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Transcript

Your Dealbreakers Are Fear In A Blazer (And You Know It) · Toxic Girls Zone

0:03
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back. I'm glad you're here, and I'm going
0:06
Speaker 1: to need you to actually mean that today, because we're
0:08
Speaker 1: not doing a light one. Okay, so grab a coffee. Seriously,
0:12
Speaker 1: go get it. I'll wait. No, I won't, but grab
0:14
Speaker 1: it anyway, because today is not an easy one, and
0:16
Speaker 1: I want you to be sitting down. We're talking about
0:18
Speaker 1: deal breakers, the ones you wrote in your journal, the
0:20
Speaker 1: ones you've repeated to your best friend so many times
0:22
Speaker 1: she can recite them back to you in your exact voice,
0:24
Speaker 1: the ones you maybe even put somewhere public, like a
0:26
Speaker 1: statement of personal policy, a manifesto of what you will
0:29
Speaker 1: not tolerate, a declaration of self-respect. I'm going to show
0:32
Speaker 1: you something about those deal breakers today that you have
0:34
Speaker 1: not wanted to see. And I'm going to do it
0:35
Speaker 1: with love, I promise. But I'm not going to be
0:37
Speaker 1: gentle about it, right? Because gentle isn't what this one needs.
0:41
Speaker 1: The woman we're talking about today is someone I'm calling
0:43
Speaker 1: the fear dresser. She's not a villain. She's not broken.
0:45
Speaker 1: She's a woman who has looked at everything that hurt her,
0:48
Speaker 1: pulled out her sharpest vocabulary, and dressed her fear up
0:50
Speaker 1: so well that even she can't tell the difference between
0:52
Speaker 1: protection and avoidance. And listen, I've been her. I am
0:56
Speaker 1: sometimes still her on a Wednesday when my nervous system
0:58
Speaker 1: decides to have opinions. We're going to take her whole
1:00
Speaker 1: outfit apart today, piece by piece, right? So yes, coffee, now.
1:06
Speaker 1: Picture this. You've got a note on your phone. It's
1:09
Speaker 1: titled something reasonable, something like what I need or my standards,
1:13
Speaker 1: or maybe just a list with no title because you
1:15
Speaker 1: know what it is. And you pull it out sometimes,
1:17
Speaker 1: not in a frantic way, in a grounded way, like
1:19
Speaker 1: consulting scripture before a big decision. You read it. You nod.
1:23
Speaker 1: You feel clearer. You feel like a woman who has
1:25
Speaker 1: done the work and knows herself, right? That list has weight.
1:28
Speaker 1: That list has history. That list is you, standing up
1:31
Speaker 1: for yourself in document form. Yeah, I know that feeling.
1:35
Speaker 1: I had that note. I still have a version of
1:38
Speaker 1: it somewhere in my phone graveyard, buried under 17 screenshots
1:40
Speaker 1: I meant to come back to and never did. Now,
1:43
Speaker 1: here's the thing. And I'm going to say it now,
1:45
Speaker 1: and I'm going to say it again later, because it
1:47
Speaker 1: needs to land. What you call your deal-breaker is often
1:49
Speaker 1: a door you're afraid to walk through. Not always. Some
1:53
Speaker 1: deal breakers are exactly what they say they are. But
1:55
Speaker 1: some of them, the ones that keep showing up in
1:57
Speaker 1: different outfits with different men, those ones are in protection.
2:00
Speaker 1: Those ones are the fear dresser at work, nodding at
2:02
Speaker 1: her own list like scripture. We're going to figure out
2:04
Speaker 1: which is which. That's what today is, right? And yes,
2:07
Speaker 1: it's a lot. You were warned. You made that list
2:10
Speaker 1: from a real place. Something hurt you, something real, and
2:13
Speaker 1: you decided never again. And I want you to hear
2:15
Speaker 1: me when I say, that's not wrong. That is not wrong.
2:19
Speaker 1: The deal breakers exist because you had to survive something.
2:21
Speaker 1: And the survival instinct is smart. It's fast. It works.
2:24
Speaker 1: I made my own list. I wrote it on a
2:26
Speaker 1: legal pad at 26 with tea going cold next to
2:28
Speaker 1: me and my whole chest still bruised from a breakup
2:30
Speaker 1: that I thought was going to end me. Every single
2:32
Speaker 1: item on that list was true. In the moment for
2:34
Speaker 1: that wound, for that specific woman sitting at that specific table,
2:37
Speaker 1: every item was accurate, right? But here's the turn, and
2:41
Speaker 1: I need you to feel this one. The list started
2:43
Speaker 1: working so well that it started rejecting things that were
2:45
Speaker 1: not dangerous at all. Things that were just unfamiliar. A
2:48
Speaker 1: man being consistent. A man who didn't text in riddles.
2:51
Speaker 1: A man whose feelings I didn't have to chase down
2:53
Speaker 1: like a lost dog in the rain. I crossed those
2:55
Speaker 1: men off the list and I told myself I had standards.
2:57
Speaker 1: I said things like we didn't have chemistry or I
2:59
Speaker 1: just didn't feel it or he was a little too eager.
3:01
Speaker 1: And all of those things sounded right in my mouth.
3:03
Speaker 1: None of them were lies. But none of them were
3:05
Speaker 1: the whole truth either, right? The whole truth was that
3:07
Speaker 1: steady felt strange and strange had learned to call itself boring.
3:11
Speaker 1: The nervous system. I need you to understand this now
3:14
Speaker 1: because we're going to come back to it. It does
3:16
Speaker 1: not know the difference between a genuine red flag and
3:18
Speaker 1: a man who is just safe. It fires the same alarm.
3:21
Speaker 1: The alarm feels like instinct. You've been trusting that alarm
3:23
Speaker 1: for years because the last time you ignored it, something
3:26
Speaker 1: went wrong. So now you trust it completely. You don't
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Speaker 1: question it. It sounds and you go, okay, this one
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Speaker 1: is not it. And what you call your deal breaker
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Speaker 1: is often a door you're afraid to walk through. I'm
3:35
Speaker 1: going to keep saying that. Make sense? I showed that
3:39
Speaker 1: list to my best friend once, the full legal pad version,
3:41
Speaker 1: and she just looked at me. Like, she read the
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Speaker 1: whole thing, nodded slowly, and then she looked at me
3:46
Speaker 1: and did not say a single word. And I said, what?
3:49
Speaker 1: And she said nothing. And then she asked if I
3:50
Speaker 1: wanted more tea. That was its own kind of answer, right?
3:54
Speaker 1: She's been my best friend for 12 years, and she
3:56
Speaker 1: has never once told me what I want to hear
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Speaker 1: when what I want to hear is wrong. I love
4:00
Speaker 1: her for it. I also find it extremely inconvenient. Picture this.
4:05
Speaker 1: It's a third date. He's present. He's kind. He's already
4:08
Speaker 1: mentioned wanting to do this again before the evening's even over.
4:11
Speaker 1: The restaurant is nice. Not trying too hard. Just nice.
4:13
Speaker 1: He asks you a real question and actually waits for
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Speaker 1: the answer. He's not performing. He's not hot and cold.
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Speaker 1: He's just there. Genuinely there. And something feels off. Not wrong, exactly.
4:21
Speaker 1: Just quiet. Like something's missing that you can't name. And
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Speaker 1: you say, after, you say to your friend, I just
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Speaker 1: don't feel the connection. And you quote your own standard
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Speaker 1: back at him in the retelling, like, I need someone
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Speaker 1: who matches my energy. And she nods because she loves you,
4:33
Speaker 1: but she's heard this before, right? She has definitely heard
4:35
Speaker 1: this before. Okay, so I'm going to tell you something
4:38
Speaker 1: embarrassing because that's what I'm here for. I was 28,
4:41
Speaker 1: post-studio apartment, post a really bad breakup. I'd done some therapy.
4:44
Speaker 1: I had the shelf. You know the shelf, the one
4:46
Speaker 1: with all the books you've actually read. I had the shelf.
4:48
Speaker 1: And there was this guy. He was fine. He was
4:50
Speaker 1: more than fine, actually. And he texted back immediately, like fast, quickly,
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Speaker 1: every time. And I called my best friend and I said,
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Speaker 1: he texts back too fast. And she said so. And
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Speaker 1: I said, it's giving no mystery. And she said, oh,
5:01
Speaker 1: come on. And I said, I need someone who doesn't
5:02
Speaker 1: seem so available. And she did not text me back
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Speaker 1: for two days on purpose. She told me later, she
5:08
Speaker 1: said I was making a point. I said, that's mean.
5:10
Speaker 1: She said, you texted back immediately. Yeah, she got me.
5:13
Speaker 1: I did not have a response. What you call your
5:15
Speaker 1: deal breaker is often a door you're afraid to walk through, right?
5:19
Speaker 1: Even when the door is just a text reply speed.
5:22
Speaker 1: So the real question isn't whether your deal breakers are valid.
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Speaker 1: They are. Something wrote them, right? A real moment, a
5:28
Speaker 1: real hurt, a real person who did a real thing.
5:30
Speaker 1: I'm not going to sit here and tell you your
5:32
Speaker 1: list is fake. The question is whether the list is
5:34
Speaker 1: pointing at what you say it's pointing at. Because if
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Speaker 1: the deal breaker keeps showing up in different forms, with
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Speaker 1: different men, in every new city and every new app
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Speaker 1: and every new situationship, that's not a pattern of bad
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Speaker 1: men finding you. That's a pattern in your nervous system.
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Speaker 1: And that's a different conversation entirely. What would it mean
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Speaker 1: if the thing you've been calling a standard was actually
5:51
Speaker 1: a very well-dressed reason not to let anyone get close?
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Speaker 1: Not a bad person. Not even a bad pattern. Just
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Speaker 1: a scared one. Make sense? And I know, I know,
6:00
Speaker 1: the list feels like proof of growth, right? Like, look
6:03
Speaker 1: how much I know myself now. Look how quickly I
6:05
Speaker 1: spotted it. But here's the thing about patterns. They're very
6:08
Speaker 1: good at wearing new clothes. The nervous system doesn't care
6:11
Speaker 1: that you've done therapy. It doesn't read your journal. It
6:14
Speaker 1: just knows what old love felt like. And it keeps
6:16
Speaker 1: trying to find it or keep you away from the
6:17
Speaker 1: version that doesn't match. Yeah, that's the part nobody puts
6:21
Speaker 1: on the graphic. Okay, so picture this. You're three months in.
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Speaker 1: By every measure you said you wanted, it's going well.
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Speaker 1: He shows up. He's not hot and cold. He says
6:30
Speaker 1: what he means. The dates are good. He's not texting
6:32
Speaker 1: you at midnight from a parking lot, which used to
6:34
Speaker 1: feel like passion. And now you understand that was just
6:36
Speaker 1: anxiety with a data plan. But something is bothering you.
6:39
Speaker 1: You can feel it in your chest. Aloha. So you
6:41
Speaker 1: start doing inventory. He takes a day to reply to
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Speaker 1: text sometimes. That's on the list. That's a deal breaker.
6:47
Speaker 1: You bring it to your best friend and she says,
6:49
Speaker 1: does he show up in person? And you say yes.
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Speaker 1: And she says, then what's the problem? And you say
6:52
Speaker 1: it's about communication standards. She goes quiet. You know the quiet.
6:56
Speaker 1: It's the one where she's deciding whether to say the thing.
6:59
Speaker 1: She doesn't say it yet. You spend the next week
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Speaker 1: in your head building a case. He doesn't ask follow-up
7:05
Speaker 1: questions consistently. That's emotional unavailability. He likes music you don't
7:09
Speaker 1: connect with. That's a values mismatch. He's a little quieter
7:12
Speaker 1: on weeknights. That's low investment. The items pile up and
7:15
Speaker 1: they all sound reasonable. And they are all arriving in
7:17
Speaker 1: the exact same week that he said, kind of casually,
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Speaker 1: I really like where this is going. And your whole
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Speaker 1: body started cataloging exits the morning after he said that.
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Speaker 1: The deal breaker machine turned on in the 12 hours
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Speaker 1: after a man told you, clearly, that he was in. Okay,
7:30
Speaker 1: can we see this? That's not your judgment. That's a
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Speaker 1: frightened body reaching for the eject button. And I did
7:36
Speaker 1: this to someone. I'm not proud. I'll just say that first.
7:39
Speaker 1: I was 29. I had done the work. I had
7:41
Speaker 1: the therapy, the journal, the shelf, the whole aesthetic of
7:44
Speaker 1: a woman who knows herself. His name doesn't matter. What
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Speaker 1: matters is that he was steady. He cooked. Not elaborate,
7:50
Speaker 1: just real food on a table with a plate. He
7:52
Speaker 1: called when he said he would. He remembered things I
7:54
Speaker 1: mentioned once, and I spent three months finding reasons. He's
7:57
Speaker 1: too comfortable in silence. I told myself that was avoidance.
8:00
Speaker 1: He doesn't make grand gestures. I told myself that was
8:03
Speaker 1: low effort. I was very convincing. Mostly to myself, right?
8:07
Speaker 1: One night he left a note on my kitchen counter.
8:09
Speaker 1: Just the name of a restaurant, and I made a
8:10
Speaker 1: reservation for Saturday. That's it. And I stood in my
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Speaker 1: kitchen holding that little piece of paper thinking, is this enough?
8:16
Speaker 1: And the question wasn't about the note. The note was lovely.
8:19
Speaker 1: The question was me, asking myself whether I was allowed
8:21
Speaker 1: to have a thing that felt this still. I had
8:23
Speaker 1: calibrated so hard to chaos that a handwritten note on
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Speaker 1: a counter felt like nothing instead of everything. I told
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Speaker 1: him I didn't think we were compatible. He said, okay.
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Speaker 1: I could hear in that one word that he wasn't surprised.
8:33
Speaker 1: I cried in the bathtub that night, which is very
8:35
Speaker 1: dramatic and also very inconvenient when the bathtub is the
8:37
Speaker 1: size of a large shoe box. Yeah, I do not
8:39
Speaker 1: recommend it. Zero stars. So let's talk about the actual
8:43
Speaker 1: mechanism because once you see it, you can't unsee it, right?
8:45
Speaker 1: The nervous system was trained on the emotional temperature of
8:47
Speaker 1: early love. And for a lot of us, that temperature
8:50
Speaker 1: was not steady. My dad was kind. He was genuinely kind.
8:53
Speaker 1: But he was hard to reach. He worked late. He
8:55
Speaker 1: was a little behind glass. Always just arriving or just leaving.
8:58
Speaker 1: I learned that love comes with some distance. That distance
9:01
Speaker 1: is just how love feels on a Tuesday. So when
9:03
Speaker 1: a man showed up fully present, fully at the table,
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Speaker 1: I didn't feel loved. I felt exposed. The nervous system fired,
9:08
Speaker 1: not warning me about him. Warning me about the feeling
9:11
Speaker 1: of being truly seen. Because that feeling had never been
9:13
Speaker 1: safe before. You know? The deal breaker list is where
9:17
Speaker 1: the nervous system puts its language. It gives the alarm
9:20
Speaker 1: a reason that sounds like wisdom. He didn't communicate the
9:23
Speaker 1: way I need. We had different values. I just didn't
9:25
Speaker 1: feel the chemistry. None of those are lies. Every single
9:28
Speaker 1: one can also be a frightened nervous system repackaging itself
9:31
Speaker 1: as a discerning woman. And here's the part that gets me.
9:34
Speaker 1: The fear dresser doesn't know she's doing it. That is
9:37
Speaker 1: what makes the whole thing so convincing. Your nervous system
9:39
Speaker 1: has a PhD in attachment theory. Self-awarded. Never peer-reviewed. Absolutely
9:45
Speaker 1: certain it's right. No notes. And your body maps the
9:48
Speaker 1: early stuff as baseline, right? Whatever was familiar in childhood, distance,
9:52
Speaker 1: having to earn warms, waiting for the moment the mood shifted,
9:55
Speaker 1: love that came in doses you had to time correctly,
9:57
Speaker 1: all of that gets registered as normal. And normal gets
9:59
Speaker 1: registered as safe. So when something different shows up, something steadier,
10:03
Speaker 1: something that doesn't require you to perform or wait or guess,
10:06
Speaker 1: the body sounds an alarm. Not because danger is present.
10:09
Speaker 1: Because unfamiliarity always reads as threat. This is not intuition.
10:12
Speaker 1: I want to be really clear about that. This is
10:14
Speaker 1: pattern recognition running on very old data. Sound familiar? Yeah,
10:18
Speaker 1: I thought so. And then picture this. You had a
10:21
Speaker 1: great date last night. He texted this morning, warm, specific,
10:25
Speaker 1: something you actually said. Your body is doing something in
10:28
Speaker 1: your chest and you reach for the list. Your inner
10:30
Speaker 1: voice goes, something feels off. And you can't name what
10:33
Speaker 1: it is. You can just feel the hum. That hum
10:35
Speaker 1: is your nervous system telling you this doesn't match the map.
10:38
Speaker 1: Not telling you to leave, just telling you it's new.
10:41
Speaker 1: There's a difference, a big one. And the fear dresser
10:44
Speaker 1: doesn't have access to that difference yet. That's what we're
10:46
Speaker 1: building toward. Next, who taught the fear dresser to dress
10:50
Speaker 1: this way? And I'll tell you right now, it's closer
10:52
Speaker 1: to home than you want it to be. So let's
10:55
Speaker 1: talk about who taught her. Who taught the fear dresser
10:57
Speaker 1: to pick out that outfit every morning, right? Because she
11:00
Speaker 1: didn't come up with it herself. Nobody invents this from scratch.
11:03
Speaker 1: I want you to think about the first person whose
11:05
Speaker 1: love you had to work to feel. Not the first boyfriend.
11:07
Speaker 1: Not the first situationship. Earlier than that. The parent who
11:11
Speaker 1: was kind, but somewhere else. Always a little behind glass.
11:14
Speaker 1: Warmth there, but you couldn't always reach it. Or maybe
11:16
Speaker 1: the parent who was present but in a way that
11:17
Speaker 1: needed managing. You had to be okay so they could
11:20
Speaker 1: be okay. You learned to read the room before you
11:22
Speaker 1: walked into it. Either way, you grew up learning that
11:24
Speaker 1: love has a temperature, a texture, and some amount of
11:26
Speaker 1: reaching was just built into it. Make sense? My dad
11:30
Speaker 1: was a good man. I want to say that clearly. Kind,
11:33
Speaker 1: showed up, never missed the important things. But he was
11:36
Speaker 1: hard to reach on a Tuesday. Working late, a little
11:39
Speaker 1: in his own head, warm when he was there but
11:41
Speaker 1: I had to go to him. He didn't always come
11:43
Speaker 1: to me. And I spent my entire 20s going to men.
11:46
Speaker 1: Chasing men who were just arriving or just leaving. Men
11:48
Speaker 1: whose cars were always in the driveway but never fully parked.
11:51
Speaker 1: I called that passion. I called that depth. My best
11:54
Speaker 1: friend called it exhausting and she was correct, right? The
11:57
Speaker 1: fear dresser learned to dress in that house. She didn't
11:59
Speaker 1: invent the outfit. She inherited it. And picture this moment,
12:03
Speaker 1: one I've thought about a lot. Me at maybe 12,
12:05
Speaker 1: standing by the front window. My dad's car pulling in
12:08
Speaker 1: later than expected. And the specific quality of what I
12:11
Speaker 1: felt when he came through the door, it wasn't joy exactly.
12:13
Speaker 1: It was relief. The dropping of a tension I'd been
12:15
Speaker 1: holding without knowing I was holding it. I recreated that
12:18
Speaker 1: feeling in every relationship I called passionate for the next
12:21
Speaker 1: 15 years. The tension. The waiting. The release of it.
12:25
Speaker 1: I spent my 20s calling that chemistry. It wasn't chemistry,
12:28
Speaker 1: it was a curriculum. An emotional education that I did
12:30
Speaker 1: not sign up for and definitely didn't need to keep repeating.
12:33
Speaker 1: Sound familiar? Yeah. And notice where your body holds the
12:37
Speaker 1: feeling of not quite enough, right? That's the entry point here.
12:40
Speaker 1: Because it's old. It is not about him. It is
12:43
Speaker 1: not about the guy who texted back too slowly last
12:45
Speaker 1: week or the one who seemed distracted at dinner. It
12:47
Speaker 1: is a feeling that was already installed before you were
12:49
Speaker 1: old enough to have a first date. The fear dresser
12:51
Speaker 1: doesn't check the source. She just wears what was given
12:53
Speaker 1: to her and calls it her own style. And I
12:56
Speaker 1: want you to sit with that for a second because
12:58
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of a relief when you get it.
12:59
Speaker 1: Not your fault, truly. And also yours to deal with
13:02
Speaker 1: now because we're adults and that's the deal, okay? And
13:06
Speaker 1: then picture you at the table with him. He's attentive.
13:08
Speaker 1: He's actually asking you questions, real ones, follow-up ones. And
13:12
Speaker 1: instead of receiving it, you're sitting across from him wondering
13:14
Speaker 1: what is wrong with him. Because easy has never felt
13:16
Speaker 1: like love before. Love for a lot of us was
13:19
Speaker 1: something you had to earn the room for. So when
13:21
Speaker 1: someone just gives you the room, just hands it to you,
13:23
Speaker 1: your body doesn't recognize it as the thing you wanted.
13:26
Speaker 1: It reads it as a trap, right? Or a performance.
13:28
Speaker 1: Or naivety. And you go home and tell your best
13:30
Speaker 1: friend he was too eager and she gives you the look.
13:32
Speaker 1: She doesn't say anything. She's gotten very good at the look.
13:36
Speaker 1: Now here's the layer underneath all of that. There's a
13:38
Speaker 1: part of you that formed after something hurt and said
13:40
Speaker 1: never again, right? In Part's work, they call this a
13:43
Speaker 1: protector part. A piece of the self whose only job
13:46
Speaker 1: is to stop the wound from being touched again. This
13:48
Speaker 1: part does not update. It doesn't get the therapy notes.
13:51
Speaker 1: It doesn't read the self-help books you've got stacked on
13:53
Speaker 1: the nightstand. The ones with the spines you've cracked but
13:56
Speaker 1: never fully finished. I see you. It just watches for
13:59
Speaker 1: the shape of the old threat. And the shape of
14:01
Speaker 1: the old threat is closeness that could be taken away.
14:03
Speaker 1: So it does the smart thing. It rejects the closeness
14:06
Speaker 1: before the closeness can leave. That is the protector part's
14:09
Speaker 1: most strategic move. And the deal breaker list is this
14:13
Speaker 1: part's most sophisticated tool because it makes rejection look like judgment,
14:16
Speaker 1: not fear, discernment, not protection, standards. The protector part went
14:20
Speaker 1: to business school, very polished, very articulate, absolutely in the
14:23
Speaker 1: wrong department. And the shadow underneath it, the thing it
14:25
Speaker 1: never lets you look at directly, is this. If I
14:28
Speaker 1: let someone fully in and they leave anyway, I will
14:30
Speaker 1: not survive it. You survived the breakup at 26 and
14:33
Speaker 1: it nearly undid you. The protector part watched that happen
14:36
Speaker 1: and said, absolutely not, never again, and you called that growth.
14:39
Speaker 1: And some of it was. I mean it. Some of
14:41
Speaker 1: it genuinely was. And some of it was armor. There's
14:44
Speaker 1: a difference, right? Yeah. Real growth in armor can look
14:47
Speaker 1: almost identical from the outside. The difference is what they're protecting.
14:51
Speaker 1: And picture your inner voice, right? Articulate. Firm. Listing the
14:55
Speaker 1: deal breakers with total confidence, a well-organized presentation, nothing out
14:58
Speaker 1: of place. And underneath it, quieter, almost not there, the
15:02
Speaker 1: voice that says, I cannot do this again. Please. That
15:05
Speaker 1: voice is not your standards. That voice is real and
15:07
Speaker 1: scared and doing her best. And she deserves to be heard,
15:10
Speaker 1: not turned into a list, not dressed up in vocabulary. Heard.
15:14
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what the fear dresser pays. Because
15:17
Speaker 1: there is a real cost here, and I want you
15:18
Speaker 1: to know it, right? She pays in people. She crosses
15:22
Speaker 1: a steady one off and goes home and doesn't know
15:23
Speaker 1: exactly why she feels worse. She pays in time. She
15:26
Speaker 1: spends years with the list, tightening it, refining it, making
15:28
Speaker 1: it more specific. And each year the options feel more narrow.
15:31
Speaker 1: And she tells herself that's because her standards are just
15:33
Speaker 1: really high. She pays in the stories she tells herself
15:35
Speaker 1: about what she wants. I want someone with emotional depth,
15:38
Speaker 1: she says. And what she means underneath that is someone
15:41
Speaker 1: whose depth I have to excavate. Because excavation is the
15:44
Speaker 1: only kind of closeness she knows how to do. You know?
15:48
Speaker 1: My sister got engaged and I remember standing at the party,
15:50
Speaker 1: the string lights, the sound of the toast, watching her
15:53
Speaker 1: face and doing this slow math in my head about
15:54
Speaker 1: all the things I'd ended. All the notes on counters,
15:57
Speaker 1: all the immediate texts, all the reservations made on a Saturday.
16:00
Speaker 1: And I was listing reasons in my head, the old reasons,
16:02
Speaker 1: the list doing its work even at a party, even
16:03
Speaker 1: with champagne in my hand. My partner found me on
16:06
Speaker 1: the way out. We were standing there later and my
16:08
Speaker 1: partner asked me one question. What did you actually want
16:10
Speaker 1: from tonight? And I stood there and gave back silence.
16:13
Speaker 1: Which is its own kind of answer. The protector part
16:15
Speaker 1: does not take nights off at engagement parties. Very dedicated.
16:19
Speaker 1: Worst timing imaginable. Here's the hard truth. Baby, you cannot
16:23
Speaker 1: heal the fear dresser by making a better list, right?
16:26
Speaker 1: More specific deal breakers do not fix a nervous system
16:28
Speaker 1: that was calibrated for distance. The fix is not better judgment.
16:32
Speaker 1: The fix is learning to stay in the room when
16:33
Speaker 1: the alarm goes off. Not because the alarm is always wrong.
16:37
Speaker 1: Some alarms are absolutely right, and I will never tell
16:39
Speaker 1: you to override a real alarm. But you need to
16:41
Speaker 1: learn the difference between your gut and your fear. And
16:44
Speaker 1: that difference is not available to you right now because
16:45
Speaker 1: you've never let it play out long enough to show you.
16:48
Speaker 1: What you call your deal breaker is often a door
16:50
Speaker 1: you are afraid to walk through. And the woman on
16:52
Speaker 1: the other side of that door is not naive. She's
16:54
Speaker 1: not settling. She's not lowering anything. She's expanding her capacity
16:58
Speaker 1: to tolerate something that is good and might stay and
17:00
Speaker 1: might actually be love. And that, genuinely, is the most
17:03
Speaker 1: terrifying thing you can offer some of us. Not heartbreak. Safety. Safety,
17:09
Speaker 1: the villain of this story, apparently. Showed up on time.
17:11
Speaker 1: Made a reservation. Absolute monster. I'm not okay. And picture this.
17:17
Speaker 1: You're on a date and it's going well. Genuinely well.
17:19
Speaker 1: The easy kind of well that doesn't require performance. And
17:22
Speaker 1: the list opens in your mind like a browser tab
17:24
Speaker 1: you didn't click. Your inner voice says yes, but. Yes,
17:27
Speaker 1: but he seemed too settled. Yes, but there wasn't that edge. Yes,
17:31
Speaker 1: but I just didn't feel the thing. And I want
17:32
Speaker 1: you to notice that yes, but. Because that yes, but
17:35
Speaker 1: is the fear dresser pulling on her blazer. Right? That's
17:38
Speaker 1: the signal. Not proof that something is wrong. Proof that
17:40
Speaker 1: something is new. So what does the other side actually
17:44
Speaker 1: look like? Because I think we need to talk about
17:46
Speaker 1: this concretely, right? The other side is not a woman
17:48
Speaker 1: who ignores red flags. She's a woman who can sit
17:51
Speaker 1: with a good thing long enough to find out whether
17:52
Speaker 1: it's a good thing. Her nervous system isn't running the
17:55
Speaker 1: show alone. She notices the alarm and she doesn't immediately
17:57
Speaker 1: obey it. She has learned that the absence of chaos
18:00
Speaker 1: is not the absence of chemistry. It is just a
18:02
Speaker 1: nervous system that hasn't recognized peace yet. There's a concept
18:05
Speaker 1: for this, a window of tolerance, the range inside which
18:08
Speaker 1: your nervous system can take an experience without defaulting to alarm.
18:12
Speaker 1: When you're inside that window, you can actually read what's
18:13
Speaker 1: happening in front of you. When you're outside it, you're
18:16
Speaker 1: just reacting to old data on a new face. The
18:18
Speaker 1: work is expanding that window slowly, so good things get
18:21
Speaker 1: a fair read. Make sense? You know that kind of
18:25
Speaker 1: reality dating show. The kind where two people stand at
18:27
Speaker 1: a fake altar after six weeks and decide where it's
18:30
Speaker 1: all compressed and emotional and everybody's vibrating. There's always one
18:34
Speaker 1: person electrified, visibly overwhelmed, electric with feeling, and one person still. Clear-eyed,
18:39
Speaker 1: not cold, just settled in something. The still one always
18:42
Speaker 1: gets called cold by the people watching. By the end,
18:45
Speaker 1: the still one is almost always the one who meant it.
18:47
Speaker 1: The other side is the still one. She hasn't stopped
18:49
Speaker 1: feeling things. She stopped mistaking the vibration for the signal.
18:53
Speaker 1: And my partner falls asleep about 10 minutes into every
18:55
Speaker 1: movie we put on, right? Every single one. Movie starts,
18:58
Speaker 1: 20 minutes in, gone. I used to read that as
19:01
Speaker 1: low engagement. I genuinely did. I added it to a
19:04
Speaker 1: mental list once. Now I know it is the deepest
19:06
Speaker 1: form of comfort he has ever felt with another person.
19:09
Speaker 1: He is so at ease that his nervous system finally
19:11
Speaker 1: goes quiet. I used to think quiet meant nothing was happening.
19:14
Speaker 1: Quiet means nothing is wrong. Okay? So four moves, and
19:19
Speaker 1: none of these are about becoming someone who accepts anything, right? First,
19:22
Speaker 1: when the alarm goes off, write down exactly what the
19:25
Speaker 1: deal breaker is in one sentence. Not the theme, the
19:27
Speaker 1: actual sentence. He texted back too quickly. He planned things.
19:30
Speaker 1: He said where he stood. Write that sentence and read
19:32
Speaker 1: it out loud. Second, ask yourself one question. If I
19:35
Speaker 1: were not afraid, would this still bother me? Not is
19:38
Speaker 1: the fear valid. The fear is valid. But would a
19:40
Speaker 1: version of me who already knows she is safe still
19:42
Speaker 1: have this problem? Third, give it three more data points
19:45
Speaker 1: before you act. Not three months. Three moments. Stay in
19:48
Speaker 1: the room for three more pieces of information. Your nervous
19:51
Speaker 1: system makes its call in about four seconds. Three data
19:54
Speaker 1: points is already longer than it wants to wait. You
19:56
Speaker 1: can do three. And fourth, name the protector out loud.
19:59
Speaker 1: You can say it to the dog. Nobody is listening.
20:01
Speaker 1: He is already chewing something important and is not judging you.
20:04
Speaker 1: The part of me that is scared right now is
20:06
Speaker 1: trying to protect me and I hear it and I
20:07
Speaker 1: am not leaving just yet. Say that. With a dog.
20:11
Speaker 1: With a sock situation happening nearby. It counts, right? So
20:15
Speaker 1: write the one sentence deal breaker. Literally do it. Read
20:18
Speaker 1: it out loud to yourself. Just your voice in the room.
20:21
Speaker 1: And ask honestly, is fear alone doing the work here?
20:24
Speaker 1: That's it. That's the dare. And picture you on the balcony, right?
20:27
Speaker 1: The plants in various states of survival. Your phone in
20:29
Speaker 1: your hand. Writing the sentence in your notes. Reading it back.
20:33
Speaker 1: Your own voice surprising you a little. That's her. That's
20:36
Speaker 1: the woman doing the work. It doesn't have to be
20:38
Speaker 1: bigger than that. The woman you're becoming is not the
20:41
Speaker 1: one who throws out the list entirely, right? She's the
20:44
Speaker 1: one who can pick it up and ask who wrote
20:45
Speaker 1: this and why. She knows the difference between a boundary
20:48
Speaker 1: that protects her values and a wall that protects her wound.
20:50
Speaker 1: She can feel the alarm and say thank you and
20:52
Speaker 1: not run. She has a little more room inside her
20:54
Speaker 1: and she lets good things sit in that room long
20:56
Speaker 1: enough to show her what they are. I'm still building
20:58
Speaker 1: that room. I have the balcony plants as my standing metaphor.
21:01
Speaker 1: I keep almost killing them. I also keep them alive.
21:04
Speaker 1: Some of them are actually thriving right now and I
21:06
Speaker 1: don't fully know what I did differently. The balcony plants,
21:08
Speaker 1: technically still living, mostly through stubbornness on both our parts.
21:12
Speaker 1: The work is the same, right? And picture you, a
21:16
Speaker 1: little softer at the edges, not naive, just not running,
21:19
Speaker 1: letting the moment be a moment, not reaching for the list,
21:22
Speaker 1: not opening the tab, just sitting in the thing and
21:25
Speaker 1: letting it show you what it is. That woman exists.
21:27
Speaker 1: She's not somebody else. She's you, with a wider window
21:31
Speaker 1: and a little more time given to the good things.
21:33
Speaker 1: She's who you're growing toward. What you call your deal
21:35
Speaker 1: breaker is often a door you are afraid to walk through.
21:38
Speaker 1: That's the whole thing. That's what I wanted to say
21:40
Speaker 1: to you today. The fear dresser is not a bad woman.
21:43
Speaker 1: She's a very smart, very tired woman who has been
21:45
Speaker 1: dressing her fear in her best vocabulary for years. And
21:48
Speaker 1: I love her. I am one of her. And I
21:50
Speaker 1: am asking her very gently to try the door. Just
21:53
Speaker 1: try it. Not forever. Just try it. The dog will
21:56
Speaker 1: eat another sock while you do. Life continues. The stakes
21:59
Speaker 1: are manageable. You're going to be okay. The question to
22:02
Speaker 1: sit with this week and write it down if you
22:04
Speaker 1: want to. Find a scrap of paper, put it in
22:06
Speaker 1: your notes, stick it somewhere you'll actually see it. Which
22:09
Speaker 1: deal breaker have you named three times in a row,
22:11
Speaker 1: and what might it be keeping you safe from? Not
22:13
Speaker 1: keeping you from harm. Safe from. Sit with that. And
22:16
Speaker 1: if an answer comes up that surprises you, I really
22:18
Speaker 1: want to hear it. Send this to a friend who's
22:20
Speaker 1: been refining her list for the third year in a row.
22:22
Speaker 1: She needs this more than she'll admit, and you both
22:24
Speaker 1: know it. Come find me, leave a comment, tell me
22:26
Speaker 1: what you found. I'll be here. Take care of yourself. Bye.
22:30
Speaker 1: This show is made by Obamedia.