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Be Real, Not Nice: You Saw The Red Flags And Stayed Anyway · Unlocking The Paradigm Portal

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  Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to unlocking the
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  Paradigm Portal. My name is Sarah.
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  So continuing the week of discussions about relationships,
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  I'm going to just go full sledgehammer right now and we're
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  going to tackle red flags. So the first time that it
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  happened, you saw it. You can try to deny it, but you
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  saw it and maybe you called it something else.
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  Maybe you felt they were having a bad day or a rough patch, or
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  that's just how they are when they're stressed.
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  Maybe you took it as something that you had done and maybe you
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  filed it under everyone has stuff, or I don't want to be
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  judgmental, or it wasn't that bad, but you saw it.
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  So Monday we talked about the common denominator, about the
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  pattern that lives in you, not in them.
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  And today we're going to go one layer deeper because here's the
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  part of that conversation we didn't finish.
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  The pattern doesn't just live in who you choose.
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  It lives in what you choose to see and what you choose to
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  Unsee. Once you've seen it, where have
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  you thrown your blinders on and pretended problems are not
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  there? And that is a different kind of
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  reckoning entirely. So let's be precise about what a
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  red flag actually is, because I think we've gotten kind of
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  sloppy with the term. A red flag is not a personality
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  difference. It's not someone who loads the
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  dishwasher wrong or has a different communication style or
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  needs more alone time than you. Those are incompatibilities.
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  Those are things you navigate or you don't.
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  A red flag is a signal, a clear, observable behavioral signal
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  that something in this person or this dynamic is going to cost
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  you. It'll cost you your peace, your
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  sense of self, your safety, your ability to trust.
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  It's not a vibe. It's not a feeling you can't
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  explain. It's something you witnessed,
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  something they did or said or revealed, and some part of you
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  registered it as information and then you stayed anyway.
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  Now here's where I'm going to push you and pull out my
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  sledgehammer, and I need you to stay with me because this is
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  where most people get defensive. Staying wasn't something that
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  happened to you. And I know that's uncomfortable,
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  and I know there are 100 reasons that feel completely legitimate.
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  You loved them. You'd already invested so much
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  you didn't want to start over. You thought it would get better,
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  and maybe it did for a while. I know all of that is real, and
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  you made a choice repeatedly. Not because you're stupid and
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  not because you're weak, and not because love made you blind,
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  though love will absolutely blur some edges.
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  You stayed because some part of you decided that what you saw
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  was either tolerable, fixable, or less dangerous than leaving.
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  And that is a calculation. A subconscious one in most
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  cases, but a calculation still. And the most important question
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  isn't why you stayed. The most important question is
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  what were you willing to Unsee in order to stay?
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  What were you willing to throw blinders on rather than look at
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  it? You cannot change what you
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  refuse to see, and you cannot move forward until you're honest
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  about what you chose not to see. So here's what I want to offer
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  you. And this is the part that
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  changes everything if you let it sink in.
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  The fact that you stayed doesn't make you weak, it makes you
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  human. And it also makes you someone
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  who is operating from a wound, not from a clear eyed choice.
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  Because here's what red flags actually are.
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  When you strip away the judgement and look at the
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  mechanics of it. They are your nervous system
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  speaking. They are your body registering
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  something that your mind immediately got to work
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  explaining away. That feeling of tightness in
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  your chest the first time they snapped at you in public or said
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  something that was cutting, or the way your stomach dropped
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  when they went quiet for three days without explanation, or the
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  moment you caught yourself adjusting your behavior so they
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  wouldn't get upset before they'd even shown you they'd get upset.
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  That's walking on egg shells. And you noticed that, right?
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  You were already managing them before they asked you to.
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  That's your system. That's your body saying pay
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  attention. This is information, and
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  somewhere between that first signal and six months later, you
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  learn to mute it. Not because you're broken, but
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  because you were trained. Trained by old experiences, by
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  old wounds, by the very attachment patterns we talked
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  about Monday. Trained to distrust the signal,
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  to tell yourself the feeling was the problem, not what triggered
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  it. And This is why the work isn't.
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  Just trust your gut. The gut isn't always reliable
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  when the gut has been living in a dysregulated nervous system
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  for 10 years. 20 years, 304050 The work is learning to tell the
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  difference between fear of vulnerability and an actual
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  warning, between discomfort that asks you to grow and discomfort
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  that asks you to leave. And that distinction that is the
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  work of a lifetime. And it starts with being honest
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  about the times you got it wrong.
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  Not to punish yourself, but to sharpen the instrument that is
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  your intuition. The red flag wasn't the problem
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  deciding your explanation was more trustworthy than your
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  signal. That's where it started.
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  So I want to say one more thing before we get to your stone for
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  today, and this one is going to sting a little, so try to stay
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  with me. Sometimes you didn't just ignore
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  the red flag. I know that's hard to hear, but
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  some you know it. Sometimes you didn't.
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  Sometimes maybe you argued other people out of seeing it too,
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  like you gaslight yourself and then tried to gaslight those
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  around you. Maybe your best friend raised an
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  eyebrow. Maybe your sister asked a
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  question that made you uncomfortable.
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  Someone maybe who loved you said, I don't know, something
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  feels off or asked you directly. Are you sure about this?
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  And you defended them. You defended the situation.
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  You defended the story that you told yourself.
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  You built the case. You gave the contacts, the back
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  story, the mitigating circumstances.
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  You explained why what looked like a problem wasn't actually a
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  problem if you understood them the way that you do.
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  And in doing that, you didn't just override your own knowing.
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  You outsourced your certainty to other people and then
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  systematically dismantled it. That's not a character flaw.
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  That's what humans do when they're attached to an outcome,
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  when leaving feels more dangerous than staying, when the
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  cognitive dissonance of I love this person and this person is
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  not good for me is too painful to hold.
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  So one of those truths has to go.
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  And the one that usually goes is the inconvenient, uncomfortable,
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  and challenging. 1 So here's the the reframe.
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  And this is real. This isn't just a pivot to make
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  you feel better. Every single time you overwrote
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  a signal and it cost you, you were gathering data about
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  yourself. About what you're willing to
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  accept, about what your system is calibrated to call normal,
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  about what your system is calibrated to call love.
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  That data is not wasted. That data is the foundation of
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  every change you're capable of making from here.
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  You are not behind, and you are not broken.
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  You are not someone who can't be trusted with their own heart.
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  You are someone who is finally asking the right questions.
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  The signal was never wrong, you just hadn't learned yet how to
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  listen without flinching. So your Wednesday stone, the one
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  thing that I'm going to suggest you do to move toward becoming
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  the person that you choose. I want you to think about 1 red
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  flag from any relationship, past or present, that you explained
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  away. It doesn't have to be the
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  biggest one, doesn't have to be the most painful one, just one
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  thing, one that you can see clearly now in hindsight.
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  What is the red flag that you ignored?
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  And I want you to write it down or say it out loud.
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  If you're in your car right now, I want you to look at it with
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  two steps. First, what you actually saw,
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  we're going scientific research here, the observable behavior,
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  the specific moment, the thing that your body registered before
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  your mind got involved. And 2nd, the explanation you
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  gave yourself to make it OK. How did you whitewash it?
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  How did you make sense of it? What is the story you were
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  telling yourself? That's it.
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  You're not over analyzing it. You're not even analyzing it.
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  You're not processing the whole relationship.
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  You're just putting those two things side by side, the signal
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  and the story. Because when you can see the gap
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  between those two things clearly, when you can see
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  exactly how much interpretive work you were doing to keep
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  yourself in a situation your body was already flagging, that
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  gap becomes impossible to Unsee next time.
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  And that's the whole point. It's not about punishment, it's
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  pattern recognition. You can't use information.
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  You won't look at the signal and the story you told.
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  Instead, name both. So come back Friday.
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  Come back and join me early Friday morning.
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  We're going to talk about what happens when you actually do the
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  work before it breaks instead of after.
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  And that conversation is going to ask you something harder than
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  anything we've covered this week.
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  So show up for it. Let's go.
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  It's go time. Happy Wednesday, I will be back
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  Friday.