Latest / Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour / Leaving The One Way Street. Episode 5. Leaving The Psychological Labyrinth

Transcript

Leaving The One Way Street. Episode 5. Leaving The Psychological Labyrinth · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back.
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee from the Children's Consultancy.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: And in this final episode of the series Leaving the One Way Street, I am going to talk about how, in order to do that, one has to leave the psychological labyrinth.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now leaving a destructive relationship isn't something that is sudden.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Normally it ends as a consequence of a very long and quite often extraordinarily painful and damaging psychological process.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And people don't leave easily, especially when they've invested love, loyalty, patience, and hope.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Many remain in the damaging relationship, not because they're weak, but because the mind is still trying to preserve something that once was meaningful, even if we latterly discover that that was an illusion.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: But there was a sort of maintaining or persistent belief that somehow that relationship was real.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Repeated deception creates a kind of psychological maze.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And each attempt to repair the relationship when it fails just leads to a deeper sense of confusion.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so eventually the individual realizes something difficult.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: The problem isn't misunderstanding, the problem is structural.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And by which I mean that the way that the relationship is put together is simply flawed.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, part of the process of leaving the maze, I mean, once one realizes that's exactly where you are, distance is important.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Creating distance.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Further attempts to repair are futile.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Distance isn't about revenge, although some people feel that they want to take revenge.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So distance isn't punishment.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a kind of psychological protection because it allows clarity to return.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Think of it from the point of view of can't see the wood for the trees, well, you have to leave the forest in order to do that.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So distance really allows clarity to return, and recovery can then begin, but it's a gradual process, and first it tends to be shrouded in confusion.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Then quite often, and quite understandably, anger.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Anger at the betrayal, the deception, the manipulation, the fact that essentially the person has been using you.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: But also there can be self-anger.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Why did I allow myself to be so stupid?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because there were points along the way when I could see, but tried not to, that this was a deceptive process.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: After that, I think people experience grief.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: But oddly, I don't think it's a kind of grief necessarily of the person you've experienced.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a a grief at the loss of a person who never really existed.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people kind of role-playing this is who I am and how I am.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, that wasn't maintained.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so almost a kind of loss of something that never was, which is a curious idea, but I suppose the loss of hope, the loss of self-trust, the loss of identity, interspersed with feelings of humiliation.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: But outside of that, or beyond that, something stronger begins to emerge.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: More distance, more clarity results in self-trust.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And self-trust is the kind of quiet recognition that the individual's own perception of reality was never really the problem.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Leaving a destructive relationship is not simply an ending, it's a kind of return, a return to clarity and dignity.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I think sort of rediscovering that truth and truthful people still exist, sometimes there needs to be a symbolic way in which that leaving occurs.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Many people will talk about having no further contact and disallowing contact from the other person.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Things like removing them from contact lists and blocking them on different platforms.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes people will return things, things that are representations of the person who has deceived them, quietly just returning them without explanation.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, that quiet action is very loud for the recipient because it says, You no longer exist in my life.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want anything to do with you.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you are not worthy of an explanation.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: There is no way back for you.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: How that lands with them isn't really important.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because clearly, if you mattered that much to them, you wouldn't be doing the return.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: When truth becomes distorted, the mind eventually has to choose between illusion and reality.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Very often along the way, people will have moments where they think, This is this is mad, what am I doing?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: What's in this for me?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm constantly giving but receiving nothing.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And of course the deceiver will rationalise that if they're asked.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth here is that once reality becomes the predominant position that one takes, then the adjustment and the recovery is possible.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I really do think it's important to recognize that recovery is part of an important, necessary, healthy part of the entire process.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Confidence has to be restored because it is almost always going to be damaged in some way.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: But confidence in your own ability is actually not determined by the actions of others, it's determined by you.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And once you take care of yourself, once you recognize that actually this was not your fault, that will facilitate the return of confidence.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I realize this hasn't necessarily been an easy series for people to listen to.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And my hope is that it will have been helpful.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: If this is something which has touched you, if this is something which you found helpful, then talk to somebody you trust.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to share this episode or this series, you're very welcome.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.