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39 | When You Don't Recognize Yourself Anymore · The Messy Middle Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Messy Middle, the podcast for women navigating the raw, confusing, lonely aftermath of narcissistic abuse and emotional control.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Erica Leon, trauma-informed abuse recovery coach, mom of five, and creator of the six keys to unfuckwithable.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you're picking up the pieces, questioning everything, and trying to remember who the fuck you were before you were so carefully erased, you're in the right place.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everybody, welcome back to the messy middle.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: This episode is all about when you don't recognize yourself anymore.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it might not be what you think.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into it.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: There is a phrase I hear from women all the time after a relationship ends.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's I don't know who I am anymore.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand why we immediately want to reassure somebody when they say that.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you'll find yourself again, or you'll get back to the old you, she's still in there, and that is true.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I've probably said versions of that myself so many times over the years I can't count.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the longer I do this work, the less fully convinced I am that getting back to yourself, I guess however you define that, is actually the job.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is that really what you want?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because which self?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: The woman you were before you met him, the woman you were before you had children, before marriage or career, before you spent 10 or 20 years having experiences that changed you.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: You were growing during that time, growing and changing.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, I'm not sure I want to go back and find 27-year-old me because she had no clue compared to 54-year-old me.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: She had some questionable ideas raised in the unspoken sea of patriarchy, and she had some really questionable eyebrows also.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe we can leave some things in the past.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: But there's another reason I I don't particularly like the idea of finding your old self, because the woman you remember being wasn't entirely you either.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Some of her was you, and some of her was an adaptation.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And most likely the two were so tangled together that you couldn't possibly have known which was which at the time.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: We'll come back to that.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because first I want to talk about something that happens before any of this lovely rediscovery shit even begins.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Something I don't think women are always prepared for.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you can spend months, sometimes years, fighting your way out of a relationship, fighting your way through the practicalities of it, dealing with lawyers and money, custody, the house and documents and emails and children, and another allegation, and another emergency, another fucking message on the fucking co-parenting app.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: You have to answer carefully because apparently writing, oh do fuck off, Chad, isn't considered appropriate co-parenting communication.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're constantly responding to something, and your body does get used to that.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a job.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: There is a job, right?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I can survive this.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Surviving it is a job.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Get through today, protect the kids, answer the lawyer, find the money, make the decision.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is all with meals and house and school in between, deal with the next thing, and then eventually some of it stops.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the divorce becomes final, or the custody order is now in place, and it does give you some semblance of relief.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: You probably won't like it.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, who does?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: But you know that it's fixed and that's what you're going to do.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or you finally find your own home, or the legal bills aren't arriving quite as frequently as they were.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And there are still things to deal with, of course, because wow, life is really lifing out there, but that really acute period is over.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I talk about this all the time, and it is called the messy middle, so forgive me for that, but everybody around you seems pretty relieved, right?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're probably glad you're not talking their ear off about it anymore, and they do this big exhale.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God you made it.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you do it too.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And now you can move on, and you think you should feel fucking amazing.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Except often, more often than not, actually, you don't.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you feel worse.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: You feel exhausted and flat and lost, and sometimes incredibly sad.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because you finally have the freedom you were fighting for, and you find yourself sitting in it thinking, why don't I feel better?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And because women are incredibly talented at making their own perfectly understandable human responses into evidence of personal failure, you start worrying about that too.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm not doing this right.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I didn't heal properly, maybe I made a mistake.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I still thinking about everything?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Did I do all of this wrong?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: But your body doesn't necessarily know the war is over because somebody stamps some kind of document.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I know I've said it many times, but I want you to get this stuff in your mind.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And repetition is good for that.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: You've spent a long time anticipating the next thing, that when the shoe's gonna drop, that keeps your body braced for impact has been there for all of this time.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Through this, and strangely, the emergency itself gave you something very clear.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: You knew who you were inside of this, this crisis almost, this shit storm.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: You were the woman getting through the divorce.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like running through something, like a waterfall with something over your head.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: You were just focused.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know you have to get out the other side.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're the woman protecting her kids or fighting for financial stability or dealing with him, the woman surviving all of this shit.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you didn't necessarily want that identity, but you do the job.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And now there's this strange open space where the battle used to be.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can't really see through to the other side.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to focus anymore.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Of I just need to get through this.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Where's the goal gone?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's one of the first places that a lot of women I work with can experience that I don't recognize myself anymore.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because survival is very organizing, it tells you where to put your attention.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: When survival starts loosening its grip, and suddenly there's this room, and room can initially feel a lot like emptiness and it can feel awful, especially if you've spent years organizing your life around someone else, around their moods and preferences and their needs and their reactions.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: You become extraordinarily good at reading a room.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: You knew, even from the way the front door closed, what sort of evening everybody was about to have, right?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: You could detect this mood shift in them from three rooms away.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's a fucking skill, obviously.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a horrible one to need, it's a horrible one to have, but it is a survival skill, nonetheless.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then you live alone, or you live with your kids and not them anymore.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody comes through the door.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's nobody to read, nobody's emotional weather to track, you know, and your nervous system is just standing there with a clipboard going, uh right, who are we looking at now?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Who are we monitoring?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Chill, dude, we're having tea.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: But that can take some getting used to.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually so much harder than you would think.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: If I had explained this to you back when you were going through the shitstorm, the meat grinder, you would have just been like, whatever, idiot.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: But honestly, this is something that comes up so frequently that this is what I chose to make the direction of this podcast about.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: It all takes some getting used to, but I do see a lot of different outcomes in this that are interesting, and I love to just observe what people are doing.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's really fascinating to me.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the people I work with try to fill that space really quickly, which brings me somewhat inevitably to the dating.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oof, girls.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I say this with enormous affection.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: I love you, I love you, I love you.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't say not to do this either, because I believe in you and I believe in your path.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: You sometimes have to try a thing, right?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of women date soon after these relationships are over.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: They get on the apps, they're lonely, they're curious, they've spent years being told they're unattractive or difficult or nobody else would want them.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Did you get that conditioning?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: No one's gonna want you, you're not ever gonna do better than me.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they're suddenly having evenings without the kids, and there's this whole world of people on a phone going, Hello.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And in my completely unscientific but obviously alarmingly extensive client room research, a statistically suspicious number of these women end up with much younger dudes, and I'm not judging.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love all of that.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: I have done pieces of this myself, it's definitely a process.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And for reasons I can't fully explain, a lot of them with their personal trainers.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not kidding, I swear, and this is my experience with my clients, and my clients are quite niche, so this may be data that nobody else would back me up on.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: If I had a dollar for every post-divorce woman who has suddenly found herself being enthusiastically pursued by a man 15 or 20 years younger who has opinions about protein, I could retire.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And hey, sometimes I'm sitting here thinking, perhaps don't combine your trauma recovery with your deadlift, Susie.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm also fascinated by what happens psychologically.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because imagine that you've spent years being told that you're getting old, that no one will want you, you let yourself go, or you're too much of a mom, and now you're just like roommates.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Your body isn't what it used to be, or you're frigid or undesirable.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no fucking shit.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: When I've had to be your mom for the last 20 years, who wants to feel like they're having sex with their son?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Gross.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe you've been picked apart physically for years.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Then suddenly somebody is looking at you like you're the most sensual, desirable creature they've ever seen, and practically drooling at the mouth.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the women I work with are completely bewildered about that.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: They can't believe it because the world is giving her information that contradicts the information she received the whole way through that relationship, and that is important.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying a younger man's desire is how a woman discovers her worth, by the way.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Please, God know.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: No pick me in here.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: We've only just got her out of outsourcing her identity to one man.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're not handing the job to old Luca from LA Fitness.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes external experiences do provide the first crack in a distorted mirror.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: She thinks, hang on, maybe what I was told wasn't true.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't only happen with attractiveness.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: She goes back to work and people value her ideas.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: She makes her financial decision and it works, and she's like, Oh, she handles something she's always told she wasn't capable of handling.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Along the way, she's meeting new people, and they think she's interesting.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: People are laughing at her jokes, she realizes she can travel alone or she fixes something in her house.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it was the dishwasher, and I was so proud of myself.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: She starts discovering that the world isn't responding to her the way he told her it would.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: That this whole thing was basically just him negging and gaslighting so that she wouldn't think she could do any better than his sorry ass.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you've spent years looking at yourself through the eyes of somebody who diminished and minimized you and actively made you feel negative about yourself, imagine you don't immediately realize the mirror was distorted, do you?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not something you think about.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: You think that's just what you look like, and it's how people will perceive you until one day reality starts arguing back with that narrative.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I kind of love the young personal trainer thing.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: For my clients that have done it, it's not where they ended up after many years, but it was certainly the ego boost that they needed to crack that dome of reality that the abuser or the manipulative or controlling person in their life had taught them was the truth.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to turn this into a lovely montage where she gets divorced and shags the personal trainer and starts a business and discovers she's actually Beyoncé.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because there is grief here.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's real grief, of course.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the identities that women lose when relationships end were identities they genuinely loved.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like being the mom or the wife or the full-time mom or whatever.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the people I work with, everyone actually, at some point they loved being a wife.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really important to acknowledge that most of them really did genuinely want the marriage.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: She wanted the family to stay together.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: She wanted her children to grow up with mum and dad under one roof and she didn't really want that stigma for them.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: She may know with absolute certainty that leaving was necessary and still grieve the family as she hoped she would have.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And all that future of you having a partner and watching your kids do this stuff together when they first get engaged or when they get married or when they graduate, all of that stuff tied up in a neat bob.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Those things can coexist.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: I see women struggle enormously with their children becoming quote unquote children of divorce, and that was a huge for me.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: I would almost have taken any kind of treatment just so that I didn't have to subject my children to something I went through that was so harmful and awful.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And divorces aren't always like that, obviously, but even when they're not awful and abusive, they are still not easy.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the women I work with, and myself included, and people in my friend group, they hate what the children have been exposed to.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: They hate the custody arrangements, they hate missing Christmas mornings or weekends or birthdays having to be divided up.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: They wish with every cell in their body, usually, that their children have been spared all of it.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that does not mean they wish they were still married to their ex.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oof, no, not at all.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Those are two completely different wishes, let's be clear.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think women need permission to grieve the first without interpreting it as evidence of the second.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: There is that weird thing that hangs in the air when you say that you really wish that this hadn't have happened, especially the way it went down.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: People kind of mix that with I want to be married again.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that every narcissistic partner, ex-partner out there, is out in the world saying things like, they would take me back no matter what.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: She still would have me back, which is an absolute nonsense.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've literally never come across that with all of the people I've worked with myself.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: They always talk about that, your ex behind your back, all and sundry, but it's actually never been true for any of the women I've worked with.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you go ahead, you tell yourself that.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you can sleep at night thinking you're some kind of a catch.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: But there's grief around names.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I have many clients agonizing over whether to change their surname.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And most don't, to be honest, because they would prefer to have their name the same as their children.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that whole practice of taking your husband's surname in marriage is absolute bullshit, by the way.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: I did not know this until I was in my 40s or 50s, and I don't want to get into it here, but at some point we can talk about that.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, who does all the work in this scenario?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: You give birth to this baby, you grow it.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: We are the portal, the divine portal to life.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so he just stands there.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes he even faints, he does absolutely nothing in the process, and then suddenly we give the child his name.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I digress.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oof, but often women do want the same surname as their kids because they've had that name by this time for decades and decades.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's the name attached to their professional identity, too.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I don't think there has to be a correct feminist answer.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, kind of I do, but I won't go there.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: But you don't have to ceremonially throw his surname into a volcano to prove that you're better now, you're healed now.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's your bloody name now, too.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you decide.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the biggest identity losses I see with women who were stay-at-home moms, and it breaks my heart.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this was my own case for a while, because sometimes we talk about women going back to work after divorce, as though it's automatically this exciting empowerment story.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I do know so many of my clients who have actually found a great part of them that was missing by going back to their career or being out in the world, in the work world with other people.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone does say, look at her reinventing herself, she's awesome.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And really, it is awesome.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it really eventually is awesome.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, mostly, but the beginning can be fucking terrifying and hold with it so much injustice.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of the time being home with her children was something she and the husband chose and valued deeply.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was supposedly a shared goal that was not to be compromised on for the sake of the children.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: But the minute that Chad goes off and has an affair with his secretary or is so abusive that she can't take it anymore, suddenly he doesn't want to pay and he wants her to go to work and he doesn't mind the kids being in a daycare that almost takes up all of her money.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what I see more than anything.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you guys can come at me with whatever.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I see in my niche more than I see anything else.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And at this point, she has spent 10 or 15 years or more building her life around caregiving, and she wanted to do that for her family.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then the marriage suddenly ends.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: The financial structure that made that possible is gone, sometimes on purpose, by the way, a lot of the time on purpose.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And in high conflict divorces, as they call them, I don't.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think they're just one abuser.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Money can just be another battlefield that the narcissistic abusive person uses as another way to punish you when they can't get access to you anymore by living with you.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I've worked with women whose former husbands hide or diminish income so often, especially entrepreneurs, people that don't have a paycheck that comes in that you could garnish.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: They stop paying support that they're supposed to pay.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: They fight over every expense, and the cost of raising the children hasn't mysteriously disappeared because the marriage ended.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: So she's not sitting there thinking, ooh, perhaps I'll discover my purpose.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: She's thinking, what the fuck?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: How the fuck am I going to pay for this?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: How can my kids eat?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there is still school runs and homework and appointments and sports and laundry and extracurriculars and food and all of the relentless logistics of kids.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And now she has to work out how to earn money, as well as all of that.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: So when somebody tells me she's been divorced for a year and she still isn't experiencing the glorious liberation she was promised, I don't automatically think, oh, she's stuck.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Which when I see some of these Facebook groups, I want to scream because that is exactly what they're saying.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: We need to be real about this.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: I always think, what's her actual life like?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's really difficult to feel expansive when you're worried about keeping a roof over your kids' heads.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: I know this pain.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing at that time that wouldn't want to make you punch someone in the face more than telling you about manifestation.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that phase lasts.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: But then the kids get older and they become more independent, and there aren't bars and bedtimes, and someone needs to be driven everywhere every 14 fucking minutes.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Ask me how I know.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: She starts getting pieces of her time back.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: I see a lot of the women I work with get a job.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Or she might go back into a career that she left years ago, or she starts a business that she's always been obsessed with in the back of her mind, but always thought she didn't have the stuff to do it.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I love watching this part.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: I could honestly just sit here and cry thinking about even the clients I've got right now that are going through this.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: I am so Fucking proud of them.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even tell you.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: It breaks my heart open in a lovely way.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because I have been there.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And very often she starts remembering something that she's fucking capable.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: She's maybe more capable than she has ever given herself credit for.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly people outside the old relationship are reflecting something completely different back at her.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Her employer loves her.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Clients want her expertise and she learns how money works.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: She gets financially literate.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: So she negotiates like a bast and she solves problems.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I've watched women almost shake their heads as though they're coming out of a bad dream because they're suddenly remembering, oh my god, I was the shit.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: How did I ever let this dusty, musty little goober convince me that I'm not what I actually always was?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you remember, you knew things, you had ideas, you could do things.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And side note, if I had a big team of people, I would be only hiring single moms because they are the most resourceful people on the planet.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: They are.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'll die on that hill.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the really beautiful part of it is that she's not just returning to the woman she was before, because I don't think that woman had much evidence.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: This woman has evidence.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: The earlier woman didn't have.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: She knows this one now, she knows I can survive something I genuinely thought would destroy me and kill me.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And she didn't know that before.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know every part of yourself in advance.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Some identities they only become available because life calls them forward.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I think I don't recognize myself anymore, starts changing its meaning.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Early on, it can mean I don't know what I like, I'm exhausted, I'm totally fucked.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like a potato, I don't know what comes next.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when you get to this part a bit later, I almost hear them talking more with reverence.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's a different expression on her face.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't recognize myself.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: I said no, and I didn't explain it for 40 minutes.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: I went somewhere by myself, I handled the problem, or I made that money I needed to make.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't answer the message.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: I sat in my house alone on a Saturday night and fucking loved it.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this one is huge because I cannot tell you how often women have been told by abusive or controlling partners that you can't be alone.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: You'll never cope without me, you'll fail.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I have seen enough of these relationships through from start to finish now to be endlessly fascinated by how often the person making that accusation seems to be absolutely fucking terrified of being alone themselves.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: That old adage of every accusation is a confession with narcissistic people is certainly true.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes there appears to be another girlfriend before you finish changing the Wi-Fi password.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And book.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then another one.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And she's meeting the children approximately nine minutes later, and somehow each new woman is receiving the director's card of the story in which the ex-wife is completely insane, inexplicably prevents this wonderful man from being a dad.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard variations of that story so many times I could probably perform all the parts.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I had a dollar for it every time.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, the woman who supposedly couldn't survive alone is discovering I really like my own company.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe more than anyone would ever have expected.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the discovery almost feels illicit because women aren't always taught to regard solitude as desirable, are we?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're taught to worry about being lonely and ended up dead with our cats.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds awesome to me.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: But solitude, when you have spent years managing another person's emotional presence, can feel luxurious.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: I personally love it.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: You hear your own thoughts, you make your own plans, you begin noticing what you actually look like.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes scary in my case.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Really think about that.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Are you easygoing?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Were you always?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or did you just learn that you survived better that way, or you were loved better that way, or you got better results that way?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you were the friend who was always available.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Did you genuinely love that role?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Or did being needed make relationships feel secure?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like you wouldn't lose them so easily.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you were that extraordinarily capable person, and perhaps that is authentically you.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe never needing anybody was also an armour.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know yet.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to decide for you either.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's the fucking point here.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're investigating.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of the old you was completely authentic, and maybe some was survival that you had to build over the years to get the best outcomes.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: And probably most of us are a gloriously complicated mixture of temperament, I guess, experience, a lot of conditioning, I would say, lots of adapting, preferences, and whatever mood we wake up in any given morning.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're a mixture of all of that stuff.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: And there isn't going to be a forensic report at the end, don't worry.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: But once you're no longer automatically adapting to the environment you were in, you get to become curious.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's when people around you may start saying something interesting, which has got a bad rep.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: That phrase, you've changed.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oof.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it does land like an accusation.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of the people that say it are actually low-key jealous, and that's why they are feeling threatened by the fact that it holds a mirror up to their lack of motivation to change, where they are very uncomfortable that you actually did it and they would like to do it, but have an apathy about it still, or don't think it's possible for them.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if you spent your life believing that love depended on remaining a version of yourself, other people found comfortable, you've changed.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe you have, but whenever someone says it, it sounds like something you need to be embarrassed or ashamed of.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's worth wondering which change are they actually responding to?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're not as easygoing anymore means you started telling me when you don't want to do something, right?
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not a bad thing.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: That is how reciprocity in relationships should work.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: It should not all be one way.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're selfish now.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that would be pretty offensive if someone said that.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: And what they're really saying is I had much more access to you before.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you don't want to give access to everyone all the time when they want it.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: And occasionally that I miss the old you means I preferred the version of you that worked better for me.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't hold a mirror to me, didn't challenge me.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not always that, but sometimes it is that.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes somebody who loves us is genuinely noticing that we're struggling or behaving badly.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Healing does not make us immune from being an asshole, by the way, but you've changed isn't automatically evidence that something's gone wrong.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes change is precisely what was supposed to happen, needs to happen, and thank God it did happen.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: So if we aren't necessarily trying to get the old you back, what the fuck are we doing?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Personally, I think we're discovering and creating both at the same time.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think there is one pristine, authentic self buried underneath all the trauma like some archaeological artifact that we're eventually going to uncover if we journal hard enough.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think there are parts of you that have always been there, and there are parts of you we haven't met yet because it's a kind of a chemical alchemy that happens with your circumstances and what you overcome, and it creates this amazing version of you that you haven't met yet, because you haven't lived the experiences to call them forward.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where I think healing, you know, I hate that word now, can become far more fun than we sometimes make it.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: At some point, you have to go and collect data about yourself.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can't sit in your house and definitely asking, who am I?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: And your brain doesn't fucking know.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Give it something to work with, go do something, try salsa dancing.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you go once and you discover, Jesus fucking Christ, I hate salsa dancing.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: And excellent, that's good information.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: You've successfully discovered something about you, so maybe you try pottery.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, a load of people I know love art and they love pottery.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's really been a thing.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: So many women are so creative.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you might be terrible at pottery.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's totally fine, it's great actually.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody died, right?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing bad happened when you tried pottery.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Go somewhere alone, that's a big one.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Go eat a meal alone.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Order that thing you've never ordered because your husband didn't like it or didn't want it near him or your ex-partner or whatever.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or take a trip.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's a big one.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or try a class or wear something different that you would usually have thought was a little bit young for you or something.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or talk to somebody you wouldn't normally talk to.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe date Luca, the personal trainer.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not your mum.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, that's up to you.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Although, perhaps maintain separate gym memberships for a little while.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: The point is that identity is not only discovered through introspection, it's discovered through experience.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: And find out who you are by watching yourself live in real time.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's particularly important for women who have spent a really long time being somebody in relation to everybody else.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody's wife, somebody's mom or daughter, or the reliable friend, the person who holds everything together.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Who are you when nobody needs anything from you for three hours?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: What do you reach for?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: What interests you?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: What makes time disappear?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: What do you find beautiful?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Who do you want more of?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want more of?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you don't know.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think I don't know is an incredibly underrated stage of healing.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: I see it a lot on my intake forms because there is a gap that can appear between adaptation and the authorship, I suppose, of your life.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: You stopped automatically being the person everybody expected, but you haven't lived enough of the next chapter yet to know who it is that that you're becoming.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that space is a little bit disconcerting, sometimes frightening for people.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: It can feel like you've lost your identity, but perhaps you haven't actually lost anything.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe for the first time in a really long time there's room.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't necessarily advise people to just want to rush in to feel it.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where I think there's an obsession with reinvention, and it can become another pressure in life.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: So say you get divorced at 48 and suddenly everybody wants you to have a revenge body or start a company, run a marathon, do TikTok lives.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: Can't a girl just have a fucking nap first?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to emerge from an abusive relationship as a completely optimized human.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's just more pressure on women for no reason.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think we have enough.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're good.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to turn your suffering into a brand all of a sudden.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe for a while you're just figuring out what you'd like for dinner, and that's as big of an ask as you can expect to fulfil.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's identity work too.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Some discoveries might surprise you.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you aren't as social as you thought.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: This was a big one for me.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone I've ever worked with goes through a phase of cocooning, by the way, and it's a good phase.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Don't diss it.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's great where you just don't want to see anyone and you don't want to do anything social.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're in that phase, I salute you.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it will end, and you'll know when the time is for that.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you need much more quiet than you've needed before, or you discover you actually are incredibly social.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now that socializing doesn't involve monitoring someone else's drinking or worrying about what shitty thing they might come out with because they have no empathy and they're basically a shit bag or the mood they'll be in when you get back.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your sexuality changes.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Your ambition changes, or your politics change.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you realize that career you fought incredibly hard for doesn't interest you anymore.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or you have this ambition that you have buried because your success created problems in the relationship.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's no predetermined correct woman waiting at the end.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: That is what I love so much about this stage.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of my favorite parts of my work because after all that firefighting, we get to pull things apart.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not just because everything has to go.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: We just finally get to examine it.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do I believe this?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do I like this?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do I want this?
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Does it light me up?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps my favorite and most delicious question is would I choose this now?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's very different from trying to become the woman you were before somebody hurt you.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because frankly, you know too much now, don't you?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: You've lived too much.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: And some of what you've discovered about yourself was only possible because you had to dig deeper and do harder shit than you've ever done before.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: I wish honestly that you hadn't had to discover your strength through something so painful.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: I wish that for myself too.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: I wish the women I've worked with had never needed to know how fucking resilient they are and their children too.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: But they know now.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they get to keep that knowledge, and that's theirs.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Which means there'll be moments where you'll look at yourself and genuinely think, who the fuck is this woman?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: Say hello to her.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to know everything about her yet.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: She's still probably figuring herself out.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: She probably is gonna change her mind next year and several times.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope she does sometimes.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: I really do.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: I hope she does.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's living.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want you to construct another identity that's so rigid that you become trapped inside this one too.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: You are allowed to keep unfolding.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so we perhaps stop asking how do I get myself back and start asking, who do I get to be now?
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not who should I be, not that should word, or not who will everybody else be comfortable with.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely fuck no.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: But who do I get to be now?
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: Being the woman you don't yet recognize isn't evidence that you've lost yourself.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's more likely to be that you're meeting a self that the old conditions simply didn't have room for.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't need to recognize her immediately anyway.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: You just need to give her enough life to become recognizable.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just live with her for a bit.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you, she's lovely, and you'll love her.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And before you go, you know, I like you to do a little something.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a little something that may horrify those of us who like to process everything to death and logicize it and analyze it.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to collect one piece of data about yourself.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Data, if you're American.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's it.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's the assignment.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Collect one piece of data about yourself.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do something slightly outside your automatic routine.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't need to be anything profound at all.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Try something or go somewhere, choose something without asking anybody else what they would prefer, maybe.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: And afterwards, don't grade the experience.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Don't ask whether it was healing.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: Please don't assess whether your nervous system was sufficiently regulated during the pottery class, because I will come there and I will find you.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: But just notice, did I like that?
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe yes, maybe no.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I don't know yet.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's all useful.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if doing something new feels like too much right now, you can do the exercise backwards.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: Just look at something you've done recently that surprised you, a decision you made, boundary you held, or something you handled where you surprised yourself.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it was just a moment where you enjoyed your own company, and then just notice I didn't know that about me.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Just notice it.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: I did not know that about myself.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Identity isn't something you have to solve.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can meet yourself gradually, and it will just be one ordinary piece of evidence at a time.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're in this stage where the immediate crisis has passed, but you're looking around thinking, okay, who the fuck am I now?
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is some of my favorite work.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: There always comes a point where it doesn't have to be entirely about what happened to you.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: We can start getting curious about what comes next, and we can pull apart the adaptations that kept you safe from the beliefs you inherited and the identities you've outgrown and all of that good stuff without assuming everything about the old you needs throwing in the bin.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we start experimenting.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: What fits, what doesn't.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want now that you're actually allowed to want something?
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you want me beside you while you work out some of that, the details that are in the show notes of either laser sessions or one-on-one coaching, but today, if you don't recognize yourself right now, I don't want you to automatically interpret that as something being wrong.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: I am begging you, please hear me.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: If nothing else, you have lived, you've changed, maybe you've survived things that demanded parts of you that you had never met before.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: And now you have the extraordinary, sometimes terrifying, granted, occasionally fucking hilarious job of discovering who you are when survival isn't writing, your entire job description.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to rush it.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to recreate some woman from ten years ago.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Just go collect some data, try some shit, change your mind, be surprised by yourself.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: And for gold's sake, if it turns out to be Sal's dancing, please report back because I would like to know how that goes.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sending you so much love.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, please take good care of yourself.