Latest / From Sad Pick Me Girl to Alchemist / Episode 2 - There Is No Quick Fix for Healing: The Truth About Healing After Toxic Relationships
Transcript
- Denise: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of From Sad: Pick Me Girl to Alchemist. My name is Denise, and this is episode two. And in episode one, I introduced why I created the podcast, and I'd like to preface by reminding everyone that podcasts truly saved my life. They introduced me to a world that I had not much familiarity with that I had delved into a little bit but didn't know too much about. And that was a world of spirituality and just understanding. That we're all here with a purpose. And so that purpose has helped me crawl out of the depression hole that I had been living in for really my entire life. So in this episode, I really want to talk about how healing was not linear for me. There was no quick fix. There was no one particular method that worked. And it really took trial and error for me to get to where I am now. And as I'd mentioned in my first episode, I was married. I dove into dating right away and I was met with lesson after lesson and it just really opened my eyes to the fact that I had to make a change within myself or I was not going to live a life that I wanted to live. And I was just so sick of my own shit. That was really it. And I was looking for a quick fix. I was looking for anything to just be like to promise me that I was going to be better. And there were so many things out there. And that's one of the things that I want to emphasize that I am not this person that's sitting here being like, this is the one way that you're going to heal. My whole purpose is helping you find out what is going to help you ultimately. And if that doesn't make sense, it's really the I believe there is no one size fits all. And that it really does take us figuring out and listening to ourselves. And we're just fed with so many promises these days. Like take this eight-week course and you'll manifest the love of your life or take this seven week course and you will learn to love yourself and yada yada yada hear it i just made that stuff up off the top of my head but ultimately you get the point there's just so there are so many false promises fed to us that are marketing tactics and that's why i really go against the grain i for better or for worse i don't follow those tactics because i think that as long as i put myself out there i will reach the right people and ultimately the people i want to reach are the women that are struggling in relationships wondering why the hell can I not find the love that I crave so deeply. So that was me. I've been there and here I am in my, I want to say, first full month, maybe not talking to a single man, not entertaining a single man, not doing any of the things that I would do before just because I wanted some sort of validation. So I want to start with when I got divorced, I immediately dove into the dating pool and I will go back and say, yes, in my childhood I was modeled narcissistic tendencies from my father and he was abusive to my mother. I had to juggle me exhibiting some of the traits that I didn't like from my father as long as as well as some of the submissive traits that my mother exhibited. So it was really my entire life finding but a balance between being this I want to say narcissistic individual, but I exhibited some of those traits that my narcissistic or whatever you want to call him father ⁓ had and then some of the more like bend over backwards for people that don't treat you well of my mother. And that was my entire life. So ⁓ when I was married, I got married step w as I mentioned again in episode one, I decided that I didn't want to be married anymore. And I dove immediately into dating and I was met with very it was like a slap in the face. I was not prepared. I thought that it was a different world from, you know, I this was in 2022 and I had been with a partner since twenty thirteen. So lot changes in nine years. It's it was crazy. So I immediately went into dating and I was met with men with very toxic habits. The first one that I went on dates with and thought I felt strongly about was later found out he was heavily addicted to cocaine, even though he was relatively successful in the corporate world. He just it was behaviors I was not familiar with. It was a short stint. We remained in touch for a while, but ⁓ you know, we could never get along for very long for many reasons, but My first longer relationship was with somebody who was extremely I wanna say abusive, but he struggled so much. I mean it was abuse. He he was one of those people who like my phone would go off and he immediately be would say, Who's that? Who's that? Or like, ⁓ you're not really going with so-and-so friend to this place, or ⁓ you just work out, you just go to the gym for attention. He was one of those. So I I didn't know it it started quickly, but he started with the love bombing. I didn't even know what love bombing was. This is how naive I was. I mean it. Like I had no idea. He would bring flowers to the house. He was very kind and then quickly exhibited the abusive behaviors. But I stayed much longer than I should have in that because I had seen who he was in the very beginning and I thought, okay, like maybe if I stay, he will become that person again. And as I say it, I sound ridiculous. I'm aware you're like, ⁓ that's not how it works. But again, I was so naive. It is insane to me. You would think at whatever age I was at the time, I think 33. I think ⁓ it doesn't matter. It's just you would have thought that I'd known better and I didn't. So I stayed in that dynamic for so long and I knew it was unhealthy. And I remember it wa at that point I was still trying to get like, you know, do some self development and I'd Read a book called Untamed, where she talks about just connecting with herself and how she believes that ultimately we if we all listened to ourselves, we would be in a better place. And I may be butchering the premise of the book, but that was what I got out of it. So that was my first introduction to a quote unquote higher self. I don't know if she ever used that term. I can't remember again. I'm not a huge reader. I'm not gonna pretend I am. Podcast, yes, reading, not so much. So I started reading that book and I was still heavily involved in this very toxic situation and it would get so volatile where he had like smack me in the face with a wet towel one point and it got to the point where there was we were at a bar and some ⁓ guy had texted me and we were on and off all the time and so I mean of course like as I mentioned I used male validation a a lot and he I don't remember Or actually I do remember who it was that texted me, but that was insignificant. He grabbed my phone and stomped on it at a bar in front of everyone and then walked out. And it was a phone that I had just gotten. And so I remember we got in this huge fight. And I like went to his house and I was like demanding for him to pay for my phone. And again, I exhibited behaviors that I'm not proud of. Like I could have just let it go and like been like I'm done with this person. But instead I was very confrontational and I thought that that would be the way to, you know. solve the issues. I don't know what I was trying to do. I was coming from an ill unhealed place as well. I think I wanted to also insert my power and know that he didn't have control over me, even though in a sense he did. So he ⁓ it got to the point where he had that night like put his hands around my throat so perfectly that like I don't remember what happened, but I just know that for two weeks later I could not swallow. It hurt so bad. And he had also had a blade to my torso and was like He we were fighting and he I had said some things like I'm just gonna like press charges or something and then when he grabbed this big blade and was like, Who's in control now? And I remember that night because for some reason he like just sat there with a knife, I don't know for how long, and then decided to pull it away and throw it. And I didn't leave after that. And that's the crazy part. But I remember thinking, I need to find a way out of this, and I you would think it's is just as easy as stepping away, but it wasn't. And now in speaking it, it sounds crazy because if somebody else is in that, I'd be like, why don't you just never see this person again? And I wish I would have done that, but again, all we can't beat ourselves up. It's all a learning experience. I ended up connecting with a spiritual counselor and she when I the first session I had with her, he was in my car and he I was telling her, I need to get out of the relationship that I'm in right now. And he is in my car waiting for the session to be over. I don't remember why he was in my car. I think we were okay at that time. So it wasn't like I wasn't an immediate threat. But it was insane. So that was the start of my healing journey. The spiritual counselor was the start of it. And it was not a one-size- or one-size-fit sol. It wasn't a one thing fit or fixes everything situation. I don't know why I went with one size fit solvable, but still it wasn't something that it was an immediate result. It took little by little me connecting with spirituality, me understanding what spirit guides were, me understanding how Oracle decks worked and knowing that there is no solution. And that's ultimately why I'm sharing these things because it wasn't a w there wasn't a single moment where I was like, okay, enough is enough. Because the way that I got out of that was by meeting another guy that I was into at a par my friend's 30th birthday. I met a guy who was a ranch owner in the the town that she lives in. And he, you know, fit the bill as far as what I liked physically. He seemed nice. And, you know, when I met him, he was saying he had met that night that I met him, he was like, ⁓ I'm not seeing anybody. And, you know, we things started quickly and ended just as quickly. I think we were had only seen each other for two months. But that that when I met him, I realized that I could have attraction for somebody else without the physical violence that I was experiencing with the other guy. So It was in part the spiritual work that I was doing, yes, but it was largely also because I had met someone else that took away my attention from this person. And thank thank God I did, because I don't know if I would have stayed in that dynamic and eventually things would have just gotten to a point where there was no return. Who knows? But again, everything happens for a reason. And I met this person and I dated him for a little bit. And I was still continued on my spiritual journey with the seeing the spiritual counselor and really familiarizing myself with the concepts of spirituality and spirit guides. And ⁓ she did a lot of table tipping if you're not familiar and s you know there could be some people who don't believe in it. And I still have my reservations about it, honestly, but I like I believing in it is what helped me. But it was just essentially you connect and it's like a yes or no, almost like a pendulum, right? Yes or no and you're connecting to spirit on and you would ask questions and they would connect with you that way. So that helped me. I did that for roughly seven months, but I was still, you know, even when things ended with the guy that I had met at my friend's party because again they ended because I wanted commitment and he was like, I'm not really in a place to commit. I'm just really focused on growth, you know, whatever excuse. And we'd only been seeing each other for a little while. So it wasn't a big deal, but I was still devastated because any time that something would end with someone I liked, I just could not handle it. And it was part of my abandonment wound abandonment wound being triggered. So then I I hopped into another situation ship, we'll call it, with the guy Mr. Secret Service man. And that lasted throughout the duration of this was back in 2024. And in that time I was met with so much unhappiness because This person was everything I wanted and then everything I didn't want all at once. He was really into doing like physical doing physical things. I mean like he would go rollerblading with me, he would go running with me, do paddleboarding, he was like wake up early and we'd have breakfast together and make coffee, all of the basic things. But I thought, like, okay, I'm attracted to this person. He does all these things, he's like promising all this stuff. And so I thought this was it. And then he would go MIA, he would go quiet, he would stop making plans. So he came on very strongly and was like, Yeah, I really like want something. And then was really even after our first day, he's When can I see you next? And then all of a sudden he pulled back. Well, it felt like all of a sudden he was just stopped making plans. And I was like, Wait, what happened to the guy who was pursuing me? And again, I was not familiar with the dating world. Like I just didn't understand that this was a common thing that people experienced. So It was so difficult for my unhealed abandonment wounds to under like it. It was just triggered, right? They were all triggered and I was triggered. So it was a very difficult time for me. And I my entire happiness, sadness, excitement revolved around how our dynamic was on any given day. And you know, if he was making plans with me, then I was happy. If he was pretending I didn't exist, I was deeply depressed and just like, why is this happening? I don't understand. I couldn't even be. Again, I don't know how, as I'd mentioned in episode one, how I operated in the world, how I operated as a mother, because I was so consumed with the relationship and how it was going. So I knew, and because it was back and forth and up and down, and when I started voicing opinions, like I just knew that it wasn't a healthy dynamic. And I found a podcast and this was really what catapulted my spiritual journey and it just explained the concept of soul contracts and our soul's purpose and how we're all here to learn something and the karmic relationships that we exhibit and how those are mirrors to the wounds that we have not yet healed. And all of those things really brought reasoning to what I was experiencing. And again, I wasn't ready to fully step away from that dynamic. I still thought that I could potentially make it work. You know, maybe this was different. Maybe I didn't fall in that category. And maybe that I could just really with enough enough love and compassion and patience, I could make this guy be the one that he was at the beginning when I first met him. The one who pursued me, the one who liked me, the one who wanted to, you know, spend Halloween together and do matching costumes and matching costumes with my kids even because he brought that into play. And so I I ended up signing up for a retreat with the host of this podcast. And that retreat was heavily focused again on connection with self, connection with spirit, connection with other women who were also on similar paths. And that also, I will say I was I thought I was going to come back and just like completely my whole life was going to be fixed. And that's not how it worked. And that's not how it was supposed to work. But bit by bit I was crawling out of this hole. And so I like I think a lot of the times we think, okay, well, this didn't work and this didn't work. You know, you try different modalities and you give up. But bit by bit you're chipping away at the pieces of you that you need to do away with. So I wouldn't say that if you try something and it doesn't work out in the way that you would or you had thought and you didn't get the results that you'd imagine, it doesn't mean it was a failure. Because I was I've I like to envision it as a whole. I was in this deep hole. And I was slowly crawling out of it bit by bit. And I would slide down a little bit and then go again, crawl up. And I would never slide down as low as I was before, but I would keep sliding down. And so the one s n there is no I I keep wanting to say one size fits all, but it's really quick fix, is what I'm trying to say. There is no quick fix because I went to this re winded up going to the retreat the following year. And this was after everything had ended with Mr. Secret Service Man will call him. And So I went on the retreat the following year, but I had ping pong back to the guy that I met at my friend's birthday party. And so that was gonna be a whirlwind too. Because when I connected with him, I connected on how sad I was that it had ended with the other Mr. Secret Service man. And he seemed to be understanding and he had just gotten out of a relationship, which I didn't realize he wasn't really out of. He was just telling the girl that he needed space while hanging out with me. And I should have taken that as a sign as that. And that that's how he operated. He would kind of string someone else along until someone, you know, took away his attention and then he'd hop onto that person. And we always think we're going to be the exception. So I thought because we had reconnected as friends that we were going to, you know, it would eventually r inv that it would eventually evolve into more. And it didn't evolve into anything but a situationship where this person would be, you know, I I only want to be with you and I only want to, you know, do things with you, but I don't want to commit. And I didn't understand it. And it was a psychological game that I had never been a part of. And it was in a different level than the first guy. So either way, it was psychological games that I was unfamiliar with that I didn't know. And so I fell into situationships before I even know what situationships were. And so ⁓ the reason that I'm sharing this is because again, I was mail hopping while trying to do the work. And I went on the retreat while I was seeing the the the you know the more recent guy and I came back and I was like, all right, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do this anymore. I'm gonna choose myself. And of course, literally on the car ride back from the retreat, he texted me and was like, ⁓ I hope, you know, hope you make it back safely. And back we were in the cycle for another few months where he would Pursue me, then pull away. And to this day I could only assume that he was pulling away for other women, which I would say assuming is wrong because I found ⁓ many a time that that was there. I mean, there was concrete evidence that that was the case. So I can't sit there like notes from women and well, one note from a woman in a book. And, you know, when I would confront him about it, he had some elaborate story and that was just the way our dynamic played out and ⁓ when that finally ended, I was so heartbroken because I thought this person had seen me and he always played the I know you and he did know me. He knew how to read my emotions, he knew just what to say when I, you know, wanted to pull away. And he also knew just what to do to keep me coming back. So in a sense, he had me wrapped around his finger, and I always wanted to do more for him, and he would always say, like, you know. You want me to commit to you. And he wouldn't say this in these terms, but he would essentially say, like, you know, if women want men to commit, they need to do things for men, because back in the day women would do things for men, and now they just want all the glory of, you know, being with a man that does things for them without doing things that women used to do. Those kinds of things. So I would try to fit the bill. I'm like, okay, well, how can I do more for him? And it never was enough. Nothing I did was enough. And so I sat there all the time just wondering, okay, well, how can I make this man see me? And I would, you know, even I remember driving to take him chicken soup when I was really sick that day and I just wanted to be with him and hang out with him. And so I was sick and took him soup because he didn't want to get sick. And he was like, Well don't come if you're sick and I somehow convinced him that I could go and that I wasn't that sick rather than him come to me. And he was like, I can't afford to get sick. So, you know, that kind of behavior and so in hindsight, it's really sad that I thought that was what I needed to do to gain someone's commitment. But again, I share this because I was still in my spiritual work when that happened. But when we ended things, it was so bad. And I had acted in such a way that I was am still so not proud of. Like the the way that I the ending was again volatile. And I remember being he was saying looking at me and recording me as I was losing my shit on him and not in a physical way. I was yelling. And I just said, like, you know, this whole time you've wanted me to be your secret girlfriend while nobody knows about me. You don't post anything about me. We had gone to Hawaii together and he didn't post a single thing. ⁓ he never followed and I know this sounds stupid, but it's a tall tale sign. Like he wouldn't follow on Instagram. He didn't want anybody, it felt like he didn't want anybody to know about my existence. So finally I just exploded in that moment. And I let it all out. And I was he was in his car and I was on the passenger seat, not inside the passenger seat, but talking to him in a parking lot from the passenger seat. And I remember he was like just like I don't I don't even want to get into the exact thing of what he said, but I was so mad that I grabbed this like grocery chicken that he bought and I chucked it so far across the parking lot and then I finally walked away. And every time I tell the story, I think it's kind of funny because he like Obviously owned a ranch and people are like, wait, you chucked a chicken like a real chicken? No, it was not a real chicken. Okay, it was like a grocery store chicken. I would not chuck a real chicken. The chicken would not deserve that. But besides the point, all of this had to come to a head so that I would really learn that I needed to do some serious work, that I never wanted to be that woman that was sitting there screaming in the parking lot at some guy for hiding me for damn near a year from people and treating me like his secret girlfriend. And I don't ever want any other woman to feel the way I did about just begging for somebody to to love me and he would claim that he did, but he was one of the people that ⁓ broke me the most. So I ⁓ took a w what I thought enough was enough time from dating and then I tried to go back into the dating pool and then I realized I can't do it. I can't. I really need to understand myself. And so I again kept leaning heavily into spirituality and I kept, you know, consuming content that was uplifting because what you consume is everything and surrounding myself with people that were not feeding me the narrative, the scarcity narrative that love is hard to find or that unhealed men don't exist and all those things. And so slowly I crawled my out of that pit and one day s it clicked. One day I realized, you know what, I don't need this attention. And I I ended up going on a date. I think this was probably the final moment. I went on a date, I don't know, it was probably a little over a month ago at this point. And the guy was really fun. I would say he was mildly attractive. Sorry. And this is I shouldn't apologize, but like I don't like to comment on looks. It's just like I wasn't super attracted to the guy. And so the reason I share this is because, you know, he my old me would have just loved and soaked up the fact that I had attention, but I went on a a fun date. The guy was nice and he would continue to text me, but it was never with any depth. It wasn't like, hey, how are you doing? How's your day? It was never anything about getting to know me. It was very surface level and I thought, I don't want this anymore. I don't want attention that's cheap. I want a quality partner and what does that take? So yes, it was it a month ago. Yeah. But I swear it like clicked like a light bulb one day and I was like, you know, I'm focusing on myself. I'm gonna do my own thing. I am really going to figure out who I am and I'm going to help other women so that they don't have to go know or so that they know that they don't have to go through all of this for, you know, their entire life, that you have the choice to do better and that you can try different modalities and it may not work right away. It may take, you know, several tries and you can try different things and it's never a failure. And even if you're like, ⁓ you know what, that didn't feel so good, at least you tried it. Because I think we give up and we're like, you know, nothing's gonna help me. I've tried X, Y, and Z and nothing's working. And you know what? It's just you know, I don't believe it anymore. It's very easy to fall into that, but don't. Because that is when when you give up, then you have no shot. You have no shot at a better life. And I know that healthy partnerships exist because as I've shared, I'm starting to witness that with my mindset shift and I've shared it on social media, I should say, I share a lot about how your mindset really does affect your reality. So when I started shifting the narrative and telling myself there are people out there that are doing the work, there are people out there that are trying to do better and there are couples out there that are doing the same, I started to see that and I've started to making I've started making friends that are in that space where they're either couples that are collectively d ⁓ working on efforts to help other people in relationships or individual people that You know, they're still in the wellness space or one of them is, and the other person in the relationship supports them. And it's just a growth. It's all about growth and two individual people, two individual whole people that are wanting to grow together. And there's still passion involved. So I've always told myself, there's no it's either passion or safety. You can't have both. And now I know that's not true. So I'm going to continue to share my stories as I go on this journey because yes, again, I'm relatively new to the whole being single and not entertaining somebody. And this doesn't mean I'm not open to it, but I I if I do meet somebody, I want it to be in a space where I'm not searching for them and I'm not depending on them for my happiness. I'm not sitting there waiting on their text and if they don't text me, I spiral and think, ⁓ my God, it's happening again. Like the world sucks and men suck and you know that whole dynamic. Because that is not the space I want to be in. Our happiness should never depend on one single individual outside of ourself. It should really just be about us. And yes, of course, there are things that happen that make us sad, and that's part of life. And so this is really just a statement when it comes to relationships. Your happiness should not depend on how much attention you're getting from your partner, your partner's mood. And yes, to some extent, I'm sure it affects our moods, but your whole existence shouldn't revolve around it, is what I'm saying. And my existence revolved around. men and how they were treating me, even men that I barely knew. If I really liked somebody, it didn't matter if I'd only dated them for a couple weeks. That's how it was. I immediately was like, okay, my entire existence, are they texting me? If I don't hear from them, does that mean they're pulling away? Which leads me to my other point. What's for you will never pass you by. That is one thing I truly know to be true. So if it's for you, it'll s it'll resurface. And of course you want to call in what's for your best and highest good and how you do that is by continuing on your path and your purpose and not revolving your life around finding somebody. That's where we got wrong. I think that collectively a lot of us have revolved our lives around finding a partner. And so you're not seeing healthy relationships because of this because people are consuming themselves with that goal. If everyone would focus on themselves individually, on what their souls were here to do, then you would encounter your divine counterpart. But we're sitting here with a mix people that are unhealed thinking, okay, I need to find love and then Men are so afraid of being vulnerable or you know, they have so many options and they're like, ⁓ whatever. I just like these surface level connections. So really there's so many unhealthy dynamics out there, but there are also really good people out there as well. And that's what I'm learning. So I want to continue to raise the collective by sharing my story of how I went from somebody who revolved her entire existence, her entire happiness around male attention to who I am now. And I have crawled out of that hole and I can safely say I'm not gonna fall in that pit again. And what that looks like and how that develops remains to be seen, but I'm so excited to share my journey with other women. And again, I want to bring other healers into the space because I do think it's important to try different healing modalities because I don't think that therapy alone does it for everyone. I know that we live in a society where everyone's like, do therapy and you know, you know, that's how the way to do it. You have to go to therapy and whatnot. I Honestly saw so many different therapists and never clicked with a single one. So and for me it was spiritual counseling. That's not to say that there that therapy is wrong. As I've said, I don't believe that you should not go to therapy. I I believe that you should listen to yourself and do what makes you feel good and do what makes you feel is helping you rise. And you know, again, maybe therapy was part of me crawling out of the hole because I did start there. But there is no quick fix, it's never ending effort, and we should always be aiming to do better. So ultimately, my point of this episode is to share that if you are making an effort to be better, don't be hard on yourself because you are trying and that's that's what sets you apart. There are people out there who try and then give up. And it's okay if you give up and you take a little, you know, I don't know, healing hiatus, but get back on it. Don't let it last too long. Don't let it consume you. Because I promise you, we were all meant here, meant to experience a fulfilling life. And if you're surrounding yourself with people who are telling you otherwise, it's because they're projecting their fears and insecurities on you. And I encourage you to change your circle because again, our mindset shifts our reality. And I'm living proof that it happens very quickly. Once I started to master my mindset, my external has shifted exponentially in just these few months. And I want that for everyone. So I am going to keep preaching and I will see you guys next week. Thank you so much for listening.