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From Abuse and Shrinking to Self-Recovery: Unmasking Your True Colors · No Shrinking Violets Podcast for Women

• 0:00
  Kristen: And she said to me, Well, well, why don't you just move out?
• 0:04
  Kristen: And I said, Well, she won't let me.
• 0:07
  Kristen: And my friend said, Are you kidding me?
• 0:11
  Kristen: You're a 55-year-old woman.
• 0:13
  Kristen: You don't need her permission to move out.
• 0:20
  Mary: For centuries, the phrase shrinking violet was used to diminish women, to suggest we were meant to be small and meek.
• 0:27
  Mary: But in nature, violets are anything but weak.
• 0:30
  Mary: They're resilient, beautiful, and essential to the ecosystem.
• 0:34
  Mary: Hi, I'm Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist, and each week I sit down with women who remind us that being compared to a violet isn't an insult.
• 0:42
  Mary: It's a testament to strength, endurance, and the power of taking up space and living by your true nature.
• 0:48
  Mary: If you're ready to stop shrinking and start thriving, you're in the right place.
• 0:53
  Mary: Hey Violets, welcome to the show.
• 0:57
  Mary: I talk a lot about essential nature on this show, but I also know that there are many, many women who aren't really sure who they are, what is truly their real nature, and what is the programming that seems to just happen along the way.
• 1:11
  Mary: I know for me, I spent a large part of my teenage years trying to hide the best parts of me.
• 1:16
  Mary: I think I really internalized an idea of the kind of woman that was the quote right kind of female.
• 1:22
  Mary: And many of my attributes just didn't match that.
• 1:26
  Mary: First, I wasn't cool by 80 standards.
• 1:29
  Mary: In fact, I was quite the opposite.
• 1:31
  Mary: I was at the top of my class when it wasn't uncommon to dumb ourselves down so we didn't intimidate the boys.
• 1:37
  Mary: And the saying of the time was, boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses.
• 1:42
  Mary: First, I wore glasses.
• 1:44
  Mary: Second, and a question I didn't know to ask myself until much later, why in the freaking world would I want a boy to make a pass at me?
• 1:52
  Mary: Well, I can tell you that at the time, that was the gold standard of being worth something.
• 1:58
  Mary: In my defense, re-watch some of the 80s movies and look at the subtle and not so subtle messages that were baked into nearly all of them.
• 2:06
  Mary: A girl was the right kind of girl if she was popular and boys wanted her.
• 2:11
  Mary: Those ideas of worth were so insidious.
• 2:14
  Mary: And with parents typical of Gen X, I didn't have a mom who tempered those messages or who even understood really what they were, because of course they were so much worse in her time.
• 2:26
  Mary: So when I saw the video on the webpage of my guest, I realized it was so appropriate for our topic today.
• 2:33
  Mary: Well, it took me a minute to realize what it was.
• 2:36
  Mary: You gotta check it out.
• 2:37
  Mary: Not gonna lie, it kind of freaked me out.
• 2:40
  Mary: You're gonna find out what it is as we talk because I feel like it is so spot on, and it's so often what women are.
• 2:47
  Mary: Our superpower is an ability to read the unspoken cues, to know the assignment.
• 2:53
  Mary: We are reinforced for playing to the audience, give them what they want, until we aren't really sure what our true colors are anymore.
• 3:02
  Mary: Kristen Crabtree is an author and certified divorce coach whose work is grounded in lived experience, not theory.
• 3:09
  Mary: She's the creator of Paramour Paradox that helps seekers rediscover who they are and destination true you 2.0, where she supports lesbian women leaving psychologically abusive marriages.
• 3:20
  Mary: Through her own journey of self-recovery, Kristen helps others move from invisibility to authenticity, reminding us it's never too late to feel alive again.
• 3:30
  Mary: Welcome to No Shrinking Violets, Kristen.
• 3:33
  Kristen: Oh my gosh, thank you.
• 3:34
  Kristen: And that was a delightful introduction.
• 3:37
  Kristen: I've I've heard your others, and I was like, I can't wait to hear the one before my that was awesome.
• 3:42
  Kristen: Um, what's really amazing that I did not, you know, I wouldn't have fathomed to talk about this, but it's very relevant to the introduction is um some things that my mother uh said and and taught me.
• 3:56
  Kristen: So I'm 57, she's uh turning 80 soon, and um about uh four years ago, um I weighed significantly more.
• 4:09
  Kristen: I was 240 pounds, and um I lost 100 pounds.
• 4:15
  Kristen: And when I went to visit my mom one time after uh losing the weight, um we were out at lunch and she looked at me and she said, Isn't it so wonderful now that now that you've lost weight, you get the attention of men?
• 4:31
  Kristen: Oh, yeah.
• 4:32
  Kristen: So the interesting thing, there's several layers to that.
• 4:35
  Kristen: One is I identify as a lesbian, right?
• 4:39
  Kristen: And I was still married to a woman and I hadn't gone through trauma therapy, so the attention of men was like not what I wanted.
• 4:47
  Kristen: And she never accepted the fact that I was sexually assaulted and raped when I was young because I asked for it, right?
• 4:55
  Kristen: And because that's what women do.
• 4:58
  Kristen: And on top of that, she's brilliant.
• 5:01
  Kristen: I mean, she has a master's degree, she got educational scholarships for both her undergrad and graduate.
• 5:09
  Kristen: She graduated valedictorian in high school.
• 5:12
  Kristen: I mean, she's brilliant, and yet all of her value is wrapped up in her beauty.
• 5:18
  Kristen: She also is so beautiful that on two different occasions during her life, one when she was young and one when she was older than I am now, um, she's had people stop around the street, women, in fact, and say, Oh my god, you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.
• 5:33
  Mary: Whoa.
• 5:34
  Kristen: So she's a beauty, but she's also brilliant.
• 5:36
  Kristen: But the beauty part is the part that's always, you know, given her validation.
• 5:40
  Kristen: So your introduction is like my life, you know, my childhood.
• 5:45
  Kristen: So that's really, really interesting.
• 5:48
  Mary: Yeah.
• 5:48
  Mary: And so my mom is not living, she'd be 99, but you know, I think she did struggle with a lot of this stuff.
• 5:54
  Mary: I think she maybe at times wanted to talk about things or check in on me, but she was, I mean, very hands-off.
• 6:01
  Mary: And I think it was just, you know, she had had an abusive childhood.
• 6:04
  Mary: So I think it was um, you know, a lot of that.
• 6:06
  Mary: But it's interesting how those are the things that kind of stand out to us, the things that our parents said that to them never would have been, well, first of all, it was never or often never an intentional comment that was meant to sort of hurt or wound.
• 6:23
  Mary: It was kind of made in the moment, but we remember them.
• 6:26
  Mary: I call them flashball moments.
• 6:28
  Mary: So when you think about your story, what are some other times that you think about as flashballed moments?
• 6:35
  Mary: Like times where you're like, this was one of those things that kind of punted me onto the next path or created a sort of a curve in my path.
• 6:46
  Kristen: Wow.
• 6:47
  Kristen: Well, I know there were ones when I was young, but you know, what I've been through in the last call it um five years, so almost exactly five years, was so um impactful.
• 7:02
  Kristen: And so uh, what did you say?
• 7:03
  Kristen: Flashbulb movement, yes.
• 7:05
  Kristen: Oh my gosh.
• 7:06
  Kristen: And there were so many over the last five years that, and they kind of still keep rolling.
• 7:11
  Kristen: Um so uh let's see, without dragging this, I I'm good at telling short story long.
• 7:19
  Kristen: So um to try to avoid that, probably one of the first ones during the last five years was my ex had a couple of undiagnosed mental challenges.
• 7:37
  Mary: Yeah.
• 7:37
  Kristen: So um I was diagnosed as bipolar 20 something years ago, and I've always been on medication, I've always been really stable.
• 7:46
  Kristen: She even told me when I was first diagnosed before we were married, and she told me, you know, if you ever go off your medication, we're done, right?
• 7:56
  unknown: Wow.
• 7:57
  Kristen: And so before we got married, she had an episode that I would have called Manic.
• 8:04
  Kristen: And um, I told her she had to go to the, you know, therapist or whatever before we got married, or I wouldn't marry her.
• 8:12
  Kristen: And she said, Well, if I'm okay by January, is it okay if, you know, I don't go?
• 8:17
  Kristen: And stupidly I said, sure.
• 8:20
  Kristen: So she was okay by January, and life went on.
• 8:23
  Kristen: Her next big episode, and the reason these were so instrumental in my my more recent years of figuring things out is she has something else.
• 8:34
  Kristen: And it's impossible usually to get this diagnosed, but she truly has narcissistic personality disorder.
• 8:42
  Kristen: I mean, truly, she's not just a narcissist.
• 8:45
  Kristen: My therapist said she could teach people with narcissistic personality disorder how to be better at their job.
• 8:52
  Kristen: Um, I mean, she was phenomenal.
• 8:55
  Kristen: And um when she would get manic or whatever, you know, I'm not a diagnostician, but when she would have these behaviors, that part of her behavior or her personality rather would get worse.
• 9:07
  Kristen: It would really intensify.
• 9:09
  Kristen: So we went 14 years without another one of those combination episodes.
• 9:15
  Kristen: And when it came up, again, I was like, oh my God.
• 9:19
  Kristen: Um, but I can handle this every 14 years if I have to, you know.
• 9:24
  Kristen: I never wanted to get married.
• 9:25
  Kristen: She kind of convinced me to get married.
• 9:27
  Kristen: Once I committed to getting married, I was committed because everybody in my family had been divorced.
• 9:32
  Kristen: Oh, and I didn't want to be one of those people.
• 9:35
  Kristen: So I thought, okay, every 14 years I can do this.
• 9:38
  Kristen: Well, the next one was seven years later.
• 9:42
  Kristen: I was kind of like took a deep breath.
• 9:46
  Kristen: Okay, seven years isn't bad.
• 9:48
  Kristen: I even sort of did the math, you know, how many of these will I have to go through?
• 9:53
  Kristen: But I thought, okay, they only last about four months.
• 9:56
  Kristen: So the most intense behavior was only four months.
• 10:01
  Kristen: Only.
• 10:02
  Kristen: The other, the other months, years, she was typically in a deep depression.
• 10:08
  Kristen: And the personality disorder would still come out, but it was a lot less because she was too busy being depressed.
• 10:17
  Mary: Okay.
• 10:17
  Kristen: So she wouldn't talk much.
• 10:19
  Kristen: In fact, there were rules about when I could talk to her.
• 10:21
  Kristen: I couldn't talk to her before coffee.
• 10:23
  Kristen: Coffee was usually about noon when I would bring it up to her in bed.
• 10:27
  Kristen: And then I wasn't allowed to talk to her after five because that's when the TV went on and we started drinking.
• 10:35
  Kristen: And I say we because I would too.
• 10:37
  Kristen: I pretty much, excuse me, had to drink in order to be in the marriage.
• 10:41
  Kristen: Um, so we started drinking at five.
• 10:43
  Kristen: And if I talked to her after that, I was either interrupting the show, which is, you know, recorded, but interrupting the show or um getting her thinking about things so she wouldn't be able to sleep at night.
• 10:55
  unknown: Oh.
• 10:56
  Kristen: Okay.
• 10:56
  Kristen: So I would have so the personality disorder wasn't that bad during that time.
• 11:01
  Kristen: So I actually liked it.
• 11:02
  Kristen: That was like, okay, she's in a depression.
• 11:06
  Kristen: Great.
• 11:06
  Kristen: Um, I didn't know it at the time, but that's kind of how I felt.
• 11:10
  Kristen: So then, see, short story long.
• 11:14
  Kristen: So um the next one after that seven-year break was um so uh 2020, so two years.
• 11:28
  Mary: Oh, it's getting much shorter.
• 11:30
  Kristen: And her personality disorder got worse because I went through trauma therapy during the last one.
• 11:37
  unknown: Okay.
• 11:38
  Kristen: And as I left my therapist's office, um, he said to me, you know, now that you've put down this huge bag you've been carrying, um, over the next, you know, there will be some immediate changes, but really over the next two years, I went through intensive.
• 11:52
  Kristen: It was called progressive counting, which is a spin-off sort of of EMDR.
• 11:56
  Kristen: Um, he does both, but that's what I did.
• 11:59
  Kristen: So it was like um five days, eight hours a day.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 12:03
  Kristen: And so as I'm leaving his office, he said, you know, over the next two years, things are really gonna change.
• 12:07
  Kristen: And I was like, change.
• 12:08
  Kristen: I don't want change, you know, I hate I don't want change, things are fine.
• 12:12
  Kristen: Sure enough, over the next two years, I didn't even realize it, of course, but um, I was starting to stand up to her and I was starting to push back.
• 12:21
  Kristen: So the degree of those personality disorder behaviors intensified dramatically.
• 12:31
  Kristen: And um finally I went back to the same therapist to fix my marriage.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 12:41
  Kristen: And so I'm in therapy.
• 12:43
  Kristen: So this is two years after my my trauma therapy.
• 12:46
  Kristen: So I went back to him to fix my marriage.
• 12:49
  Kristen: She and I were in couples counseling, but really struggling there.
• 12:53
  Kristen: And about a month into it, he looked at me and he said, you know, there's gotta be more you can do to to fix her.
• 13:02
  Kristen: And I looked at him and I was like, Yeah, what else can I do?
• 13:06
  unknown: What else can I do?
• 13:07
  Kristen: And he looked at me like, Are you kidding me?
• 13:11
  Kristen: That was not a serious comment.
• 13:14
  Kristen: So you missed the sarcasm, you totally missed it.
• 13:17
  Kristen: Totally missed it, you know?
• 13:19
  Kristen: And so that was a pretty big moment.
• 13:22
  Kristen: The next one came within a few months.
• 13:25
  Kristen: So I finally got up the guts on March 3rd to tell her I wanted a divorce.
• 13:31
  Kristen: I didn't do it the best way.
• 13:32
  Kristen: I did it over the phone because I didn't know how else to do it.
• 13:36
  Kristen: So she was understandably upset and shocked.
• 13:40
  Kristen: I went and stayed with a friend for uh about a week while we sort of, you know, got our ground.
• 13:47
  Kristen: And then I went and uh went back home.
• 13:50
  Kristen: And we were living in separate rooms, but we always did.
• 13:53
  Kristen: Um, well, not always, but for a long time.
• 13:56
  Kristen: So I um told her I had found a place to move out to that was inexpensive, which I knew would be a big deal because she controlled the money.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 14:07
  Kristen: Um, I did have my own job and I was starting to save money, and that was an issue, right?
• 14:13
  Kristen: But um I said, you know, I found a place, it's really cheap, it was really awful too, but it's furnished, utilities, take pets.
• 14:23
  Kristen: So um I'm going to move there.
• 14:26
  Kristen: And she said, Oh no, you're not.
• 14:27
  Kristen: We can't afford that.
• 14:28
  Kristen: And I I said, Well, you know, I you know, I f I found it, you know, I need to move there.
• 14:34
  Kristen: And she said, No, oh, before this.
• 14:37
  Kristen: So November before um I went back to therapy in January, I took a trip to see my dad, and she demanded my wallet and took all of my cards out and gave me a hundred dollars.
• 14:55
  Mary: Oh, that would be financial that would be financial abuse right there.
• 14:59
  Mary: Yes.
• 14:59
  Kristen: Yes.
• 15:00
  Kristen: So that was a moment um prior to these other moments.
• 15:05
  Kristen: And um, so I told her I had found this place.
• 15:08
  Kristen: She said no.
• 15:09
  Kristen: So then I found a cheaper place that was even more awful, but had all the other boxes checked.
• 15:14
  Kristen: And she still said no, um, you can't move out.
• 15:18
  Kristen: So I was walking with that friend.
• 15:20
  Kristen: I only had one local friend because again, I was very isolated, which is another tactic.
• 15:27
  Kristen: I had friends far away, but they were on the west coast, um, on the east coast.
• 15:32
  Kristen: So I was taking a walk with this one friend, uh, and I was singing my woes, short story long, probably.
• 15:41
  Kristen: And she said to me, Well, why don't you just move out?
• 15:46
  Kristen: And I said, Well, she won't let me.
• 15:49
  Kristen: And my friend said, Are you kidding me?
• 15:53
  Kristen: You're a 55-year-old woman.
• 15:55
  Kristen: You don't need her permission to move out.
• 15:58
  Kristen: And I stopped at my tracks and looked at her, and it was like this giant bucket of ice cold water had been thrown on me.
• 16:07
  Kristen: And I was like, Oh my god, I don't need her permission.
• 16:12
  Kristen: You know, I even have my own money so I can do this.
• 16:16
  Kristen: Like, what the hell?
• 16:18
  Kristen: Um, what the heck?
• 16:20
  Kristen: Um, so um thank you.
• 16:24
  Kristen: So, anyways, um, over the next uh couple of weeks, I found a really nice place that I could afford on my own with my own money that you know was furnished, took pets, all of that.
• 16:38
  Kristen: And I did that because she was taking a month-long trip out of town and I knew I could move out then.
• 16:45
  Kristen: So I did.
• 16:46
  Kristen: I moved out with two car loads of my belongings and our three pets, not intending to keep all three pets from her, but you know, my three pets, and um, I emailed her and said, I moved out and I took the pets and I left pretty much everything else for you, and she lost her marbles, she lost her crackers.
• 17:10
  Kristen: So, yes.
• 17:11
  Kristen: I mean, there were some other, you know, moments along the road and and after the road, yeah.
• 17:16
  Kristen: But I would have to say to answer your question with the big ones, those were the big ones.
• 17:22
  Mary: Yeah.
• 17:22
  Mary: Well, and that was one trajectory, and it within that to see the moments of realization really coming from both your therapist and your friend.
• 17:34
  Mary: And you know, you talked about your mom originally, like being so intelligent, but kind of having this skewed sense of worth.
• 17:42
  Mary: And so I think this is what happens often.
• 17:45
  Mary: And I don't want to just say women, but you know, I'm talking to women.
• 17:48
  Mary: And I think we tend to try to so much fix it or fit into the shape that somebody hands to us.
• 17:58
  Mary: I want you to fit this shape.
• 18:00
  Mary: And we continually have to shave off parts of ourselves to fit.
• 18:06
  Mary: And so I often talk about taking up your space.
• 18:09
  Mary: And so when you talk about having like that mental bucket of cold water thrown on you where you realized, oh my God, like I can do what I want, I feel like that was one of those things where that expanded you just a little bit.
• 18:23
  Mary: And then I think as we start to have these realizations, have these people that we trust call us out on something and change our thinking, we continue to expand.
• 18:36
  Mary: And I know you talk about the concept of self-recovery versus we think self-help, like a self-help book, and that'll help me like figure out the right way to be or the right things to do.
• 18:47
  Mary: But self-recovery has a different flavor to it.
• 18:49
  Mary: Can you explain when you talk about that, what does that mean?
• 18:53
  Kristen: Yeah.
• 18:53
  Kristen: And it's also different than personal development, but personal development and self-help both imply that something has to be fixed, that you're broken or you're wrong, or you're bad, or you're deficient, not developed, you know, that kind of thing.
• 19:10
  Kristen: And I didn't know this when I left.
• 19:12
  Kristen: I didn't know, I didn't have a name for the NPD that she had.
• 19:17
  Kristen: Um, I didn't know that I had shrank.
• 19:21
  Kristen: I was a shrunk violet.
• 19:23
  Kristen: I didn't know um that.
• 19:25
  Kristen: I just knew that I was um, well, another one of those moments was me on the bathroom floor before I moved out, talking to my dad and having a horrible panic attack where I was vomiting.
• 19:37
  Kristen: And he was talking to me through the speaker and he said, Well, you don't have to leave now.
• 19:41
  Kristen: You can leave later.
• 19:42
  Kristen: And I said to myself, or I said to him, I can't, I can't stay, but I can't leave.
• 19:48
  Kristen: And I didn't know that that was actually a quote from um eat, pray love, because I've never read that book.
• 19:54
  Kristen: But that's exactly what I said, and that was another one of those moments.
• 19:59
  Kristen: So when I Left, I yeah, I just knew something was like really, really bad, but I didn't know what it was.
• 20:07
  Kristen: So the self-recovery, your true self is there, and your true self is brilliant, and your true self is here to do something miraculous.
• 20:18
  Kristen: But over the years, even starting as a baby, you know, we put these masks and layers on.
• 20:25
  Kristen: And it's not a it's not a fault or a flaw.
• 20:28
  Kristen: We do it to adapt, we do it to be safe, we do it to fit in, we do it to conform.
• 20:34
  Kristen: Um, and everybody does it, even people in healthy families, and everybody does it.
• 20:41
  Kristen: But as time goes on and as those layers go on, or even, you know, when we're young, the thick layers, um, we stop being able to hear ourselves, um, our true self.
• 20:54
  Kristen: And so my belief and my process in my book, my book is called Be the You That's More You Than You've Ever Been.
• 21:01
  Kristen: I've got it sitting right there because I still reference it.
• 21:04
  Kristen: My process is about getting back to that truth.
• 21:09
  Kristen: You know, you know, I don't know how to fix you because nothing needs to be fixed, and your reality is not my reality.
• 21:18
  Kristen: Um, but I do know the process that I used, and that's a whole nother story.
• 21:24
  Kristen: But I do know the process that I used to first of all realize that I didn't know who I was, and then how to get back there, how to how to hear who I am, and I am brilliant.
• 21:37
  Kristen: And I was trained for many years to think I was stupid, but I am brilliant, and I have a lot to offer this world, and I now know that, I know what it is, I can hear it.
• 21:47
  Kristen: Um so yeah.
• 21:49
  Kristen: So that's that's why I consider it a different process.
• 21:53
  Mary: Yeah, because you're recovering the self that you were, and you've always been.
• 21:59
  Mary: And so one of the reasons I love this so much is that in the book that I have coming out, I talk about it as essential nature and I compare it to plants.
• 22:06
  Mary: So my whole book is taking the life of a plant and how do we set boundaries and stay well, and because we tend to want to apologize for doing that.
• 22:14
  Mary: And if we think about plants, there's no bad plant.
• 22:17
  Mary: It's just if it's not thriving, it's not getting what it needs.
• 22:20
  Mary: And so I think when we think about, we were all born with who we are.
• 22:26
  Mary: And then each little thing, each time somebody looks at us weird or tells us we're weird, we feel like we need to, you know, sort of make that change.
• 22:36
  Mary: And so I will tell people who didn't immediately run to your website that the image or the little movie on your homepage is a chameleon.
• 22:45
  Mary: And it took me a second because it's like starts with the big eye.
• 22:48
  Mary: And I'm like, what is that?
• 22:50
  Mary: But you know, chameleons do that to stay safe.
• 22:54
  Mary: And so I think that sometimes women learn to blend in because it feels safer.
• 23:02
  Mary: And certainly for you, when you started to say, well, here's a color that is part of me that I love, and I don't want to mute that, there's a little bit of a feeling of abandoning safety because it is so scary to just be the color you are.
• 23:22
  Mary: So you talked about obviously one of those times was when you're in the bathroom, you're talking to your dad, and you realize my mom used to say you're between a rock and a hard place.
• 23:31
  Mary: So, you know, but it's like, you know, I also read something recently that said, just be water and so flow, like find the place to flow to, because sometimes we think there has to be that next definite step.
• 23:46
  Mary: So you sound like it sounds like you've had a lot of those moments, especially in that part of your journey.
• 23:52
  Mary: So when you had those times where you realized here's a color that I've been muting or trying to blend in, I don't want to do that anymore.
• 24:02
  Mary: How did you navigate the fear, uncertainty, whatever those emotions were?
• 24:07
  Kristen: Wow, you have totally hit the nail on the head with that revelation.
• 24:14
  Kristen: That's the word, self-revelation, uh, with that revelation is um, you know, I started off with I moved into a really cute place that um was decorated sort of mid-century modern, which was also my ex's taste.
• 24:29
  Kristen: And it's beautiful, right?
• 24:31
  Kristen: I mean, it's it's lovely.
• 24:33
  Kristen: Um, but it's not me, and it was never me.
• 24:36
  Kristen: This is me.
• 24:37
  Kristen: And for people who can't see it, it's a tapestry.
• 24:40
  Kristen: My um my living room is just loud, right?
• 24:46
  Kristen: It's 50 million colour colors.
• 24:48
  Kristen: I have, you know, anyways, it is so me, but I didn't know what I was.
• 24:54
  Kristen: Like I had no clue.
• 24:56
  Kristen: And that's a really basic kind of stupid who gives, you know, a shit, rat spot idea, you know, like who cares?
• 25:06
  Kristen: But um, but it actually was symbolic because when I met her, I was a hippie.
• 25:11
  Kristen: And throughout our relationship, if a little glimmer of that came out, like I bought a pair of jeans at a thrift store that had embroidery on it and they were kind of hippie-like, she was like, Oh my god, those are so ugly.
• 25:24
  Kristen: So I never wore them, right?
• 25:26
  Kristen: So it you know, it's the self-revelation process and about the fear.
• 25:33
  Kristen: Oh my god.
• 25:34
  Kristen: Um, you know, I had no friends except for this one.
• 25:37
  Kristen: Um, locally.
• 25:39
  Kristen: I had another friend that literally spent 20 hours a week with me on the phone, literally.
• 25:44
  Kristen: And he had a life, like a really demanding life, but he was my friend since I was 13.
• 25:49
  Kristen: And um he he would I'd be like, you know, I'm never gonna lose touch with you again.
• 25:55
  Kristen: This is so amazing.
• 25:56
  Kristen: And he's like, nah, you're gonna get friends.
• 25:58
  Kristen: You know, I'm just here for the transition.
• 26:00
  Kristen: I'm like, no, I'll never have friends like you.
• 26:03
  Kristen: And sure enough, I have this amazing community of friends now.
• 26:08
  Kristen: Um, I have probably six best friends scattered over time and over the United States now.
• 26:15
  Kristen: Um, I feel so blessed for all that, but I did feel like I was never gonna find my people and never be accepted.
• 26:23
  Kristen: And that's a really scary thing to be alone, you know.
• 26:27
  Kristen: Um really scary.
• 26:30
  Kristen: Uh yeah, like you're just there with yourself trying to figure out, yeah.
• 26:37
  Kristen: So absolutely.
• 26:38
  Mary: Yeah.
• 26:39
  Mary: And I know you mentioned this, and I know this is in part of what you write, that you're not the expert in someone else.
• 26:45
  Mary: And so we are the expert in ourselves, and that's really a main tenet of coaching, is that the person you're working with, they are the expert in them, and we're really here to help guide them.
• 26:57
  Mary: But I think even that can be like, well, I like what you just said, I don't know what I want.
• 27:02
  Mary: Like we do know, but again, it's been shaved off or smooshed down for so long that we have to really look for, it's almost like you're digging through kind of, I don't know, I think it because I'm a gardener.
• 27:16
  Mary: So I think about digging through the soil to find like the little jewels down there because they're covered up and you find one, you're like, oh, like I love jeans with embroidery on.
• 27:26
  Mary: And when you say, you know, how your home decor is, what your environment is, that's really important.
• 27:32
  Mary: And that's one of the things I think we diminish.
• 27:35
  Mary: Like if somebody says, Well, I don't like that, I don't like when you wear that, or I don't like really that message is, well, I don't like the true person that you are, I don't like your taste.
• 27:44
  Mary: My husband has this artwork.
• 27:46
  Mary: We got married only three years ago.
• 27:48
  Mary: So of course he brings things into the marriage.
• 27:50
  Mary: So he has what we call the cheese picture.
• 27:52
  Mary: And to me, it is macabre.
• 27:54
  Mary: It is this comical Swiss cheese with these eyes and teeth, and he thinks that it's happy.
• 28:00
  Mary: And I'm like, it's macabre.
• 28:01
  Mary: So certainly you can have differences of taste.
• 28:04
  Mary: We laugh about that, and it's not allowed to hang in the kitchen.
• 28:07
  Mary: But but I think some of these things where we can dismiss it, we can say, well, it's not really a big deal.
• 28:14
  Mary: Well, it is a big deal because there should be space for both people in a relationship.
• 28:20
  Mary: And so I think this idea of someone else being the expert in them, they can feel like you felt like, my gosh, like, where do I start?
• 28:31
  Mary: So if you have someone like that, they're reading your book or they're listening to this and they're thinking that, like, I've been so smooshed into this shape that isn't me.
• 28:40
  Mary: How do I start?
• 28:42
  Mary: What would you say to that?
• 28:44
  Kristen: Yeah, so your analogy is pretty much identical to mine.
• 28:48
  Kristen: So my book takes on the process of an archaeologist digging through the dirt, finding artifacts, which are the pieces of you, the memories, the experiences.
• 28:59
  Kristen: It's broken into mental body, emotional body, physical body, and spiritual body.
• 29:04
  Kristen: And within those bodies, you do the archaeological dig.
• 29:08
  Kristen: So the first chapter, you learn um the current science, the philosophy, the metaphysics, and you're invited to pick and choose what resonates with you.
• 29:20
  Kristen: And then that piece of information then allows you to go into your excavation, your dig.
• 29:27
  Kristen: So the second chapter for each body is um a hundred questions and 20 to 40 exercises to help you get those nuggets.
• 29:39
  Kristen: Yeah.
• 29:39
  Kristen: Help you get those and be able to differentiate is this a piece of rubble or is this an artifact?
• 29:44
  Kristen: Like, does it really matter?
• 29:45
  Kristen: And the third chapter in each uh section is actually it's the web and it's about um how one little change, tiny little change, can ripple out not just into your life, but into the world.
• 29:58
  Kristen: The fifth fifth section is called integration.
• 30:00
  Kristen: And so, and it's where you take on the role of the architect, and the architect is uh there to help you, or you to help you uh design your what I call the true you 2.0 self.
• 30:15
  Mary: I didn't even I knew you had that framework, but I when I said about the soil, I really wasn't thinking that.
• 30:20
  Mary: But yeah, it is perfect because we do have to uncover some of the things that were covered up.
• 30:26
  Mary: And I would guess that when you get to those artifacts or you figure out the meaning, or you know, I don't know all the details, but that is also something that is allowed to evolve as you decide, okay, I want to try this now, or maybe I want to explore this part of myself.
• 30:44
  Mary: You don't have to have, you don't like arrive to an answer, like, oh, this is who I am.
• 30:48
  Mary: It's very fluid and dynamic, I would guess.
• 30:52
  Kristen: Absolutely, 100%.
• 30:53
  Kristen: And in addition to the book, I actually just finished, it's not published yet, but will be soon.
• 31:00
  Kristen: The the journal that accompanies it, the journal adds information, but then helps people continue the process of uncovering, unearthing, and then um integrating and designing.
• 31:14
  Kristen: The final exercise is called the tree of becoming, and it is a tree because you might want to prune branches, right?
• 31:23
  Kristen: You might uh there might be branches that just fall off naturally.
• 31:27
  Kristen: Um, there might be new buds that form over the years.
• 31:31
  Kristen: So it's definitely the idea that you're talking about where it's it doesn't become set in stone, you know.
• 31:37
  Kristen: It's uh it's an evolving process that will change throughout your life.
• 31:42
  Mary: Yeah.
• 31:42
  Mary: That is so cool.
• 31:44
  Mary: Like it really does dovetail a lot with what I've written and how I work with my clients.
• 31:49
  Mary: So that is sounds very comprehensive.
• 31:53
  Mary: It sounds awesome.
• 31:54
  Mary: So if someone is listening to this and they're starting to feel that little bird of hope with its, you know, wings saying, Maybe I can, you know, they might be in, it could not even, it doesn't even have to be a personal situation, maybe it's a work situation or something where you felt very paralyzed, very afraid to kind of, you know, push the trigger on the dynamite and blow up your life and start over.
• 32:19
  Mary: What would you say would be like the first small shift that somebody could make to start to really connect or remember who they are?
• 32:30
  Kristen: So the very first exercise in my book, I call it foreplay, um, is called Who Am I?
• 32:35
  Kristen: And it is an exercise you can do over and over and over and over and over again for a long period of time, and I still do it.
• 32:42
  Kristen: There's also, I put together a short video series, totally free, so they can access the video on my website.
• 32:50
  Kristen: Um, it's four little videos and go through the process that way.
• 32:56
  Kristen: Um, so that to me is such an important step because the first thing it does is show you that you don't really know, and that you've got a lot of layers, a lot of chameleon colors on top of you.
• 33:11
  Kristen: Um, so it it brings that to awareness.
• 33:14
  Kristen: And awareness is really the first step in that self-transformation, self-revelation.
• 33:22
  Mary: So the the really the core of that is is really being able to name it for yourself.
• 33:29
  Mary: Like, who am I?
• 33:30
  Mary: What would be some answers that you would you might hear someone give to that?
• 33:35
  Kristen: It would usually start with things like mother, sister, daughter, teacher, cook, uh, housekeeper, uh, you know, whatever.
• 33:46
  Kristen: And then you get stuck.
• 33:48
  Kristen: Yeah.
• 33:48
  Kristen: And so you start to go, okay, who am I?
• 33:51
  Kristen: Okay, I'm um kind, I'm uh compassionate, I'm generous.
• 33:56
  Kristen: And then you, you know, okay, I'm and so you know, there's there's a lot to peel away, but you don't even know what's there until you start peeling.
• 34:10
  Mary: Yeah.
• 34:10
  Mary: And it's interesting because I I would have guessed people would start with identity.
• 34:14
  Mary: That's the safe thing, right?
• 34:15
  Mary: Because who's gonna argue that you're a daughter?
• 34:18
  Mary: You know, but when you start to then name the adjectives, I think that's where we I've had people say, like, you know, they'll say, I'm kind or I'm thoughtful, and then they say, but am I?
• 34:28
  Mary: You know, it's sort of like we doubt we're good.
• 34:31
  Mary: And I love how you said, I don't remember how you said it exactly, but we're brilliant.
• 34:36
  Mary: We're all wonderful and brilliant and just the way we've been made.
• 34:40
  Mary: And so, yeah, I just think all those themes and ways of exploring it seem really to be really a powerful and effective way to start and work through it.
• 34:51
  Kristen: One more suggestion, something somebody can do any moment of their day is you talk about yourself out loud in the third person doing a routine activity.
• 35:02
  Kristen: So Kristen is washing the dishes.
• 35:06
  Kristen: She takes the first dish, she rinses it off, she takes the sponge, then Kristen puts the soap on the sponge and scrubs it.
• 35:13
  Kristen: Kristen realizes it's hard to get off, so Kristen reaches for a Brillo pad and scrubs that.
• 35:19
  Kristen: And then Kristen puts the dish under the water, rinses it, checks it to see if it's fully rinsed, and sticks it in the dish drain.
• 35:28
  Kristen: Now, Kristen, and you do that for, again, a timed amount of time, one minute, three minutes, whatever.
• 35:34
  Kristen: And it helps you to separate your actions from who you are.
• 35:42
  Kristen: It's a very strange dynamic, and it does start that process of um realizing there's something to you more than just what presents.
• 35:51
  Kristen: And the real process of the transformation has to come from awareness.
• 35:59
  Kristen: But to get to awareness, you have to quiet monkey mind.
• 36:04
  Mary: Yeah.
• 36:05
  Kristen: And so to quiet monkey mind, ultimately you need meditation.
• 36:09
  Kristen: And so, what I like to impress upon people is there's so many different ways to meditate.
• 36:14
  Kristen: You know, walking in nature and saying, I'm gonna look at um all the colors and identify them, or even walking down your street.
• 36:22
  Kristen: I'm gonna try to notice things that I've never noticed before.
• 36:26
  Kristen: That's meditation, eating a meal, eating part of eating two bites of a meal and noticing the textures and the flavors, um, cooking a meal and when you stir it, thinking about the love that is going into it for your family.
• 36:42
  Kristen: Like it doesn't have to be sitting cross-legged with your fingers up in the air saying, Oh, it can be.
• 36:49
  Kristen: That's a great way to meditate, but it does it doesn't have to be there.
• 36:53
  Kristen: But the more you can have moments of quieting monkey mind, the more you can start to become aware of the loop, the thought, emotion, behavior, experience to thought loop, which you can interrupt that loop anywhere, but you have to do it from a point of awareness.
• 37:16
  Mary: Yeah.
• 37:17
  unknown: Yeah.
• 37:17
  Mary: And as you were talking about that exercise of naming what you're doing, and you were giving that example of washing the dishes, it occurred to me that that is something where if someone is overwhelmed by the emotion and the fear, or they're starting to dissociate because it's so much that they just start to feel people can sometimes feel like they're not even in their body, like there's so much happening.
• 37:39
  Mary: And I think that grounding, that mindfulness, that is really a great way to like what you're saying, calm the mind, make you understand like you are connected to something, you're functioning.
• 37:52
  Mary: It might be just, you know, figuring out that I need the Brillo pad to get the plate clean, but it's a starting point.
• 37:58
  Mary: And I so yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.
• 38:01
  Mary: I really like that.
• 38:02
  Mary: So what a fun conversation.
• 38:05
  Mary: Thank you so much.
• 38:06
  Mary: So I'm gonna link everything, of course, in the show notes, but could you tell us what your website is?
• 38:12
  Mary: And if you want to tell us the again, the name of the book coming out.
• 38:16
  Kristen: Where I like people to start is the website that is u2.0.com because there um I have just a short little video and then an invitation to chat with me for a half hour.
• 38:28
  Kristen: Sometimes people think, oh, she's gonna try to sell me something.
• 38:31
  Kristen: I'm not.
• 38:32
  Kristen: This is like, you know, when I talked about people being brilliant and miraculous, this is my gift to the world.
• 38:38
  Kristen: So if I can help you in that half hour start to uncover a direction, great.
• 38:44
  Kristen: If you don't feel, you know, that is intimidating.
• 38:47
  Kristen: The website is paramourparadox.com.
• 38:50
  Kristen: And the book, which is available on that website and also on Amazon, is Be the You That's More You Than You've Ever Been.
• 39:00
  Mary: And which website was I on when I saw the chameleon?
• 39:03
  Mary: That was Paramour Paradox.
• 39:04
  Mary: Okay.
• 39:05
  Mary: Because people have to totally go there and see that because the it I sort of ruined it because once you know what it is, it's easier.
• 39:11
  Mary: But when I first opened the website, I am like, what is that thing?
• 39:15
  Mary: And then it just materialized, and I'm like, oh my God, this is so perfect.
• 39:18
  Mary: So thank you, Kristen, for being here.
• 39:20
  Mary: I really enjoyed our conversation.
• 39:22
  Mary: Thank you, Mary.
• 39:23
  Mary: Me too so much.
• 39:24
  Mary: Thank you.
• 39:25
  Mary: Sure.
• 39:26
  Mary: And I want to thank everybody for listening.
• 39:28
  Mary: If you enjoyed today's episode, please forward it to someone who could benefit from the discussion.
• 39:33
  Mary: And if you have thoughts on the show, you can message me at the link in the show notes, and I may even read your comments in a future episode.
• 39:40
  Mary: And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.