Latest / No Shrinking Violets Podcast for Women / Survival Codes: Healing from a Narcissistic Parent

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Survival Codes: Healing from a Narcissistic Parent · No Shrinking Violets Podcast for Women

• 0:00
  Ingeborg: My mother was very dominant.
• 0:02
  Ingeborg: Um, so I thought, well, maybe it's me.
• 0:05
  Ingeborg: Maybe I'm wrong.
• 0:06
  Ingeborg: Maybe I should do something different.
• 0:09
  Ingeborg: And yeah, that's where I developed like not being good enough.
• 0:13
  Ingeborg: So I start questioning myself.
• 0:15
  Ingeborg: I never really questioned her, but I questioned myself on every level.
• 0:24
  Mary: For centuries, the phrase shrinking violet was used to diminish women, to suggest we were meant to be small and meek.
• 0:31
  Mary: But in nature, violets are anything but weak.
• 0:34
  Mary: They're resilient, beautiful, and essential to the ecosystem.
• 0:37
  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.
• 0:46
  Mary: It's a testament to strength, endurance, and the power of taking up space and living by your true nature.
• 0:52
  Mary: If you're ready to stop drinking and start thriving, you're in the right place.
• 0:56
  Mary: Hey Violets, welcome to the show.
• 1:00
  Mary: When clients end up in my office, it's often because the instinctive survival responses or strategies that they used in their younger life to get to the next day no longer serve them.
• 1:10
  Mary: In fact, those responses often now create barriers to success in more than one area of life.
• 1:17
  Mary: For example, if someone learned that their parents will not be there to pick them up and dust them off when they fall, physically or emotionally, an individual can respond by either becoming hyper-independent and mistrustful, or they can find ways to elicit the care they want from others, or any response in between.
• 1:35
  Mary: These survival strategies really are instinctive and based on our nature.
• 1:40
  Mary: This is why we may recognize both the good girl and the hell-raising badass in kids from the same family.
• 1:47
  Mary: The key to fulfillment and success is gaining the insight to both appreciate how that way of being got you through a difficult time and now make an intentional choice to respond in a way that is healthier and no longer ruled by the amygdala, aka the drama queen of environmental danger overreaction.
• 2:05
  Mary: Simple but not easy.
• 2:07
  Mary: My guest today has navigated these waters.
• 2:09
  Mary: Ingeborg Mu'awir is a therapist and executive coach who works with women who are struggling to recognize that the layers covering their power were never theirs to carry.
• 2:19
  Mary: They were handed to them in childhood, often by a parent or a family system that showed them that shrinking was safer than being seen.
• 2:26
  Mary: Ingeborg works on the root causes that often lie buried beneath those layers.
• 2:31
  Mary: Welcome to No Shrinking Violence, Ingeborg.
• 2:34
  Ingeborg: Thank you very much for our help and having me.
• 2:39
  Mary: Yeah.
• 2:39
  Mary: Well, and I love that you use shrinking right in all of your info on your website because it's in the title of my podcast.
• 2:47
  Mary: So I think we're going to have a great conversation today.
• 2:50
  Mary: So there's this saying that fish don't notice the water.
• 2:55
  Mary: And I think when we are growing up, we are in an environment and we don't know as kids that it's dysfunctional.
• 3:03
  Mary: We just kind of do what we have to do to navigate, to navigate it.
• 3:07
  Mary: We'll recognize the dysfunction potentially later, often later.
• 3:12
  Mary: And then we're like, okay, now what do I do?
• 3:14
  Mary: So you grew up in a pretty specific dysfunctional relationship.
• 3:19
  Mary: So talk a little about your history, your childhood, whatever you feel is appropriate.
• 3:26
  Mary: How did that also get you to now, to what you do now?
• 3:31
  Ingeborg: Yeah, well, I grew up with a narcissistic mother.
• 3:36
  Ingeborg: Um, my parents were divorced, so I lived with her and my brother, uh the three of us.
• 3:44
  Ingeborg: And yeah, growing up with a narcissistic parent um is well traumatizing, uh, to put it lightly.
• 3:55
  Ingeborg: Um yeah, it basically changes your identity on a certain level.
• 4:04
  Ingeborg: Um, and it takes a while uh for some people a bit longer to get that sort of back.
• 4:12
  Ingeborg: It's never gone, but it's well been put aside.
• 4:16
  Ingeborg: You can say that.
• 4:17
  Ingeborg: Uh there's certain layers on it, and definitely survival mechanisms.
• 4:23
  Ingeborg: I've you know developed those as well to survive, obviously.
• 4:28
  Ingeborg: Um, yeah, and it's it's I always say, like with narcissism, it sort of gets under your skin.
• 4:37
  Ingeborg: It's really hard to get it because it's on so many different levels um and so many different aspects of your being.
• 4:47
  Ingeborg: Um what you said earlier, yeah, it has to be safe, obviously, to grow up.
• 4:54
  Ingeborg: Uh, you should get things from your parents, it should be emotionally safe, you should be seen and heard, and loved, and and all that.
• 5:02
  Ingeborg: And when it's not there, then yeah, you kind of think it's normal.
• 5:07
  Ingeborg: Uh you sometimes see it like with with friends and stuff like that, that it's different at their place.
• 5:14
  Ingeborg: So that that makes you realize something is off.
• 5:18
  Ingeborg: And what I find is I had I had moments um in my childhood, even when I was really little, that I thought uh this is not right.
• 5:30
  Ingeborg: Um something feels off, but I couldn't pinpoint it, obviously, because I was very small, and I didn't have some no reference or something, you know.
• 5:41
  Ingeborg: So, and because my mother was very dominant as well, um, so I thought, well, maybe it's me.
• 5:50
  Ingeborg: Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I should do something different, and yeah, that's where I developed like not being good enough.
• 5:58
  Ingeborg: Uh, since um, so I start questioning myself.
• 6:02
  Ingeborg: I never really questioned her, but I questioned myself on every level.
• 6:07
  Ingeborg: Yeah, basically.
• 6:09
  Mary: Well, we're gonna get into how that has impacted what you do now, but I want to tease apart some of this a little bit.
• 6:16
  Mary: Um because yeah, I think it's so important to when when we're young, we look to our parents to know how to react to something.
• 6:29
  Mary: So we we have so much research showing that when there's a loud sound, simple things, a loud sound or someone is crying, we kind of look at our parents like, is this okay?
• 6:40
  Mary: How am I supposed to react?
• 6:41
  Mary: When we have a parent who has mental concerns, mental issues, uh, mental diagnoses, they're not responding as we think a typical parent would.
• 6:52
  Mary: And that that continuum of typical is huge because I think, you know, many parents are very worried about some of the choices they make impacting their kids.
• 7:01
  Mary: I think that's a normal parenting concern.
• 7:03
  Mary: But we have a lot of resilience as kids.
• 7:06
  Mary: But when there is mental illness and we're dealing with that, we're constantly looking when there is inconsistent response, then we don't know, like there's no firm footing, what am I supposed to do?
• 7:18
  Mary: So we use the word narcissist a lot.
• 7:22
  Mary: And I know as a therapist, people don't use it correctly.
• 7:24
  Mary: We use it just for someone who's selfish or manipulative.
• 7:28
  Mary: Can you explain a little bit what the behaviors were that you experienced so we have an understanding and a framework of what are we talking about with narcissism?
• 7:39
  unknown: Yeah.
• 7:40
  Ingeborg: Well, I'll keep it sort of like simple in in sort of day-to-day explanation, which is is easier, I think.
• 7:49
  Ingeborg: Um what you said, the uncertainty.
• 7:52
  Ingeborg: I never knew if I did something if it was right, because one day it could be right and the next day I couldn't, and I didn't understand why, I never got an explanation, and then she got mad, and the rage within narcissism is different from someone getting angry.
• 8:12
  Ingeborg: Uh, that usually led to the silent treatment, and may have heard of that as well.
• 8:19
  Ingeborg: Um, then she wouldn't speak to me for like three weeks.
• 8:23
  Ingeborg: Uh, I still didn't know what was going on, so there was a sort of silence in the house, and um I just had to cater for myself.
• 8:33
  Ingeborg: Um, I was always scared, so I was scanning.
• 8:37
  Ingeborg: I'm I'm I'm very good at the moment.
• 8:39
  Ingeborg: I'm I'm scanning people and seeing like the slightest change in their face, tone of voice, uh eyes, you know, looking up, things like that.
• 8:49
  Ingeborg: Um and the um she made me question myself even with with like normal things.
• 8:59
  Ingeborg: I remember asking my therapist, I went into therapy um when I was a bit older then, um, and I always asked her what is normal because I didn't know what normal was.
• 9:13
  Ingeborg: I grew up with like not normal, um, and I wanted to some sort of yeah, foundation and some reference and some feedback.
• 9:22
  Ingeborg: Like is this a sort of, and I know everybody's different, and normal is very easily used, but some sort of normal, this is what parents would do.
• 9:31
  Ingeborg: Uh, and you didn't get it, so you're allowed to um you suffered, so you're allowed to well whatever do something, uh change it and and cry and and whatever.
• 9:45
  Ingeborg: Um the the feeling of well, whatever I had a feeling, it wasn't allowed.
• 9:54
  Ingeborg: Yeah, so whatever I thought was wrong, sort of period, um, and whatever I felt was made fun of, uh, was dismissed, uh, was not true.
• 10:07
  Ingeborg: Um, and she turned it around that she was the victim.
• 10:12
  Ingeborg: So because I did something, I mean I was crying.
• 10:16
  Ingeborg: Let's say I fell, I cried, um, because that's what you do as a kid, and then she made it around or turn it around into she being a victim because she had to take care of me or something like that.
• 10:30
  Ingeborg: So that's a real mind fuck, so to speak.
• 10:34
  Ingeborg: Excuse the word, but it's that's what happens.
• 10:37
  Ingeborg: So it's like a normal thing, and then they turn it around and they start questioning yourself.
• 10:42
  Ingeborg: Like, oh, maybe what I said, maybe I did something wrong, maybe I should have done it different.
• 10:47
  Ingeborg: Oh, I should well look up more, stuff like that.
• 10:52
  Ingeborg: Um and what she did as well, that's that's uh a sort of well-known thing in narcissism as well, is that the scapegoat and the golden child.
• 11:02
  Ingeborg: My brother was the golden child, and I was the scapegoat, and yeah, a riff between my brother and me as well.
• 11:11
  Ingeborg: She tried to do that, she sort of put him on the pedestal, and I was well, whatever, to come back, and then I was put aside or something.
• 11:20
  Ingeborg: And at the same time, she was jealous of me, and then she would say things about me, like, oh, Ingeborg thinks she's uh far more beautiful than me when I was a kid, you know, how old I was 11, maybe or something.
• 11:36
  Ingeborg: I'd never thought that thought about her, uh, I never thought it about myself.
• 11:42
  Ingeborg: Um, and then because she was very convincing, and that's that's how they are, people believe them.
• 11:49
  Ingeborg: And I start um saying things like, oh no, that's not true, I never said that.
• 11:55
  Ingeborg: Um, a lot of people wouldn't believe me because I was small, yeah.
• 12:00
  Ingeborg: Um, things like that.
• 12:01
  Ingeborg: So it's different things, different levels, um and very hard to navigate.
• 12:10
  Mary: Well, you bring up so yeah, you bring up so many things that are an important aspect or a shade of all of this.
• 12:17
  Mary: And and one is that often it's a parent who in society, in the community, no one would ever believe that these things are happening.
• 12:28
  Mary: So not only are you a child and you're powerless, you're confused, no one's believing you.
• 12:33
  Mary: And you know, the response that that we've alluded to already, it that often happens, especially in young girls, is reading the micro expression, being hyper-vigilant, because now you are realizing it doesn't matter what I do, it's gonna be wrong.
• 12:52
  Mary: So you're trying to change yourself and that shrinking, keep yourself as small as possible so the boat isn't rocked as much by anything you do.
• 13:03
  Ingeborg: Yeah, yeah, very much so.
• 13:06
  Ingeborg: Yeah, it's it's like you said, shrinking and trying to read before something will happen, and then I sort of can navigate it and make sure that's well, whatever, come through the day without you know, uh get hit as well because he was violent as well, in a sense, um, and and order words or the silent treatment or all the things I just said.
• 13:34
  Ingeborg: Um yeah, and then I took it upon me to start finding my own way.
• 13:42
  Ingeborg: That's that's the thing, doing things what I thought was right.
• 13:47
  Ingeborg: Um yeah, becoming more rational, and I'm very sort of feeling person in essence, but I become very rational, um organized.
• 14:01
  Ingeborg: Obviously, that's still part of my character, you know.
• 14:04
  Ingeborg: Uh there was a foundation in it, but it made it worse.
• 14:08
  Ingeborg: Uh, that was my well, control.
• 14:11
  Ingeborg: That's how I survived to control the situation, organize things.
• 14:16
  Ingeborg: I can fix things, you know.
• 14:18
  Ingeborg: And that's still the sort of facade I have sometimes that people think, oh, you know, Ingeborg can handle it.
• 14:25
  Ingeborg: It's okay.
• 14:26
  Ingeborg: She doesn't need anyone.
• 14:28
  Ingeborg: Uh, you know, and that's what I thought for a long time as well.
• 14:31
  Ingeborg: I don't need anyone, I can do it myself.
• 14:34
  Mary: Yeah.
• 14:35
  Ingeborg: Um, which is very lonely.
• 14:37
  Mary: Well, yeah, it's very lonely, but it's also you learned that you have to rely on yourself.
• 14:42
  Mary: You basically had yourself.
• 14:43
  Mary: And and that's what kind of what I talked about in the intro, is that we have this mistrust.
• 14:49
  Mary: You know, it's well, I'm not getting the feedback from the environment I need.
• 14:53
  Mary: And it also constricts your emotional continuum.
• 14:59
  Mary: You know, we we should be allowed to have all of this emotion, especially as a kid, to be able to cry and learn to self-regulate, not self-regulate because we're afraid we're going to get hit or break, you know, so that that um early experience, man, it's so indelible.
• 15:15
  Mary: So when did you start to recognize that you needed to do some things to heal, to create change?
• 15:25
  Mary: Because professionally you were doing well.
• 15:27
  Mary: Is that right?
• 15:28
  Mary: Like you were doing well in one realm of life, but not in all of it, correct?
• 15:34
  Ingeborg: Not in all of it, no.
• 15:35
  Ingeborg: Um well, I took uh I went to like a therapist when I was about, I think, 19.
• 15:45
  Ingeborg: Um and as you know, like trauma is a sort of layer after layer, it's not like sort of open out there all at once because that's too much for the mind and for the body.
• 16:02
  Ingeborg: So I did a whole lot when I was younger.
• 16:06
  Ingeborg: Then I took off to London, away from my mother as well.
• 16:11
  Ingeborg: I lived in London for five years.
• 16:13
  Ingeborg: I had a really good time, I think, especially because she was like far away as well.
• 16:18
  Ingeborg: So I could sort of open up and do the things basically.
• 16:22
  Ingeborg: Well, I don't know if you have that over there.
• 16:26
  Ingeborg: Like if you're a student and stuff, then you know you do silly things and then you know go to bars and stuff like that.
• 16:32
  Ingeborg: Usually it's like around when when people are in puberty that that period that I'm talking about.
• 16:38
  Ingeborg: I did that like sort of later because there was no puberty for me uh when I was with with her.
• 16:44
  Ingeborg: Um, so I had a really good time then.
• 16:47
  Ingeborg: Uh, I felt confident, I got feedback, and and you know, I sort of yeah, be sort of a flower opened up to the world.
• 16:56
  Ingeborg: Um, and then later on, after my second child, the first I have two sons.
• 17:05
  Ingeborg: The first one I felt something wasn't really right within myself, but I put it sort of uh I put it aside as burnout, it was too much and stuff like that.
• 17:19
  Ingeborg: Um, and then bit with the second, which is like you probably know that if you had your child, then the hormones drop, and I I came into a postpartum depression, and I found out like getting help and stuff like that, that there is always a sort of foundation for a postpartum apart from the hormones, um, and so I had to deal with that, and that was the moment.
• 17:51
  Ingeborg: So, like a year into my my second child that was diagnosed postpartum, and I had some meds for that, and then I got therapy again, and then I dealt with it, like on the well, whatever third, fourth layer, whatever it was, but I dealt with it more in depth and more, yeah, especially because there was something as well that I always said to myself, if I have kids, I want to do it different because I I well I know I'm not a narcissist, I've had a diagnosis as well.
• 18:25
  Ingeborg: I wanted to know it for myself.
• 18:27
  Ingeborg: Um, and I wanted to give them a different uh upbringing than I had.
• 18:34
  Ingeborg: So I made really conscious choices in doing things different and give them confidence and give them uh awareness, and they can talk about everything, and they can get angry, and I still love them.
• 18:46
  Ingeborg: Um so that helped well in that period as well, uh, to make that decision and work on that.
• 18:55
  Mary: Yeah.
• 18:56
  Mary: So, like you pointed out, there are layers, and I think some people, well, I'll talk about the culture here is we want this quick fix.
• 19:05
  Mary: So I want a pill, or let me just go to therapy for a few months and it'll all be fine.
• 19:10
  Mary: And I think what life tends to do is yeah, we can get to a plateau, but then it's like, all right, well, you're not done yet.
• 19:18
  Mary: Let me show you why you're not done.
• 19:20
  Mary: And you had you had a lot of loss, right?
• 19:23
  Mary: That that kind of sent you into even a deeper exploration and healing.
• 19:29
  Ingeborg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, true.
• 19:31
  Ingeborg: Like um, especially from like 2019, uh well, up till this January, basically, uh, a lot of things, a lot of loss in different ways.
• 19:45
  Ingeborg: Um and uh a lot of people as well, certain people in a few years and two and a half years, and that made me realize um, yeah, made me realize that I well I I already could rely on myself, but I think it's a different layer now.
• 20:06
  Ingeborg: It's a more sort of solid one, um more with compassion for myself.
• 20:14
  Ingeborg: I think that's the sort of I wouldn't say I'm done, and I uh well I possibly can't say this the last layer, uh, but I know like looking back, um, that this has taught me so much, and it will help my clients as well.
• 20:33
  Ingeborg: That's the whole thing because of the compassion for myself and knowing what you can go through, and it's not like linear and it goes everywhere, and then you think you're there but you're not.
• 20:45
  Ingeborg: Uh coming back to it again.
• 20:48
  Ingeborg: Um, but it's okay, it's a sort of acceptance as well for myself, acceptance that the people are not there, but they are there in a different space, or whatever you uh believe in that.
• 21:02
  Ingeborg: Um, and yeah, and it made me realize like connection is really important and it changed the um yeah, the the relationship with my sons as well, because I'm now I'm I'm the oldest one, there's no one above me.
• 21:21
  Ingeborg: My ultimate parents are are passed away.
• 21:23
  Ingeborg: Um and I feel like I don't know if you know that expression, or maybe it's a Dutch thing, I couldn't know that you look at it like from an umbrella perspective.
• 21:34
  Ingeborg: It's like that's that's how I look at it, or a helicopter or something like that.
• 21:39
  Ingeborg: I'm sort of above rather than in the situation and dealing with it.
• 21:44
  Ingeborg: I can feel that, and sometimes I'm in it, but mostly I'm sort of above it, like the paraplu or the the the uh helicopter.
• 21:53
  Ingeborg: I can look at it.
• 21:55
  Ingeborg: I allow when I have an off day, you know, I'm not.
• 21:59
  Ingeborg: that happy or something like that, knowing that the next day is always different.
• 22:05
  Ingeborg: And I've experienced that a lot in those losses I had and navigating them and um and that's really yeah good to have that feeling I I just had a conversation with a friend last night and she uh lost her mother um a few months after my father passed away and I I can feel and see what she's saying that she's still in it which is okay but then it made me realize oh I'm sort of sometimes in it but I know that you know that's what I told her tomorrow will be different.
• 22:50
  Ingeborg: It's never the same.
• 22:53
  Ingeborg: And it's not per se better per se uh because the day after could be worse but you know and you start feeling like you get some sort of control.
• 23:04
  Ingeborg: But you can live your life and sometimes it's overwhelming and sometimes you have a pretty good day and then yeah your life starts growing out and taking up more space and the grief is still there.
• 23:21
  Ingeborg: That's the sort of thing.
• 23:22
  Ingeborg: I'll take it with me but it's not as overwhelming and it's okay.
• 23:30
  Mary: Yeah and that's so important to know because when we have those days that are we don't feel as powerful or we feel overwhelmed, the first thought can be oh I'm failing.
• 23:41
  Mary: How how am I still dealing with this?
• 23:43
  Mary: But I think when you take that view from above and can say okay well look how far I've come and this is normal and typical to have those setbacks and especially when we're talking about grief and we're talking about grieving a very complicated relationship I'm sure and we don't need to go into details but I'm sure losing your mom and losing your dad like that with your father had to be complicated too because he probably had an inkling of what it what your mom was like.
• 24:13
  Mary: So I'm sure that that in itself was a lot of soul searching and finding peace.
• 24:19
  Ingeborg: Yeah yeah confusing is the word you can say that um they they got divorced and what I said earlier so and I uh I had I still saw him you know all throughout the years I hadn't seen her for 17 years well because that that was the decision well she made actually uh I never did but she she did that and um it was better in a sense was more quiet so her passing was a bit yeah strange I would say sort of weird when you you've I've I've done all the grieving with her in those 17 years and coming to terms with well with everything she did and she didn't do for me.
• 25:12
  Ingeborg: Um so that was kind of like okay yeah now it could never be any different yeah there was still yeah a slight sort of hope something like that now but now it's it's gone and it's and that gives some space as well like okay this this is now this is it um and with my father was different totally different and he is I think still I I'm still sort of processing that as it is because that was a totally different relationship um and obviously he knew my mother he he that's why he got divorced from her so he understood the that situation um yeah and it's it's yeah it is confusing sometimes I'm sure yeah and even with all the work you've done still confusing at times when I'm thinking when you are in certain days like you said the overwhelming days it might feel more like I'm still really processing this so yeah yeah yeah but it's it's what I find is that I realize that I'm processing it.
• 26:26
  Ingeborg: So that means you look like back and then realize that you are processing it.
• 26:34
  Ingeborg: And then what is that being compassionate and stuff like that which is different than being in it.
• 26:39
  Ingeborg: So it feels like I'm a sort of further and there's no timetable and there's nothing I have to achieve or something this is what it is.
• 26:53
  Mary: And yeah I deal with it the way I do day to day day to day yeah so talk a little about let's take a little turn now talk a little how all of this that you experienced impacts influences informs the work that you do talk a little about your work and how you are kind of married all of that stuff into making the impact that you make now yeah um well basically it's it's it is what I do I uh have had many life changing events and what we spoke about a little lots of other things happening so I can honestly say with a lot of things I've been there or I can relate to you or I can understand your feeling which is very helpful.
• 27:47
  Ingeborg: I help people who are successful on the outside and they have trouble either in their relationships or they can't find a relationship.
• 27:58
  Ingeborg: So that could be as extreme as people with narcissism or narcissistic personality tendencies that could be as well or going through divorce attracting toxic partner or not being able to attract an emotionally healthy partner.
• 28:17
  Ingeborg: And they the what I find is that the pattern underneath is the same so they could be successful but that a lot of people I see it's not 100% but a lot of people I see and I work with um their success is a survival mechanism so it comes from something in childhood which obviously we're going to find out um they're happy with it but at the same time they're very lonely and they could still have that feeling of not being good enough um and it's not fulfilling as well yeah so they have the money the accolades and and and and the the prestige and and everything um which is nice and the big house and cars and stuff like that um but the relationship realm so to speak is not fulfilling it's not going the way they want to um and that's where I help people so they are what I said successful and what I bring into it is well obviously the the the the studies I did for it but all my experience in life uh what I said earlier I can honestly say I've been there yeah I've you know been to so many different things we haven't spoken about which is helpful um and I find people uh what that that's what they say to me obviously is that they can trust me um and that they can they find they can tell me everything which is fine I I'm open minded you know I have no yeah anything about you we just dive in we go to the root course and I if they are want to do the work if they can put themselves to do the work I can get them to the place they want to be.
• 30:15
  Ingeborg: Yeah it's scary it's scary to get to dive into those roots yeah it is it is it it can be but it's never as big and as scary as people think.
• 30:26
  Mary: Right it's the worry of it that's so huge and then when you actually start to do it with somebody you trust it is it's not it's not easy but it's navigable.
• 30:38
  Mary: Yeah it's doable yeah that's the thing it's doable I mean I've I've coached so many people like hundreds over the years well I did myself but so many people and and what is it it's scary it's it's it's hard work definitely but if you are I always say allow yourself give it to yourself uh to go on that path which with a good therapist um and then you come out on the other side and you can't really see that now how that's going to be right um that ripple effect that goes through everything um once you've done the work so yeah I would would recommend doing it as we that way oh 100% as a therapist I can say yeah 100% so you identified something called survival codes can you talk a little about that because I'm thinking there are people listening and they're starting to think wait a minute I'm identifying some of this stuff maybe not really realizing what we're saying this this foundation that was laid in very young and now you're responding you're acting in ways you learned and they might not be the most helpful or healthy so what are the survival codes that you've identified well there's actually like the uh survival mechanisms it's like the performer uh the controller the the rescuer the harmonizer and there's some more but those are like the the the big ones and the performer is like one who's really really successful and they found out like early on that if they do something and they get uh applauded by their parents that they are seen uh and they're not seen when they're emotional and that's sort of discarded but when they do when they have like a grade if that's applicable to your uh audience um or they're very good at sport and that continues into like getting a really good job um and then that pattern or that codes you take that with you at home so let's say you are married then you think you have to perform at home as well but performance is a sort of um it doesn't get you connected to people it's it's a survival mechanism it's not it's it's mostly up here um it's not grounded in your feeling or felt sense as I call it um and connection needed to be made or needs to be made from that space yes and we never really well we we can obviously talk like this um but real connection um uh is made on a on on the felt sense on your feeling side and performance is in the way of getting to that um as in being control is like micromanagement is well is hell if you do that in the office for most people they don't like it uh so uh and you think you're doing good because you want to do everything good and well and you drink controlling and you think oh I'm very organized no that's really handy and and stuff like that but if you take that at home and let's say your partner is cooking then you start make micromanagement there and that's not again really helpful for a connection because people you know are being looked at and feel like you're their parent and and you get like yeah yeah arguments and and stuff like that.
• 34:36
  Ingeborg: The harmonizer um slash sort of rescuer because sometimes there's sometimes like a combination and no one is really sort of put in a box it's usually a combination two or three um but this one is like the people pleaser um they have very weak boundaries they have trouble saying no uh well they obviously say yes all the time even if they they they can't do it they don't have the time stuff like that um and they sometimes even don't know what they want themselves so they always say oh no let you you can decide that's okay you can decide and inside they get very revengeful because obviously they have an identity they want stuff they have feelings they want to do stuff for themselves but they never learned they weren't allowed you know to say that out loud and to even do it when there's people around them that yeah don't agree with it.
• 35:45
  Ingeborg: Yeah um so those are a few of the codes and I think it's very recognizable for a lot of people.
• 35:54
  Mary: Yeah.
• 35:55
  Mary: And I like how you said it's you're not just one thing it's percentages sort of of you know and different um I would think different situations sort of call forth the different coping mechanisms.
• 36:08
  Mary: So if there's somebody who's thinking well I'm fine professionally it's or my professional life has nothing to do with how I function in my personal life what would you say to that?
• 36:19
  Ingeborg: Well with someone like that it's usually not really good to sort of say something but sort of go around it and start asking questions.
• 36:30
  Ingeborg: And I would say okay well tell me how that goes you know if you go into meeting what do you do if you have a conversation with your manager or boss whatever um how does that how does that go um and if you go at home you know what is everything is really just a hundred percent um usually because of the the scanning as well in the face and in the voice and stuff like that I pick up on things which are not like congruent you know so that's the sort of pattern decoding I do as well people think they have a a solid uh story but usually it's not really solid there are things in there which what I said is not congruent um and then they might say yeah well maybe sometimes you know when I talk to my secretary or whatever or my assistant um I don't know I don't feel and then we have an opening there's always something they tell me which I pick up on which I feel okay that's you know a bit off and that's the opening and then I start continuing in that direction.
• 37:54
  Mary: Because in the end of the day you know we all human so nobody is like a hundred percent sort of perfect and business is good home is good nothing like that that can't be we are emotional beings yeah um so there's always something there's always something and there's degrees of it and you know you talked about this um you know starting therapy at 19 um but you know throughout life revisiting that at a deeper level like as those layers are exposed and you know kind of examined and you decide what to do but often I'll have people say I don't have time to deal with this I'm doing fine I don't have time like they might be listening and and and again recognizing some of this but we dismiss quickly sometimes like well look at all this time it took her I don't have time to do that.
• 38:50
  Mary: I think it's worth it and I think we do it you know again in degrees we can dig in and start to figure out what we want to address.
• 39:00
  Mary: But if there's somebody who has that reaction like I can't I don't have time for this what would you say to that person?
• 39:07
  Ingeborg: Well you know and I know that you can't force someone into something because obviously I know that if the pain is big enough people will come because that happens because they have to do the work obviously together with me or with someone um so it has to be them but I think most people dismiss it too quickly and what I find is that the saying very quickly like oh no I'm okay that's all right is sort of putting it outside themselves because they don't want to feel it.
• 39:48
  Ingeborg: Because otherwise if you're really sort of healthy and balanced and stuff like that you would say well there might be some things but something overall you know uh I'll I'll start doing something or you know I'll look into it because that's an open uh sort of yeah open um whatever you want to call it yeah that's open um but dismissing it like that then you want to keep it as uh outside yourself and that tells me something usually there's a lot there um they just don't want to go there because of various reasons we can talk about that that's okay um and when I do that talk about them the amount of energy and and and everything it costs them to keep this facade of being successful and I don't need anything and you know I'm okay is far more than what they get you know on the other side um so again yeah I would say allow yourself and be open and investigate.
• 41:03
  Ingeborg: I mean uh a a connection call or whatever you want to call it discovery call or with someone is only well whatever one hour of your life.
• 41:13
  Mary: Yeah it's a first step.
• 41:16
  Ingeborg: Yeah um so it usually says more about them if they dismiss it that quickly than they think.
• 41:26
  Mary: Yeah and you know this would be a whole other episode but I think there's so many things under that especially for women like a sense of shame or if I say that I'm not okay then I'm not okay.
• 41:36
  Mary: Well nobody's really okay.
• 41:38
  Mary: I'm not okay every day I can admit that.
• 41:40
  Mary: But I think what one of the takeaways that I want people to get from this conversation is that we survive the way we need to survive.
• 41:50
  Mary: And maybe not everyone would have had an a relationship with a parent that was as impactful and damaging as yours.
• 41:59
  Mary: And that can be another reason why I didn't have it that bad.
• 42:02
  Mary: Well we all have something or some things multiple things but I like to frame it like well you made it this far because you instinctively figured out a way to get through that.
• 42:13
  Mary: Now it doesn't serve you.
• 42:15
  Mary: Now you learned that we all learned that if we're willing to look at it that's not being broken.
• 42:21
  Mary: That's like okay I need to now change the mechanism because what I instinctively did is now getting in my way but I had to do it at the time.
• 42:31
  Mary: So now how do I want to interact with the world?
• 42:34
  Mary: And I think coming at it from that empowering stance can take that shame away.
• 42:39
  Mary: It is not your fault if you're struggling but having that trusted person is so important.
• 42:45
  Mary: So talk a little now before we end about what you specifically offer and where people can find you.
• 42:52
  Ingeborg: Yeah um well if they would like to have a conversation they can do so they can find me on my website um I have a first pattern scan um don't get confused with the name but it's it's very good is a diagnostic uh uh scan you can do you can find out about those survival goats I talked about it's on my website as well um and if you're if the step to like a connection call or or therapy is too big or coaching is too big I have an online training as well self-paced so you go through stuff like we talked about here um and you can do it in your own time and you get you know quite far but obviously it's different than working with someone one-on-one but it's it's a step as well yes yeah wherever you feel like you want to enter the process and I will link your I'll link your website in the show notes so people can find you.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Thank you thank you.
• 43:57
  Mary: This has been one of my favorite types of conversations in work so thank you so much for being with me today.
• 44:04
  Ingeborg: Thank you.
• 44:04
  Ingeborg: I was lovely to be here and I hope it's very good for your listeners.
• 44:10
  Mary: Yes I think it will be and speaking of thank you to everyone who's listening please forward this episode to someone who you know could benefit from our conversation and until next time go out into the world and be the amazing resilient vibrant violent that you are