Latest / Many Things with Steph Libby / Why Am I Doing This to Myself?

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Why Am I Doing This to Myself? · Many Things with Steph Libby

Hello, hello, and welcome to Solitary Creature, the podcast where I'm hoping heartbreak becomes a breakthrough and solitude turns into strength and loneliness into self-love.
I'm diving head first into healing, rediscovering who I am, and attempting to find joy in all the messy, magical moments along the way.
Every episode is a real time adventure in healing, growth, and enjoying the pleasure of my own company.
This podcast is for anyone like me who has had their world turned upside down and decided that they want to build it back better.
I am sick of settling.
I am sick of my own self-destructive patterns.
I'm sick of ignoring every red flag that comes my way, even my own.
I'm Steph, welcome and let's.
So this is obviously the first episode and I figured the best way to do the first episode is to introduce myself.
I'm Steph and it's nice to meet you.
I figured I should go over why I'm doing this to myself and, why this podcast exists.
The Cliff notes is that I'm fresh off of a breakup.
It's been about six or seven weeks now.
It's been a tough road.
It has not been a clean break by any means.
But I want to create the kind of podcast that I really.
Need in this moment, but can't seem to find, and maybe it does exist and I just haven't found it, but I want something that fills the void that I am feeling currently.
I want something that is real time.
I don't know if I'm gonna do weekly episodes or maybe twice weekly.
I haven't really decided that yet, but I.
Want it to be a real time documentation of me being a work in progress.
I'm a big work in progress and I'm reading the self-help books.
I'm listening to the podcast.
I'm listening to, you know, Mel Robbins and everything that you're supposed to listen to when you're going through a breakup.
I'm watching all the rom-coms.
I'm getting advice from my friends and family, but I don't want advice from people after they've worked out the hardship in their life.
I don't want breakup advice from someone who is two years post breakup.
I don't want life advice from people who are on the other side of it.
It's so unrelatable to me right now.
It feels so grossly unattainable that it's almost, in some ways feels not conducive it doesn't inspire me.
It just feels like those goals are so out of reach that those people are so far down the path.
I don't even know where to begin.
I to my thoughts.
I wanna share how I'm feeling as I'm feeling them.
What I'm going through on a week to week basis, the things that I'm focusing on.
How does, and maybe it's like a little bit of like a self experiment.
I am documenting my journey through healing and what I hope is transformation.
I think in order for me to be in a long-term, stable, happy, committed relationship, in order to find peace with myself and, and who I am and, and to get the things outta life that I want, this has to be a transformative time for me even when I get advice from my friends, it's like you haven't been single in five years.
You haven't been single in 13, 14, 15 years.
So it's hard.
It feels like people have forgotten what it's like.
It's hard to get advice from people and the best thing I can do is like work through it.
And I feel like there are probably a lot of people out there like me who can't relate to what people are saying.
It doesn't feel aspirational.
It feels almost depressing when you just hit with like, positivity, positivity, positivity.
This won't.
It's hard to feel positive when the outcomes you're wanting feel so far away.
It just, it doesn't leave me with a lot of hope sometimes.
The best thing I could think to do was to record all of my thoughts as I have them and turn it into a podcast and share it with the world.
One minute I am lonely.
The next I feel free and happy and loose.
So I wanted to capture that chaos and the process in real time.
And, if it's not helpful for people, then I guess I at least have a really sad diary to go back to one day.
So like, why a podcast? Like why not just keep a journal and all of that? I'm processing a lot and journaling just isn't enough.
It's not cutting it and I can't afford therapy right now.
But talking a lot is really important to my healing process for a lot of reasons.
I talked to myself.
In my house all the time to my cats, to me, but I know I sound like a crazy person, so at least if I record myself talking, I just feel a little less crazy.
And one of the things that I've always struggled with is speaking up, naming my emotions verbally, and getting used to the sound of my own voice in relationships, whether they're romantic relationships, platonic relationships, familial relationships.
I just, I have a very hard time.
I feel a lot of feelings.
I've always been a very sensitive person, and I'm very articulate.
I can be very, I'm good at naming my emotions and how I feel in my head.
I am really, really bad.
I really, really struggle with being able to speak those things aloud in a way.
That it matches the way it sounds in my head.
So, and that's caused a lot of problems in my relationship because I feel like I'm not heard and I'm starting to wonder if the reason why I'm not being heard isn't, not exclusively, but in part because I'm not verbally articulate sometimes.
So I'm hoping that speaking here.
To you, internet strangers that I'll get used to the sound of my own voice and stretch my vocabulary and get used to speaking my mind aloud the other thing is accountability.
When you live by yourself and your friends and family don't live in town, it becomes really easy.
To falter with accountability, at least, you know, speaking personally because no one's seeing that day-to-day progression.
So having to check in at least weekly will be helpful for me to keep myself accountable and ensure I'm following through on this journey.
I always like to set goals for myself, especially like weekly goals.
But what I feel like I.
The struggle with is like, I'm good thinking what I need to do.
I'm good about putting a list together.
I am bad at crossing that list off.
I'm bad with the follow through, I'm bad with execution.
In the same way that like if I, if this were like seven a self help blog like that would accountable that people were gonna logic to this podcast.
Beyond accountability, my confidence is really shattered right now.
And I think putting myself out there like this might help a little bit.
It's, I think it's gonna push me outside my comfort zone, just recording this episode and I'm like, what? Like eight, 10 minutes in is pushing me outside my comfort zone.
That's really, really scary, but I think that's good.
I think growth doesn't come from comfortable situations.
You know, doing the same things you've always done.
So I wanna do something new and bold and different because I dunno that being new and bold and different is much my style.
So, I don't know.
And I love gabbing.,
I think just like talking out loud just really does.
Help purge your purging emotions from your body and purge your thoughts from your body.
Like, and I don't know, there's just, I, it's so stupid.
Like I pee into your face and I don't even know if anyone listening to this, but I'm already like.
I feel like my mannerisms are already changing.
You can't see that obviously because this is an audio format, but like my shoulders are like chaing as I'm talking and I am already talking with so much more.
Um, certainty in my voice, even though what I'm, I'm not certain about what I'm saying at all.
There's something about holding this tiny little microphone in my hand and talking to this fuzzy little pompom on top of it that just feels really empowering.
There's that thing that people always talk about, a lot of like lifestyle influencers and positively influencers and they just talk about like take up some space, claim your space.
And maybe that is kind of what I'm doing with this.
I'm saying like, I deserve to be heard.
My opinions and thoughts matter and I am.
Worthy, and I give good advice to myself even when I don't take it.
And I do generally give, I think, pretty good advice to my friends and family.
And so why the fuck not, you know? So that's another thing, just doing something like really scary and hoping it plays out in my confidence, which I think it, oddly enough already is.
The other thing is I need a creative outlet.
And right now I'm just not in the mood to read fiction or memoir or write anything.
The only thing I can kind of stomach is self-help workbooks and study guides for my project management professional certification, my PMP certification.
So.
I need an outlet and I just, I don't have the mental bandwidth right now to sit down and write a character and dive into their whole backstory and write a scene and stare at that blinking cursor and confront the blank page.
And the idea of okay, I'm gonna write a new novel and it's gonna be words.
That is to me right now.
Like I, I can barely.
Cook myself a decent meal right now.
I can barely remember to do my skincare at the end of the day.
So taking on something like that just feels really, really overwhelming.
And I know that taking on a podcast endeavor should feel like that's taking on a really big commitment.
But it really doesn't because in my head I'm just thinking, okay, well I'm just gonna sit down every few nights and talk about what I'm feeling and talk about what I've learned this week and talk about a cool article I've read, or how I'm doing in one of my workbooks, or a quote that I saw this week that really stuck with me just like anything.
And so to me, this podcast, the way I'm thinking about it, doesn't seem as overwhelming.
It seems more manageable and doable than any of my other.
Creative outlets, but I feel like it's still creative.
It's still tapping into some sort of creativity and it's still getting my head wrapped around words.
It feels like an audio memoir, I guess in a way.
It feels like something semi creative that I can put that creative energy into.
Plus, I'm really, really bored.
I'm gonna do a whole episode about boredom and, being single.
But, I am really, really bored.
I forget how much time you spend with filling up your evenings with another person.
I'm a codependent person, I should say that.
I'm gonna give some other facts about me, but I a very, so it's really hard, especially for me.
Everything I do is usually tied up to another person.
I forget how much of my evening is just at least spent in the presence of another person and I realized that the routine me and my ex have fallen into is like really, really, really boring, and it feels like a pattern, like a depression pattern that I've fallen into, and it doesn't actually feel much like me.
Like I'm recording this at quarter to eight on a Sunday night.
And when I was with my ex, what we would be doing right now is the same thing we did every night.
We'd climb up into bed.
We'd put on whatever series we were into at the time and you know, probably something true crime or whatever is like the new show on HBO on Sundays or whatever.
And we'd watch TV until I go to bed at like 11 and that.
What I did when I was single, which is like how I would probably spend a normal Sunday evening when I was single, was I'd make myself dinner, all that stuff.
But I'd have a slow, easy, I'd probably come upstairs, I'd probably put some laundry away.
I would.
Brush my long hair cat.
I would do a simple skincare routine.
I might put on like a mud mask.
Chances are I'd probably do like rooming prep for the week, like if I had to do my eyebrows or if I had to, you know, do my nails or something.
And then I would probably.
Listen to some music, listen to a podcast, and probably read for a couple hours and journal my point is, I was not just like rotting in my bed for hours and hours and hours stuff.
We, me and my ex would just sit in bed for hours and hours and hours after spending hours watching TV on the couch.
It's just like, and I think part of the reason why all that felt so off is just because it wasn't, it wasn't really me, and oddly enough, I don't really think it was him either.
I don't know why we fell into oh, this is what we should be doing on.
A Sunday night when we both seemed kind of bored by it.
It's the oddest thing.
It's just, I don't know.
There's gotta be a name for this phenomenon of like, how do two people who don't wanna be doing this stuff end up doing this stuff together but the point is that like I'm really, I, because I, I'm having to relearn how to spend my time.
And so for the last, six weeks since he moved out I have been really, really bored for large parts of the day, especially the evenings.
So between six 30 and nine 30.
I am so bored on the weekend.
I am so, so bored.
There's just hours and hours and hours that I was filling, doing things, taking care, basically, really just like taking care of another person.
Like every chore I did took me twice as long because I was doing, I was picking up after two people instead of one.
I'm a type A person, so the best way I like to spend my time, honestly, is like, what makes me feel good is like being productive.
And so this feels like a good way, to kill two birds with one stone, kill my boredom while being productive.
I kicked off the podcast by kind of diving into what I hope this podcast will be, why I've created it.
And I just wanna be very open and honest with this, I'm winging it.
But I think there's something beautiful for a type A person like me and just going with the flow right now.
In the same way.
That you just kind of have to feel your feelings as they come During a breakup, I can't commit to any role, consistent structure or anything, which is why I've chosen such like an open format.
It's not me and another person.
It's just me sitting here.
I'm literally sitting on my bed with my almost 17-year-old cat next to me, Cosmo, and.
I'm just like chilling.
All I can tell you is that this is gonna be just me for right now, yammering on about what I'm doing to heal myself and my broken heart, and finally confront all the things that I've never really dealt with or resolved within myself.
And, I've been in three.
Serious relationships in my life and a few situation, and then a lot of random first dates and a lot of internet weirdos that I've entertained.
And, I've noticed some patterns and I wanna like really deal with them and I want, get to know myself better.
So I guess that's a good way to segue into.
I am.
And so I.
2025 and I just turned 30 and that is usually people think 40 is like a big deal but some reason I've been really dreading turning 38, I think partly because was 37, felt closer to like 35 than 40, so it felt more like I'm still in my mid thirties.
But 38 feels firmly.
Heading towards 40, you're in your late thirties and there's a lot of things that I've wanted to accomplish, in my thirties and by my forties, and I haven't, and I'm 38 now.
I'm single again, and I'm just trying to figure a lot of things and I.
Amazing transformative year for myself.
It's a challenge and a goal that I'm setting for myself.
And, the reason why I named this podcast Solitary Creature is because I am a solitary creature.
I've always, enjoyed.
Being by myself to some degree, even though I'm not always comfortable being alone.
I do enjoy my own me time.
When I was, I was single for a little bit, and a.
I had, I look back at that time very fondly.
I don't look back.
I was not a sad single person.
I've actually been, honestly, I've been more miserable in relationships than I ever have been by myself when I was single.
So I, just to give some context, I was in a almost 15 year relationship.
And he ended things in October, 2020.
It was a couple weeks before our 15 year anniversary and never married.
We did get engaged very early on a relationship.
Never planned a thing, never said a date, nothing.
So I was single for a little bit and I had such a good time.
I felt free, I felt light, I felt unbothered.
And so I named the podcast Solitary Creature 'cause I wanna embrace that part of myself again.
I wanna, I wanna find that girl again.
So we'll go into like my dating history, I think, a little bit more on another episode, but the Cliff notes is that I was in that relationship, so boyfriend and number one was a 15 year relationship.
I was single for a little bit and then I started dating boyfriend number two.
And that was like a nine month on.
On and off relationship.
It was long distance.
He was someone that I met online.
And he was an addict.
He was a heroin addict and a pill addict.
And I actually met him when he was in rehab.
He had been sober for five years.
He was with someone for like four and a half years or so.
When they broke up, he relapsed.
He went on bender for a few months.
Checked himself into rehab.
That's when I met him.
He was.
Not super honest about it in like our initial texting conversations, but when we talked on the phone, he did tell me what was going on.
I knew nothing about being an addict.
I didn't know what at like addiction was like I knew nothing.
My best friend reference was like 28 days that Sandra Bullock movie.
So like I didn't know a thing.
So I was really naive and I entered into this really.
Toxic relationship.
I felt very, I felt very hard for this person, this person.
I realize now this person was relapsing pretty consistently throughout, our relationship was not sober.
And then also I think developed a little bit of a, a drinking problem while also relapsing on whatever, basically whatever he hands on.
Eventually checked himself back into detox and rehab and he got into sober living and he eventually overdosed in a motel room while we were still together, after fight.
Couldn't come see me for my birthday.
So that has left a a, there's a lot of, lots of unpack there.
I, after that I dated, I was in a few situation ships, had like random flings and dating and all that.
Then I eventually met my boyfriend, number three, I had basically told myself that I was giving up on online dating.
Sucked talking to these men.
Sucked.
Everyone was a disappointment.
Everyone was like red flag, red flag, red flag, and just like, just like hustlers, guys that, just non-committal.
It was like everything.
Everything was awful.
Guys just want, guys just wanted hook up.
I was just wasting my time.
A bunch of stuff.
Anyway, so I told myself like, I'm gonna give up on dating, and then me and this guy matched and I thought, okay, well I'm gonna, this is the last guy I'm gonna talk to, and if this doesn't work out, I'm gonna see where it goes and like, no pressure.
And I'll see where it goes and if it doesn't go anywhere, then I'm gonna take a break for a while.
I will say that I think setting those kinds of intentions with yourself, is the best way to ensure that you are going to make a bad decision for yourself.
I, it's like thinking about it now, I thought that that was like such a strong statement I was making, but looking back, I'm like, that was a statement out of desperation for sure.
I think I subconsciously basically like sealing the deal for myself.
Like no matter what, I was gonna go in on this guy, but outwardly I was like, I am so unbothered and I am so uncommitted and I'm just gonna like, so just like going with the flow, but I probably really wasn't.
Anyway, we dated for three and a half years.
I finally ended things.
There's a lot more to get into with that, and a lot to unpack.
But that is my most recent relationship.
This is the third time I kicked him so that's what I'm dealing with.
That's what we're this podcast with.
That is what we're gonna be talking about.
That's what I am trying to resolve and deal with.
Not just dating though.
I should say this is not just about healing from dating.
This is about healing a lot of wounds.
I'm codependent severely, severely codependent.
I'm sure you probably guessed that once.
I said My ex-boyfriend's an addict.
A lot of people who date acts are codependent.
Whether they were that way before they started dating this person, or they became that way while dating that person.
But I'm also, anxiously attached person.
I have an anxious attachment style, that, and my co-dependency has me in a death grip, I struggle with my weight and body image.
I have my entire life, and I am just shy of the heaviest I've been in my life.
I mentioned that because it does play a role in my relationships and how I think about myself, it definitely plays a role in my self-confidence.
It's not just something where someone can just give you a platitude and you can just be like, oh, I'm gonna fake it till I make it, and be confident like there's a part of that.
But when you've struggled with it your entire life, it does become very hard to make sense of it all.
And it's one of the things I wanna work on as well, like I think having a healthy mind starts with having.
A healthy body.
And I'm not saying that you can't be overweight and have a healthy body.
Absolutely.
You sure can.
But I think you have to feel comfortable in your body, and I think you have to fuel your body with good, nutritious food, and you need movement to feel.
Grounded in your body, and I lack a lot of those things right now.
Do I wanna lose weight? Yes.
Me personally, I do, I don't want to.
Become a skinny mini, but I am starting to feel the effects of my weight.
Some people never run into issues.
I have never really had any health issues my entire life.
I've been fit as a fiddle.
My, even now, my blood work came back fine.
I got blood work done a couple months ago, came back fine.
There's like a couple of things where it's like, you might wanna work on this a little bit, but nothing that is where I need anything like that so far.
But my knees are starting to hurt.
I have a hip that is always hurting and I do think a lot of that has to do with, my weight and just not incorporating enough movement into my, work from home life.
And I have very few friends, so I only have a couple of close girlfriends.
I don't really have anyone that, I have one friend that lives like kind of in town, but I'm not some girl.
I've never been the kind of girl.
At least in my adult life where it's like, oh, I'm just gonna go grab a drink with, you know, Becky and be back later tonight.
I'm just like, it's never, that's never been my life.
So, I wanna work on friendships and strengthen them and learning to be someone that someone would want to be friends with.
There are days when I know I have value and I love myself, but there are also a lot of days where I am just like, why would anyone wanna be with me? I can barely stand myself.
Why would someone wanna be my friend? Why would someone want me at their job? Why would someone wanna be my boyfriend? So it's a lot to deal with and unpack.
So we are gonna get into a lot of it.
And I hope you continue this journey with me.
I promise that there will always be a little bit of ness to my episodes, just 'cause it's like I'm a single person and my mind just really wanders.
But going forward, I will probably have a topic per episode that I'm gonna dive into, so it'll be a little less random than this episode was.
I wanted to lay the foundation and like the groundwork in this first episode.
I wanted you to like kind of understand a little bit about what I'm trying to do here, because it's probably a little bit different than a lot of, it's a little bit different than least a lot of the podcasts I've been listening to.
And, I wanted you to get to know me, Stephanie, a little bit better before we go on this.
Big, bold journey together.
So thanks.