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How To Stop Your Alarm Keeper From Ruining Something Good · Toxic Girls Zone

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back. Grab a coffee for this one, genuinely,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: because we are covering a lot of ground today, and
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I want you to actually be able to use it
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: by the time we are done. This is not one
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: of those episodes where we sit with a feeling and
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: name it and call that progress. Today is a step-by-step. Usable?
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Walk out of here with something guide. The warning is real, though.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: We are going into some uncomfortable territory, and if anxiety
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: in relationships is a live wire for you right now,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: just know that going in. We are talking about anxious
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: attachment in a new relationship, not the chronic background hum
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: you have already read 12 articles about, the specific terrifying
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: window when someone new is actually good and your alarm
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: will not stop sounding anyway. And I want to be
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: precise about what I mean by that window because it
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: is different from what most people describe. This is not
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: the anxiety of a bad relationship. This is not the
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: anxiety of a situation where nothing is defined. This is
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the anxiety that shows up when he texts back, when
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: he shows up, when he is doing everything right, and
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: your brain responds to that information by immediately opening a hotline.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Emergency services, We have a man who seems to like her.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: All units, please respond. So today we are working through
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: four steps. Notice the alarm keeper in real time. Find
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: where it came from. Give it a job it can
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: actually do. And repair with your partner after it fires anyway,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: because it will. That is the roadmap and we are
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: moving through it. But first, let me tell you who
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: this episode is actually for. Because if I get that wrong,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: you might hear the wrong thing. You are not in
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: a bad relationship. That is the point. He texts back.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: He does not leave you on read for three days
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: crafting mystery. He shows up to the things he said
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: he would show up to. He said he likes you,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: out loud, with his face, and you heard it. And
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: then you immediately began collecting evidence that it was a lie.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: You know the word attachment. You have been in therapy.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Maybe you are still in therapy. You have read the
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: books and listened to the episodes and done the journaling.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: And you still found yourself at midnight last Tuesday, refreshing
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: his last scene like it contained classified information. This episode
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: is not for the woman who is ignoring red flags.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I want to be clear about that because those are
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: different conversations. This is for the woman who is creating
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: red flags from perfectly ordinary moments. He said hey with
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: one exclamation point instead of two. And now you are
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: writing a linguistic forensics operation. He seemed a little quiet
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: over dinner. And now you are mentally writing the eulogy
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: for the relationship. You are not confused about him. Not really.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: You are exhausted by yourself. You are tired of being
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: the emergency in your own love life. And you said
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: that out loud to your friend at some point. And
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: she nodded too hard. And you both went quiet. And
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I get that. I genuinely get that. There is something
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: so humiliating about knowing the theory and still doing the thing. Like...
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: You can name the cognitive distortion while you are inside it.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: You can say out loud, this is catastrophizing while you
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: are catastrophizing. And the naming does absolutely nothing to stop it.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: That gap between knowing and doing is not a character flaw.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: It is the whole problem we are solving today. But
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: sit with the fact that you are doing this to
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: a relationship that is going fine. That matters. The relationship
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: being fine is actually the necessary context for everything else.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Picture this. He sent you a text, something normal, maybe
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a reply to something you said, and his reply was short.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Two words, maybe three. And you read it, and something
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: in your chest went sideways, and you screenshotted the text
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: and sent it to your friend and said, what does
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: this mean? And your friend said it means he replied.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: And you were not satisfied with that answer, so you
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: sent it to another friend who has a different read
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: on men, and she said he seems distant. And now
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: you have two diagnoses from people who were not there
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: and have no additional information, and you are treating both
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: of them as evidence. The apartment around you is fine.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Nothing in the room has changed. He is fine. You
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: are on fire. You are standing in a perfectly good
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: kitchen convinced there is smoke. I sent a screenshot to
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: three different people once and got three completely different diagnoses.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: And I had the clarity to think, one of us
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: is wrong, and the clarity to then decide it was
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: definitely him. Here's the thing. What we are actually talking
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: about today has a name, a framework, and it is
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: going to reframe every step that follows. The concept is
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: parts work. The idea, in plain words, is this. Inside you,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: there are distinct subpersonalities, different parts of you that formed
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: at different points in your life to help you survive
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: what was happening at the time. They are not disorders.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: They are not signs that something is broken. They are
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: strategies that got frozen. A part formed when you were
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: nine does not age into 32. It stays nine doing
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: the job it learned at nine for the rest of
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: your life unless something happens to update it. These parts
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: are not random. They're not chaos. They each have a
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: function and they form because they had to. The specific
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: part we are naming today is what parts work calls
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: the protector, a part whose entire identity is keeping you
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: safe from pain. It learned threat detection as its primary job.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: It is fast, it is loud, and it is completely
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: wrong about timelines. It thinks you are still inside the
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: situation that first required it. It does not know that
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: you moved, grew up, left, healed, rebuilt. It is running
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: software from a version of your life that no longer exists,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: and it has never been updated because no one told
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: it it was safe to stop. The name I am
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: using for your protector today, the one running anxious attachment
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: in a new relationship, is the alarm keeper. The alarm
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: keeper watches him for data. It reads tone into punctuation.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: It rehearses the breakup conversation in your head while he
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: is standing in the kitchen making you both coffee. It
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: monitors his energy, his response time, his word choice, the
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: way he looked at his phone, the pause before he
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: answered a question. It is running a continuous background scan
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: and it is reporting its findings to you as certainty
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: when they are actually just fear wearing the clothes of intuition.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: We are going to work with it today, not against it.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Four steps and we are going through all of them.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Step one is notice. Step two is find where it
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: came from. Step three is give it a different job.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Step four is repair after it fires anyway. Those are
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: the four and we are doing every single one. So
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: let's start at the beginning, not your beginning with him,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: the actual beginning. The alarm keeper did not form in
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: your current relationship and that is genuinely the coolest part
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: of this whole thing. It formed somewhere else, somewhere earlier,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: in a place where the threat was real and it
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: was consistent and it was not going away. Maybe love
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: in your home was inconsistent. It came and it went
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: without warning or explanation and you never knew which version
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: you were going to get. Maybe approval was earned, not given,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: and you learned to perform, to keep the temperature in
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: the room low, to read the adults around you like
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: a weather forecast. Maybe a previous partner was actually unreliable,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: actually unavailable, and your nervous system learned that calm was
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: the before picture, that peace was just the setup for
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: the fall. Whatever it was, the alarm keeper formed there.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: It formed as a reasonable response to an unreasonable situation.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: It was the smart move at the time. Here is
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: what the nervous system does not do without help. It
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: does not distinguish between then and now. It pattern matches.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: It takes a current moment and maps it against its
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: library of past experiences and finds the closest match and
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: responds to that match as if it is happening now.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: He pauses before answering a question and the alarm keeper
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: does not think pause. It thinks last time someone paused
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: before answering it was over. It thinks I have seen
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: this before. It reports that thought to you as intuition
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: because intuition feels certain and certain feels safe. The protector
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: part carries the original wound underneath all of this. The
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: wound is, I am not safe when I am not certain.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Certainty was the thing whose absence made love feel like danger.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: So the alarm keeper monitors because monitoring was the closest
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: thing to control that was ever available to you. I
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: was 17 the first time I noticed I was doing it,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: and I had no language for it at all. First boyfriend,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: late teens, and I counted the hours between his replies
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: like I was managing inventory. Like if I tracked the
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: pattern long enough, I would be able to predict it.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: And if I could predict it, I would be okay.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: I did not know I had learned that behavior from
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: somewhere earlier. I thought I was just in love. I
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: thought this was what love felt like. This constant low
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: hum of, are we okay? Is this okay? Is he okay?
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Are we still okay? It felt like caring. It looked
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: like caring. Nobody told me it was actually fear with
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: a very convincing disguise. And the nervous system piece matters
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: here because it explains why knowing better does not fix it.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: You can know that he is not the 17-year-old boy
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: who went quiet before he ended things. You can know
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: that intellectually, hold it in your frontal lobe, repeat it
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: to yourself in the mirror. The body does not care.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: The body felt the pause and matched it and fired.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: And it did that in about half a second before
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the knowing part of your brain even had a chance
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: to weigh in. That is not weakness. That is a
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: very fast, very old system doing what it was built
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: to do. The alarm keeper is not irrational. It is
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: just using the wrong map. I want to stay here
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: for one more second because I think it matters how
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: well you understand where this came from before we get
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: into what to do about it. Because if you skip
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: this part, if you go straight to the steps without
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: really sitting with when this formed and why it made
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: sense at the time, you will use the steps as
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: another form of control. Another way to manage yourself into
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: feeling safe rather than actually becoming safer, the alarm keeper
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: formed to protect something real, an actual younger version of
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: you who needed protecting and did not have anyone else
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: doing it. So when we say the alarm keeper is wrong,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: we do not mean it was always wrong. We mean
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: its information is old. There is a difference, and that
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: difference is the reason you can feel something like gratitude
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: for it, even while you work to change what it does.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Now let's talk about what it does to you in
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: your 20s, because that is when things got complicated for me.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Early 20s, First real relationship in the sense of one
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: that lasted long enough to show me what I was
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: working with. He was inconsistent in a way I can
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: now name clearly as avoidant, though I did not have
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: that word then. The alarm keeper was not a problem
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: in that relationship in the same way it would become later.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: And here is why, because it was accurate. He actually
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: was unreliable. He would cancel plans and the cancellation felt
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: like confirmation that I had been right to monitor him,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: that my vigilance had paid off, that the tracking had
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: given me real information. The accuracy was almost a relief.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: I remember that specific feeling, the grim satisfaction of being right.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: And that relief scared me later when I looked back
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: at it, because what it meant was that I had
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: been hoping for the threat so that the alarm made sense.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Let that land. The problem was what happened after. After
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: that relationship ended, after the breakup that genuinely broke me,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I spent years chasing men who were unavailable. And in
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: that time, I trained the alarm keeper to run at
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: full volume constantly, always as a default state. It became
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: my normal. And then I met someone who was not
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: giving it any data. He replied. He showed up. He
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: made a plan and then did the plan. He did
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: not leave me hanging. And I found this completely unbearable.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I told my friend he was too available. She looked
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: at me and said, available is not the same as boring.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: And I did not hear her. I actually did not
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: hear her. I broke it off with him within two months.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Because the alarm keeper needed noise and found none and
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: decided that the absence of noise was itself suspicious. That
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: is not a metaphor. That is a literal thing the
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: alarm does. It manufactures data when the environment does not
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: supply it. because silence is more terrifying to it than
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: a confirmed threat. The alarm keeper protecting me from safety
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: because safety felt like the calm before the storm. So
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: that is where it comes from and that is what
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: it does when it has been running unchecked. Now let's
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: talk about why it is so hard to see it
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: for what it is. And this is the part that
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: makes the How to genuinely difficult, my loves, because the
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: alarm keeper has been running long enough that it does
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: not feel like a protective part anymore. It feels like personality.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: It feels like being perceptive, intuitive, careful. You read his
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: body language before he even opens his mouth, and you
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: call that emotional intelligence. You pull back before you think
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: he will, and you call that self-protection. You tell your
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: friend you just know something is off, even when nothing
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: is off, and you call it being realistic. These are
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: reframes the alarm keeper offers you, and it offers them
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: because it cannot afford to be seen as a problem.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: It is genuinely trying to help. That is the thing
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: about protector parts that makes them so sticky. They are
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: not malicious. They are not self-sabotaging on purpose. They are
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: doing their job. The job is just outdated. Its data
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: is old. And a protector working from old data in
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: a new situation is the definition of the alarm keeper
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: at work. The protector's core function is to control connection
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: before someone else can remove it. Think about that for
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: a second. If you withdraw first, you cannot be left.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: If you test him first, you cannot be blindsided. If
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: you stay one step removed, the fall is shorter. The
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: alarm keeper is doing risk management. The cost is that
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: you never actually arrive in the relationship. You are always
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: managing the exit instead of being in the room. And
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: here is what it costs in real time. What the
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: alarm keeper actually does to a relationship that is going fine,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: it makes him feel like he is always being tested.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: And the problem is he cannot pass because the test
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: keeps changing. He is warm and loving, so you wait
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: for when he is not. He is consistent, so you
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: wonder what he is hiding underneath the consistency. He gives
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: you a clear answer and you reread it 17 times
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: looking for ambiguity. The relationship stops being a relationship and
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: starts being a surveillance operation. You are the investigator and
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: he is the subject and he can feel it even
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: if he cannot name it. He eventually gets tired of
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: explaining himself for crimes he did not commit. Or worse,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: and this one is quieter and more damaging, he starts
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: to adjust. He gets a little quieter, a little more careful,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: and now the alarm keeper has actual data to work with.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: The alarm keeper created the thing it was afraid of.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: That is the loop. That is the cost. The cost
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: to you is that you never land. You are always
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: in the departure lounge of the relationship, bags already packed
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: by the door, waiting for the announcement that the flight
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: is canceled. You cannot enjoy what is actually in front
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: of you because you are stress testing it. He tells
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: you something sweet and you are already cross-examining it in
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: your head. You are not in the room with him.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: You are in a courtroom weighing evidence. The actual good
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: moment is happening and you are missing it because the
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: alarm keeper is running a simulation of how it might end.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: You miss him. You miss the relationship while you are
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: in it. And that is the cost I want you
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: to sit with, not the cost of losing him eventually,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: but the cost of not having him right now while
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: you have him. So let's talk about what it actually
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: feels like to be in the middle of it. Because
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: the alarm keeper does not announce itself. It does not say, hello,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I'm a frozen protective part from your past, and I'm
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: about to ruin your Tuesday. It just fires. And your
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: body is already moving before your brain catches up. Here's
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: the thing about identification in real time. It starts in
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: your body, not in your thoughts. Before the thought, there
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: is a tightness in your chest that has no reason yet.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: There is a shallowness to your breath like you're bracing.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: There is a restlessness, a compulsion to check the phone
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: that feels like thirst. Like if you don't check it
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: right now, something will get worse. That physical signal is
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: the alarm keeper clocking in. That is your starting point,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: not the interpretation it hands you two seconds later. The
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: body fires first. Your job is to notice the body
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: before the story starts. When the body fires, you pause
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: before the action. The action is the text you're about
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: to send that you know is too much. The action
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: is the withdrawal, going quiet and making him work for it.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: The action is a small fight you pick at dinner
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: so you can get a reaction and use it as data.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: The pause is 10 seconds of not doing the thing.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Literally 10 seconds. In that 10 seconds, you ask one question,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: not out loud if you're at dinner, but in your
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: head or on your notes app later. You ask, is
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: this the alarm keeper or is this the present moment? Not,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: is he trustworthy? Not, what does this mean about us? Just,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: which one is this? That distinction alone will not fix everything,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: but it interrupts the automatic loop. The alarm keeper cannot
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: be argued out of existence, but it can be named.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: And naming it, even quietly, even imperfectly, creates a sliver
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: of space between the signal and what you do next.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I named mine, by the way. She's very committed. She
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: has opinions at 11 at night about punctuation and text
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: messages and absolutely no sense of timing. Step two is
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: not done in the relationship. It's not a conversation you
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: have with him. It's a conversation you have alone or
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: with a therapist. And I want to say this once
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: clearly because it matters. If the alarm keeper is old
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: and it's loud and it has been running your love
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: life for years, please consider talking to a therapist who
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: works with parts. Specifically IFS or parts work. This is
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: not a solo excavation you have to do by yourself.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: There's no medal for doing it without support. Go get
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: the support. But here is the question you're asking in
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: step two. Not what is wrong with me. When did
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: this make sense? Sit with that. When did monitoring feel
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: like the smart thing to do? When did certainty feel
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: like the price you paid for love? Write down two answers.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: The first will probably be a relationship. And if you
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: go further back, the second one will be earlier than that.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Earlier than any relationship. My therapist asked me something in
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: one of our sessions during my healing era that I
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: did not see coming. She asked me to think about
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: when checking felt useful. And I went immediately to him,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the one from my early 20s, the inconsistent one, because
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: checking did give me information with him. She let me
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: sit with that, and then she asked me before that.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: And I sat there for a long time, longer than
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: I expected, because I thought I was talking about love,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: and she was pointing me towards something much older. The
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: alarm keeper formed before I had any words for what
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: it was protecting me from. Understanding that didn't dissolve the part.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Parts work is very clear that insight alone does not
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: release a protector. The protector has to be heard. But
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: understanding when it formed did something else. It reduced the shame.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: It stopped being my flaw. It started being my history.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Now step three is the strange one. This is the
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: one that surprised me most in the work. The protector
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: part in parts work does not disappear when you heal.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: It transforms. You cannot fire the alarm keeper. It has tenure.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: What you can do is reassign it. Its original job
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: description was detect threat everywhere, read everything, trust nothing, monitor constantly.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: The new job description is notice when I am abandoning
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: myself inside this relationship. And that is a job it
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: is actually good at because it is fast and it
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: is sensitive and it will catch things. It notices when
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: you say yes to something you genuinely don't want. It
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: notices when you go quiet instead of saying the thing
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: that needs to be said. It notices when you're performing
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: ease instead of actually feeling it. That is real, useful,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: relationship-serving work it can do. So when the alarm fires
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: at him, at the text or the tone or the
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: pause before he answered, you redirect it. You say, alarm
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: keeper noted, but are you maybe noticing that I'm not
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: saying what I need right now? And honestly, often yes.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: The anxious monitoring is frequently a misdirection of a real signal.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: The real signal being, I am not fully honest in
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: this moment or I am not fully present, but it
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: is so much easier to track him than to admit that.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Reassignment is not a decision you make once. It's a practice.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: You will redirect maybe 10 times before it starts to
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: feel natural. Then maybe 100. That's fine. You're not behind.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: When the alarm fires at them, redirect it. Ask yourself
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: what you're not saying right now. Step four is the
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: one people skip because it requires the most vulnerability and
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: the least strategy. It's going to fire anyway. All of this,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: the pausing, the naming, the redirecting, and it is still
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: going to fire sometimes. You're going to send the text
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: you said you wouldn't. You're going to go quiet in
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: a way that shifts the energy in the room and
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: he's going to ask what's wrong and you're going to
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: say nothing. You're going to pick the small fight. That's
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: not failure. That's just the alarm keeper doing what it's
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: done for years while you're in the middle of learning
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: something new. Step four is repair. And this is where
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: I want to share something that felt like a personal
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: experiment the first time I did it. After the alarm
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: keeper fires and you've done the thing, not in the moment,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: maybe the next morning or the next hour when you've
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: come back to yourself, you say one sentence to your partner. Not,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry I'm anxious. Not, I have attachment stuff I'm
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: working on. Something more specific. Something like, I pulled back
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: last night because something felt familiar that probably had nothing
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: to do with you. That's it. You do not owe
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: him your full therapy history. You don't owe him an
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: explanation so complete that it becomes another way of staying
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: in your head. But that one sentence does something that
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: monitoring never does. It creates actual closeness. It lets him
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: into the real thing that happened instead of making him
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: guess at a distance. The first year I lived with
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: my partner, I went cold over something genuinely small. I
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: couldn't fully explain why, even to myself. The alarm keeper
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: had fired and I had let it. Later, I said
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the sentence. Something felt familiar that probably had nothing to
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: do with you. My partner sat with me for a
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: moment and said, thank you for telling me that. And
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: I want to tell you, the alarm keeper genuinely did
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: not know what to do with that response. Because that
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: response wasn't something the alarm keeper had data for. Warmth
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: after honesty. Openness instead of distance. That data, that single exchange,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: began to update something. Slowly. Imperfectly. But it updated. After
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: it fires, say the sentence, something felt familiar that probably
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: had nothing to do with you. Now let me show
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: you what the other side actually looks like. Because I
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: think we imagine it wrong. We imagine it as the
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: version of us who doesn't feel the alarm anymore. And
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: that is not what it is. The woman on the
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: other side of this work still has the alarm keeper.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: It still speaks. She still feels the tightness in her
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: chest when he takes longer than usual to reply. But
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: she doesn't become it. It fires and she notices it
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: and she goes back to the room. Back to him.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Back to what's actually happening in front of her. She
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: can sit with uncertainty for a little longer because she
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: has evidence now. The last time she sat with uncertainty,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: the thing she feared didn't happen. Or it happened and
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: she survived it. Either way, she has data the alarm
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: keeper doesn't have yet. She has repaired enough times that
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: repair doesn't feel like humiliation. She's not fearless. She has practiced.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: And the relationship she's in has room in it. It
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: has air. Because she's not filling every corner with surveillance.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: He feels it. When you stop testing someone, you feel
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: it in the room. The air genuinely changes. Something relaxes.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: And that's what's available on the other side. Not a
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: different version of you. This version of you, after doing
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the steps imperfectly many times. Before we close, I want
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: to give you one warning, and I mean it with love.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Parts work and attachment theory can become the alarm keeper's
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: new costume. I have done this. You start analyzing the
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: part in such sophisticated detail that you stop actually feeling anything.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: You call yourself a work in progress for so long
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: it starts to function as a reason to stay unavailable.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: You explain your alarm keeper on a third date in
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: such clinical language that the other person can't find you
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: anywhere in the explanation. And it sounds like self-awareness. It
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: looks like growth. But if you find yourself understanding the
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: alarm keeper in increasingly detailed, impressive ways, and you're still
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: not letting anyone close, that is not progress. That is
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the alarm keeper adapting. It found a smarter costume. Note it.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: And go back to step one. My loves, here's what
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I want you to hold from all of this. The
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: alarm keeper formed because it had to. There was a
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: version of your life where it kept you moving when
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: staying still would have hurt too much. Thank it for that. Genuinely, once,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: actually thank it. Then ask it to move to the
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: passenger seat. It can come. It can watch the road.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: But you are driving now. Not the frozen part of
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: you that learned love was unpredictable. You, now, with the
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: information you've built, and the evidence you've collected that things
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: can go differently. So here's the question I want to
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: leave you with. Is the alarm keeper running this relationship
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: right now, or are you? And what is one thing
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: you would do differently today if you were the one driving?
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: I want you to answer that honestly, and if you've
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: got someone in your life who's been in her alarm
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: keeper's passenger seat for years, send her this. She needs
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: to hear it. And if you found something useful in this,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: come follow along, because there's more where this came from.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Take care of yourself, babe. I mean it. This show
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: is made by Oboe Media.