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31 | The Guilt of Being Happy Again After Narcissistic Abuse · 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, y'all.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to another episode of the Messy Piddle Podcast.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: This one is interesting.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into it.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: It might sound weird, and if you have no clue what I'm talking about, then skip this one, as you might not be there yet, then it will just annoy you.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: But when it happens and you can relate, I promise you'll really get it.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: This one is all about the guilt of being happy again, and it's strange because on the surface it sounds like it should be a really nice problem to have.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the moment that you start feeling okay.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not all the time, just little moments you laugh properly or catch yourself seen in the car.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Who doesn't do that?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: You realize you spent an entire afternoon without teaching about him, them, whatever.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: You enjoy a meal, you get completely absorbed in a conversation where your child says something ridiculous that mine do frequently, and you laugh so hard your stomach hurts and you feel a little, and then almost immediately something inside you tightens, lips closed because you feel like you've been caught.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: You think, hey one, am I allowed to feel this?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's such a strange experience because nobody's ever told you you can't be happy, no one's standing there telling you to stop smiling, but part of you've done it anyway.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like your own system reaches over and gently pulls the handbrake.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not today.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not because happiness is dangerous, I don't think.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's what's going on under there.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's just because happiness feels unfamiliar.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And as we've talked about a million times, unfamiliar can feel surprisingly uncomfortable.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's really nothing to do with happiness per se deeply.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's about permission.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Then maybe this episode is about permission, not happiness.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because most women I've worked with aren't really frightened of joy necessarily, they're just frightened of what joy means or what it says or what other people might think, or what they might think about themselves.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's almost an unconscious belief that if you become happy too soon, you've somehow skipped something, or you've somehow bypassed something, and often you somehow betrayed that woman who suffered for all that time, like you're leaving her behind all your kids.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I used to get attacked by pangs of guilt constantly if I enjoyed time away from the boys eventually, because it did take a couple of years for me even to be a leave when dropping them off and not crying.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was about two years.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I did used to get pains of guilt if I enjoyed any of that time away.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think anyone consciously decides that.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: I know I didn't, but I definitely didn't wake up thinking today I'm gonna semitolish my own happiness, but it's just a feeling, a hesitation, almost like your nervous system whispers, careful, don't get too comfortable, remember what happened last time, and before you even realize you're doing it, you've interrupted your own joy pathway.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And don't honestly think anyone wants to do that, because that's what's become familiar, feeling like when is the other shoe gonna drop.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what's really important here is looking for that catch so you can catch it.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever noticed something genuinely lovely happens, and instead of simply enjoying it, your brain starts looking for what's wrong.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: You have a peaceful weekend, nobody argues, the kids are laughing, or you go for lunch with a friend, or you have a really nice date, or sleep through the night, whatever it is, everything's totally fine, and then your brain starts quietly scanning and it's saying in its little pitchy voice, this won't last, something's going to happen.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: What's the catch?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it does feel like your system just doesn't fully trust peace.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's because it thinks peace is unsafe, because for years peace was often interrupted.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: You'd finally relax, and then there'd be an argument, or you would think things were getting better, and then something would happen.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Total 180.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So your body learned something, it learned not to settle down, to not exhale too much, to not assume that everything's going to be fine, or that everything that was promised could lie.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: You have to kind of stay half ready, stay half watching, half break, even with one eye open, all eyes, because that's how you survived.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So when life starts becoming calmer, your body doesn't immediately just call that safety.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it calls it suspicious or fucks up, and that's a really different conversation from why can't I just be happy?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: You get into bed that night and you think that was nice, I had a nice day, or that was a lovely outcome to something you've been working on, and then that little voice again starts looking around the room.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: What have I forgotten?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Something bad's about to happen.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it is as though your body can't cross that a good day is allowed to end as a good day.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever noticed that?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: You don't even realize you're doing it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: You start checking your phone or running through conversations, replaying something that someone said, and almost trying to find the problem.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Not because there is one, but but just because your nervous system became so used to peace being interrupted, that interrupted peace feels unfamiliar.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Calm was not something you likely relaxed into.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have been through any of these types of relationships, you probably know that calm was off to the bit before something happened, before the mood suddenly changed, or the criticism came before the silent treatment or the argument.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So now when life is genuinely quiet, much more like a slack line, your body keeps listening, footsteps that aren't there.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: That isn't you being negative, by the way.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's just your nervous system that's still standing on yesterday's battlefield, as it were.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I do think there's another layer under this, also, one that I don't hear too much talks about.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: That sometimes you're not loyal to him anymore.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about feeling bad for him or the kids, it's sometimes about being loyal to the woman who survived him.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that's who you're subconsciously protecting.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like part of you thinks, if I become happy, what was all that suffering for?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: If I love now, does that somehow minimize everything that she went through?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like happiness feels disrespectful to her.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not to him either.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's to yourself and maybe your kids.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Everything they went through, everything you went through, having to leave and having to likely accept a whole host of fuckery.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And most people who are on the receiving end of these type of relationships lose a lot more than in the average relationship.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Complete financial devastation often, insecurity of housing, even food, it's devastating often.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like you don't want to abandon her.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: That sweet lady questioned her own sanity, thought she would never smile again.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: But becoming happier isn't abandoning her.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: It is honoring everything she fought so hard to survive.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't come this far just to come this far.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't survive all of that, so you could spend the rest of your life proving how much it hurt.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: She survived so one day you'd be free enough to throw your head back and cackle like a witch.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Which is awesome, by the way.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't have to keep bleeding to prove you were wounded.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is something I wish we all understood, all women understood, because I do see this a lot.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's almost an unconscious belief that if you stop hurting, people might think it wasn't that bad.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or even worse, you might think it wasn't that bad.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So part of you keeps returning to assess the pain, not deliberately, but almost as evidence.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, C, I'm still affected.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: C it mattered.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: C, it really happened.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to whisper this to you gently.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to keep bleeding to prove you were wounded.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: The wound already existed, but your suffering isn't the receipt at all.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: You don't owe the world ongoing misery as evidence that your experience with was real.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: You don't owe anyone shit, and you certainly don't owe that to yourself.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because if that's the case, what is it you're waiting for?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is it permission?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: From whom?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: The people who didn't understand it in the first place, or the people that caused it, or society, which really we shouldn't give two shits about.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: At some point, that permission quietly has to come from you.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's rather jarring, but the world moves on before you do.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know how that feels, and it is one of the loneliest parts of healing.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: I really am getting sick of this word healing.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry if I've said that before.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have to replace it with something.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's really getting on my nerves.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Keep saying it over and over, and it just doesn't cut it anymore for me.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So submit your suggestions for a new word, please.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: I like progress, but again, it seems a bit business-y, and it also could get on my nerves.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Submit them to my little podcast box.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's brainstorm this shit.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: But back to the topic.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: At first, everybody checks on you, right?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: They check in, people ask how you are.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're worried and supportive, and they bring food and they send messages and they rally around.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then life does what it does to everyone.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: People get super busy, and the kids still need collecting, and the jobs get frickin' demanding, and everyone's own problems take over.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that is totally fine and normal.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And people are being so sweet and doing what humans do, and they don't mean any harm by it, but slowly that the check-ins become less frequent.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: People assume you're okay.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because after all, you're smiling again, right?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're working, you're functioning, you're doing the work of three people because that's mum life.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're functioning, making plans.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: So they naturally think, oh, she's doing so much better.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, inside your own head, you're only just beginning to understand what actually happened.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a weird part that I have to explain to people weekly.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Often the deepest understanding comes way after the biggest crises have passed.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Once you're finally safe enough to just to stop just surviving, you start to process.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: It begins.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And by then, everyone else quietly moved on.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when a lot of people, when I meet them, they often start censoring themselves, like, oh, I don't want to keep talking about it.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And people must be sick of hearing about me.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I get a lot of clients at this point because they have felt like they've had to turn that stuff off in their friend and family group.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then they start to internally combust, they need someone to talk and process it with.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And hearing, and they think I should be over this by now.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the classic line that we're always talking about.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it is amazing how quickly we start worrying about making other people comfortable with our reality.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, if you think about it from someone else's perspective, if you were in the friend role right now, if something had changed your entire worldview, why wouldn't you still be talking about it?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't you still be trying to make sense of it?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: It fundamentally shakes the building blocks and foundations of everything you understood.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you've often spent decades with this person.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: You've built a life that then you feel like is fake.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Everything seems like a big, just a big pile of lies that are very fragile because the person you thought you were with was not that person at all.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then you start to question everything, like we've already discussed many times on this pod and in my groups and with clients.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't you still be trying to make sense of it?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: It literally shifts the whole quicksand of your life.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you think it will be just quickly gotten over?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have the but he looks fine, brigade, in your head.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: This one can really mess you up.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: You might see photos or a new relationship, a holiday, a new house, this perfectly curated, beautiful social media feed, smiling, living his best life, and then there's this moment where you think, oh my god, why am I still carrying all this bullshit when he seems absolutely fine?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I hate to break it to you, but he probably doesn't give a fuck actually.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I digress, I actually think it's probably the wrong comparison we're making because you're assuming you're both processing the same experience and you are categorically not.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: You experience betrayal, gaslighting, abuse, grief, shock, loss, the collapse of your entire reality.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if somebody doesn't genuinely attach in the way you did, they are not grieving the same loss.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're solving a very different problem.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And for them, it's often simply, who's meeting my needs now?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sorry if it sounds harsh, and I know that this sticks with people.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say it in my groups, I get messages about it saying I've really hated hearing that, but actually, the more it's sunk in, the more I'm like, oh my God, yes, it does stay with people.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: When I liken it, you are an appliance to them.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And when an appliance breaks, they don't grieve it, they just replace it.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so what you're looking at in this new sparkly life, it's not emotional health, it's emotional absence, it's a lack of conscience, it's just replacing you with somebody who makes them feel better or holds up a better mirror of adoration for their fragile ego.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: So please don't compare your humanity to someone who has none and doesn't have any accountability at all.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Your pain isn't evidence that you're weaker or anything like that.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's evidence that you loved for real, that you really did the thing, and someone else had a completely different agenda in your relationship.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And happiness doesn't erase what happened, by the way.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is a huge fear underneath all of this for a lot of people, and I've heard this often, is if I become happy, does that somehow mean it wasn't that bad?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is no.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Categorically.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Those two things don't cancel each other out.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can have survived something devastating and still laugh until your stomach hurts.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can still have triggers and have a fantastic holiday or night out with your mates.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can still cry some mornings, uh snotting in your car and still feel deeply grateful for your life.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And look at your kids and think, oh my god, this is amazing.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And look at nature and think, oh my god, this is amazing.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And all those things are allowed to exist together.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're multidimensional, multifaceted creatures, you know.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're amazing.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And healing, there's that word again, I'm starting to hate it, isn't choosing one emotion and staying there forever.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's becoming big enough to hold them all, actually.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Big enough to hold them all.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't need anyone else to agree that you're allowed to move forward.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: It is a hard but necessary truth to realise that no one's ever gonna gather around one day and officially announce you've suffered enough how and hand you a certificate.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: There is nobody gonna do that.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I can do it if you want, but strictly speaking, that's not something that's gonna happen.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And say, right, you're allowed to enjoy your life again.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't that be kind of cool?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: There was some little committee, it turns up at your front door, maybe little nonnas or something, that would be super cute, and they had food with them.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I digress, congratulations.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: We've reviewed the evidence and you may now stop feeling guilty.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: It does sound ridiculous when you say it out loud, but I do think a lot of us have been quietly waiting for exactly that.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: I know I did, for someone to tell you you don't need to keep carrying this now.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: I frequently tell my clients that by the way, and when we're doing some kind of somatic exercise where I say you don't need to carry this anymore, you don't need to do that anymore, they always cry, it's so sweet.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem with all that is that permission does not come from outside.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Even if the nunners were at your door, none's I don't think I'm saying it right, but you get the drift.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't like closure.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: This permission does not come from outside.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: It never did and it never will.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's an inside job, unfortunately.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: It comes from you, the woman who's been carrying it all along, and she's often the last person to believe that she's earned it, honestly.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And those tiny moments, they're what mean you're healing.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's that word again.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't actually think progress announces itself in big moments.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: I always say none of this is linear.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So what even really is progress?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think honestly, you will know what that is for you, where you feel freedom and expansion in some place where you felt imprisoned in your mind.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it isn't usually some like, oh, I met someone, this is it forever, or everything's perfect now.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's more of a whisper than that.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's sometimes you realize you've driven home without replaying the conversation that you'd had that afternoon, like looking for where you did something wrong, or where you could have been problematic, or recalling stuff, horrible stuff that was said to you, or you walk into a supermarket and you don't automatically scan to see if he's there or any women he's dating or whatever, or a song comes on that used to make you cry and you just listen to it with no reaction.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: For me, that used to be Adele, her very early work, and it was like someone ripping my guts out, but now it's amazing.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I can just appreciate her for the kick-ass vocals, and I don't feel a thing.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: It could be like you sit in the garden with a cup of tea for ten whole minutes, and you're just sitting in the garden with a cup of tea, nothing else happened.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Or buying yourself something without feeling you have to justify the expense.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if this is a British thing or whatever, but I feel like if someone compliments something I'm wearing, I have to say it was on sale, or I got it from the goodwill, or something.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: I have to.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's ridiculous.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to break the habit, but it's very hard wired in there.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: You might have thought that these things sound unbelievably ordinary a few years ago or before this shitstorm hit you, but now it is extraordinary.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because peace has become possible, right?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Those tiny little moments matter.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Don't overlook them just because they don't look huge or what people consider to be like a really good sign that everything's fine now because you know how they like to be comfortable with you being fine.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what rebuilding a life actually looks like.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's not really fireworks, it's just random fucking days of the week.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: And your life does not need to stay small, remember, to honour your pain.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if some of us have accidentally made a covenant with ourselves many moons ago.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'll never let myself get too happy because then I'll never forget.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: So joy and remembering can't exist in the same person.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And again, multifaceted, multidimensional, and amazing, and never repeated or one off.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: But those things can coexist.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: You don't honor what happened by making your future smaller, you honour it by refusing to let it have the final say, and there is a big difference there.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: That relationship already took enough, it took years.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: It took confidence, it took your peace, it took sleep, frickin' self-trust, self-esteem, or probably took friendships.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know it took a fuck ton of money away, and often it takes your health too.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, when I think about all the things that these relationships take, and all the people on there's soapboxes about forgiving the people that hurt you, which you know I do not agree with at all, and you do you, but that's not a thing.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: I will never I get on pretty well with my ex-husband, and I would say this to him: I will never forgive losing something really important to me during those years, was to be with my kids when they were really young, and living in constant survival of financial or something bullshit legally happening for years and years.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was never really able to enjoy my kids when they were little after that, because it was all survival, and most of it I can't even remember because that's how trauma works, and they were lives I will never get back.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Parts of their lives whilst I was with them.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can honestly say that a lot of the time I didn't feel like I was actually with them, and robbing me of those years, I will never forgive that.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Never.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, that's a side note, just so you know where I stand.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Often these relationships take from you your idea of who you thought you were too.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do we really want to hand this relationship the rest of your life as well?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't fucking think so.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it not because you've consciously chosen that again, I want to reiterate, but because guilt quietly keeps telling you, not yeah.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like at some point, and quietly, not yet, turns into years, and I really don't want that for you.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And what if happiness doesn't mean you're finished?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's another thing that comes up.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Women think, if I'm happy today, does that mean I'm supposed to stay happy?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: You'll still have days where something catches you completely off guard and you'll turn into a puddle.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll still have mornings where grief turns up uninvited, and again you're snotting in your car.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: You will still have moments where a smell or a song or a photo takes the air right out of your lungs and your stomach just drops.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: That does not mean you've gone backwards.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Means you're human.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hello.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: And healing is not choosing one emotion forever.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: That word again.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's having enough room inside you for all of them.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can cry on Tuesday and you can laugh till your face hurts on Wednesday, and neither one cancels the other.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: We can do all of the things, especially women.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: We are amazing.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe happiness didn't leave anyways, maybe you just stopped trusting it.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking about this a lot.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if happiness doesn't really disappear, you just stop trusting in it, because every time life started to feel safe in your past, something happened.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: So now even when good things do arrive, part of you keeps one hand on the door handle, sleeping with one eye open, just ready, just in case.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand that, I really do, as a person who just literally lived that way for the first 40 years of their life.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: I also wonder what it would feel like if you just let yourself stay for another five minutes.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've had to do this, obviously.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: For another hour, maybe, or an afternoon.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not because you can be categorically sure nothing bad is ever going to happen again.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: None of us can ever say that.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's up and it's down, right?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: But because you deserve to experience the good moments while they're here, you don't have to leave them early.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to leave you with something that I hope you'll carry with you.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote this out in my little book just in case I forgot it.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: But if you've started loving again, if you've started making plans, if you've started feeling hopeful, you know when you get that little butterfly feeling?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you've caught yourself enjoying your own life, heaven forbid, please don't rush in and apologize for it.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: You are not betraying the woman you used to be.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: You are becoming the woman she was fighting for.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't survive all this bullshit, so you could spend the rest of your life proving how much it hurt as like a testament to it.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: She survived, so one day you could wake up, make yourself a cup of tea, laugh till your face hurt, throw your head back and cackle like a fucking witch, go away for the weekend, fall in love again if that's what you want.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sit quietly in the garden.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And just discover that peace doesn't have to feel borrowed anymore.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: You do not have to keep bleeding to prove you're wounded.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't have to stay miserable to prove that what happened mattered.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: It did.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: It did, it mattered.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Always will.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: It has shaped you.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: It has most likely rewired.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: But just maybe your healing isn't measured by how long you can keep carrying pain.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: It might just be measured by how willing you become to just stop interrupting the joy when it comes back to you.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Ah and before you go, I'm gonna wrap up now and stop yapping.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to leave you with a little practice.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Tiny one.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, is that good?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: So notice one moment today or tomorrow if you're listening to this late at night, like I tend to listen to podcasts, one moment where you interrupted your own joy.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Not the whole day, not one minute, not a certain set of minutes or hours or whatever, just one moment, and then ask, what did I believe was going to happen if I stayed happy?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, as always, I always advise people to have a somatic anchor to put one hand on your tummy, one on your heart, get quiet and still within yourself, sit straight, eyes closed, breathe, and then locate where that feeling came from, where you interrupted your own joy, or you started to hear the voice saying that you couldn't be this happy, or what was wrong, or when was the shoe gonna drop, and then speak to that part, put your hand on it, and then ask what did I believe was gonna happen if I stayed happy?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's just excellent information.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Practice it a few times if it doesn't come to you immediately.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: But these are the kind of little practices that will make all the difference.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you lovely Lot, I'm gonna get out of here and I am sending you loads of big hugs.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can brainstorm what we can say instead of healing, I would appreciate it because it's starting to piss me off.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, if you want to ask me any questions, please put them in my little podcast box and I will answer them in a future episode.