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9 Mistakes Your Abandonment Wound Makes That Keep You Stuck · Toxic Girls Zone

0:03
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back. No guests today, just you and me
0:06
Speaker 1: and something I've been wanting to talk about for a
0:08
Speaker 1: long time. Something most women don't even know they're carrying
0:10
Speaker 1: into every relationship they've ever had. I want to give
0:13
Speaker 1: you a quick heads up before we get into it.
0:16
Speaker 1: This is the episode I needed years ago. Like, genuinely,
0:19
Speaker 1: if someone had handed this to me at 23, I
0:21
Speaker 1: would have saved myself a lot of Tuesday nights crying
0:23
Speaker 1: in my car for reasons I couldn't explain. So if
0:26
Speaker 1: you're already feeling a little tender just from reading the title,
0:28
Speaker 1: you're in the right place. What we're doing today is
0:30
Speaker 1: looking at nine mistakes the abandonment wound makes you keep
0:33
Speaker 1: making in love. Not nine flaws. Not nine reasons you're broken. Mistakes.
0:38
Speaker 1: And there's a difference, which I'll get into in a second.
0:41
Speaker 1: Here's the thing about this wound. It does not announce itself.
0:44
Speaker 1: It doesn't walk in wearing a name tag. It just
0:46
Speaker 1: quietly makes sure you are always the first one to
0:48
Speaker 1: leave a party. Every party. Every relationship. Every situation where
0:52
Speaker 1: staying might mean risking something. You didn't decide to be
0:54
Speaker 1: that person. But here you are, keys in hand, coat
0:57
Speaker 1: already on. Right? So let's figure out why. Okay, before
1:02
Speaker 1: I go anywhere, I want to say this first, and
1:03
Speaker 1: I mean it. You are careful with the people you love.
1:06
Speaker 1: You watch for signs. You stay prepared. You read the room.
1:09
Speaker 1: And given what you've been through, that makes complete sense.
1:11
Speaker 1: That vigilance was smart once. It kept you from getting
1:14
Speaker 1: completely flattened. So I get it. You should be proud
1:16
Speaker 1: of the version of you that learned to protect herself.
1:18
Speaker 1: But here's the flip, and I'm saying it with love.
1:20
Speaker 1: The preparations have become the problem. You are managing a
1:23
Speaker 1: disaster that is not happening yet. You're bracing for an
1:25
Speaker 1: impact that hasn't come. And embracing for it, you might
1:28
Speaker 1: actually be pulling it towards you. The wound keeper, that's
1:32
Speaker 1: what I'm calling this pattern, the wound keeper. It is
1:34
Speaker 1: not protecting you anymore. It is preventing you. And that
1:37
Speaker 1: distinction is everything. Because there's a difference between a woman
1:40
Speaker 1: who is thoughtful and love and a woman who is
1:42
Speaker 1: so defended that nobody can actually reach her. You're not
1:44
Speaker 1: dramatic for feeling this way. You're not too sensitive. You're
1:47
Speaker 1: not too much. You're just a little late to realizing
1:49
Speaker 1: who taught you to feel it in the first place.
1:51
Speaker 1: And that's what today is about. Let me paint you
1:54
Speaker 1: a picture. It's an ordinary afternoon. He hasn't texted back yet.
1:58
Speaker 1: Nothing weird. It's been maybe three hours. He's probably at work.
2:01
Speaker 1: Probably fine. But you've already opened his Instagram. Not to
2:04
Speaker 1: look at anything specific. Just to check. Just to see
2:07
Speaker 1: if he's been active. You put your phone down. Pick
2:09
Speaker 1: it up again. You tell your friend, I'm not being clingy.
2:12
Speaker 1: I'm being realistic. And your friend looks at you and says,
2:14
Speaker 1: realistic about what? He's been gone three hours. You don't
2:17
Speaker 1: have an answer for that. And underneath all of it, quiet,
2:20
Speaker 1: almost below the level of conscious thought, something in you says,
2:23
Speaker 1: people always leave eventually. That's the wound keeper. Right at work.
2:27
Speaker 1: doing its job in the middle of a perfectly normal afternoon.
2:30
Speaker 1: So here's how today works. Nine mistakes, not nine things
2:34
Speaker 1: you should be ashamed of. Nine things that were learned,
2:36
Speaker 1: not chosen. And the way I want you to listen
2:39
Speaker 1: is not by thinking about what you did last Tuesday.
2:41
Speaker 1: I want you to listen for the ones you've done
2:43
Speaker 1: in every relationship. The ones that have followed you. The
2:46
Speaker 1: ones where you read the description and you go, oh, oh,
2:49
Speaker 1: that's me. That's been me. And if any of these
2:51
Speaker 1: feel like more than a recognizable pattern, if any of
2:54
Speaker 1: them feel like something that's been running your life in
2:55
Speaker 1: a way that scares you, One honest conversation with a
2:58
Speaker 1: professional is worth more than nine podcast episodes. I mean that.
3:02
Speaker 1: But you don't need a therapist to spot these. You
3:04
Speaker 1: just need to be honest with yourself. Which is the
3:06
Speaker 1: harder thing anyway. Listen for the one that makes you
3:09
Speaker 1: want to skip ahead. Because that's probably the one. Okay.
3:14
Speaker 1: Mistake number one. Leaving before he can. You know this one.
3:17
Speaker 1: Things are going well. Actually well. And something in you
3:20
Speaker 1: starts to get uncomfortable with how well it's going. So
3:22
Speaker 1: you find something. Not a real something. Just a something.
3:26
Speaker 1: A vague unease, a suspicion, a feeling that you can't name,
3:29
Speaker 1: but that tells you it's only a matter of time.
3:31
Speaker 1: And then you start the ending on your own terms.
3:33
Speaker 1: You call your friend and you say, I don't know,
3:35
Speaker 1: something feels off. And she says, what did he actually do?
3:38
Speaker 1: And you say, nothing yet. Nothing yet. That's the whole
3:41
Speaker 1: thing right there. Those two words are doing all the work.
3:44
Speaker 1: Because you are not responding to what is happening. You
3:46
Speaker 1: are responding to what you're certain is coming. The abandonment wound,
3:50
Speaker 1: and I want to be clear about what I mean
3:52
Speaker 1: when I say this, It's a learned belief formed early
3:54
Speaker 1: that closeness ends in loss, that if you let yourself
3:57
Speaker 1: get close enough, the departure is inevitable. So your body,
4:00
Speaker 1: your nervous system, your whole operating system starts treating love
4:03
Speaker 1: like a risk that requires an exit strategy. You learned
4:06
Speaker 1: that lesson in a room you were small in long
4:08
Speaker 1: before any of this. And now you're applying it to
4:10
Speaker 1: a man who just planned something nice and is wondering
4:12
Speaker 1: why you seem a thousand miles away. That belief shows
4:15
Speaker 1: up in the body as a tightening in the chest
4:16
Speaker 1: during a quiet, good week, not during a fight, during
4:19
Speaker 1: the good part. And if you felt that, if you
4:21
Speaker 1: felt anxious specifically when things were calm, that's the signal.
4:24
Speaker 1: That's the wound keeper going, I don't trust this. Let
4:28
Speaker 1: me paint you that picture. He planned something nice. Could
4:31
Speaker 1: be small, dinner, a playlist. He remembered something you mentioned
4:35
Speaker 1: weeks ago, and you show up. But you're half there.
4:37
Speaker 1: You're scanning. Not for anything specific, just for what's going
4:40
Speaker 1: to go wrong. Because something always does, right? You text
4:43
Speaker 1: your friend later that night. You say, I think I
4:45
Speaker 1: self-sabotaged again. She sends back, ya think? And the thing
4:49
Speaker 1: you said to yourself the whole evening, the thing running
4:51
Speaker 1: on a loop underneath a normal conversation was this. If
4:54
Speaker 1: I break it first, it doesn't count as being left.
4:56
Speaker 1: You heard that. Okay? Sit with that for a second.
4:59
Speaker 1: Because that sentence sounds like a strategy, but it's actually
5:01
Speaker 1: a grief. You are already grieving a loss that has
5:03
Speaker 1: not happened. And the cost of that is the good week.
5:06
Speaker 1: The actual good week that was right in front of you.
5:09
Speaker 1: Mistake number two. Testing instead of asking. You create a
5:12
Speaker 1: situation to see if he'll prove he cares rather than
5:15
Speaker 1: using your actual words to tell him what you mean.
5:18
Speaker 1: The test might be going quiet for a few hours
5:19
Speaker 1: to see if he notices. It might be mentioning someone
5:22
Speaker 1: else to see if he reacts. It might be canceling
5:24
Speaker 1: plans to see if he chases. And you tell yourself
5:26
Speaker 1: this is just reading his character. You're just seeing what
5:29
Speaker 1: kind of man he is. Yeah, and that would be
5:32
Speaker 1: a reasonable story if it were true. But what you're
5:34
Speaker 1: actually reading is your fear. You're measuring his response to
5:37
Speaker 1: a situation you manufactured, and you're calling that data. Here's
5:41
Speaker 1: the mistake buried inside the test. Tests measure anxiety, not love.
5:46
Speaker 1: He passes, you feel relief for about two days, and
5:48
Speaker 1: then the relief runs out and you need to know again.
5:51
Speaker 1: So you set up the next one. The relief from
5:53
Speaker 1: a past test is not the same as trust. Your
5:55
Speaker 1: body knows the difference. What you actually needed was one sentence,
5:59
Speaker 1: one honest sentence about what you wanted. What you got
6:01
Speaker 1: instead was a performance that both of you had to survive.
6:05
Speaker 1: Let me paint you a picture. You don't answer his
6:07
Speaker 1: message for four hours on purpose. You're watching your phone.
6:10
Speaker 1: He reaches out again and you tell your friend, see,
6:13
Speaker 1: he does care. She says, or he just texted twice.
6:16
Speaker 1: And you have nothing to say to that because she's
6:17
Speaker 1: right and you know it. And the sentence running quietly
6:20
Speaker 1: in the back of your head the whole time. If
6:22
Speaker 1: I have to ask for it, it doesn't count. Sound familiar? Yeah,
6:25
Speaker 1: I thought so. I want to tell you something from
6:28
Speaker 1: my anxious 20s because I live this one so specifically.
6:30
Speaker 1: I would go quiet and wait, not say what I needed,
6:33
Speaker 1: just withdraw and see who came after me. One man
6:36
Speaker 1: didn't notice for a day and a half. I decided
6:38
Speaker 1: he was the problem. I broke it off within the week.
6:40
Speaker 1: It was a Tuesday. I remember I was sitting in
6:42
Speaker 1: my car eating lunch and it hit me that I
6:44
Speaker 1: had been running a test I never announced. He didn't
6:46
Speaker 1: know he was being tested. I never told him what
6:48
Speaker 1: I needed. And then I graded him on it. That's
6:51
Speaker 1: not reading someone's character. That's setting someone up to fail
6:54
Speaker 1: a quiz they didn't know they were taking. Mistake number three,
6:58
Speaker 1: shrinking the need so it's easier to deny. You minimize
7:00
Speaker 1: what you want before he even has a chance to
7:02
Speaker 1: say no. Instead of saying I need more reassurance right now,
7:05
Speaker 1: You say whatever works for you, no pressure, it's fine.
7:08
Speaker 1: The wound keeper calls this being low maintenance. It calls
7:11
Speaker 1: it being easygoing, flexible, not needy. But what it actually
7:14
Speaker 1: is is preemptive rejection of yourself. You beat him to
7:17
Speaker 1: the no. You say no to your own need first, quietly,
7:20
Speaker 1: before he ever gets the chance. Because if you say
7:22
Speaker 1: it first, it's less painful than if he says it. Right?
7:24
Speaker 1: That's the logic. Except the cost is enormous. The mistake
7:28
Speaker 1: costs you a relationship where you could actually be known
7:31
Speaker 1: because you never showed him what to know. You went
7:34
Speaker 1: invisible on purpose and then felt unseen. And eventually, over
7:37
Speaker 1: weeks and months and little moments of swallowing things down,
7:40
Speaker 1: you start to feel hollow. And you start to blame
7:43
Speaker 1: him for not seeing you. But babe, he couldn't. You
7:46
Speaker 1: made yourself very hard to find. Let me paint you
7:49
Speaker 1: a picture. You want him to say he misses you.
7:52
Speaker 1: You want it. You're thinking about it. You're feeling the
7:54
Speaker 1: absence of it. And instead of saying anything close to that,
7:57
Speaker 1: you send him a meme. He laughs. You put your
8:00
Speaker 1: phone down and you feel hollow. And you tell yourself,
8:03
Speaker 1: I'm not needy like that. I'm pretty chill. You might
8:06
Speaker 1: even say that to your friend. And your friend doesn't
8:08
Speaker 1: say anything back. She just looks at you. Because she knows.
8:11
Speaker 1: And somewhere you know too. Here's what I found during
8:15
Speaker 1: my healing era. My therapy and books period. When I
8:18
Speaker 1: was doing all the journaling and all the worksheets and
8:20
Speaker 1: thinking I was figuring it all out. I went back
8:22
Speaker 1: to an old journal and I found a list I'd
8:23
Speaker 1: made of things I wanted from a relationship. And every
8:26
Speaker 1: single item had the word maybe in front of it.
8:28
Speaker 1: Maybe some consistency. Maybe knowing where things are going, maybe
8:31
Speaker 1: feeling like a priority. Every single one. And I sat
8:34
Speaker 1: there looking at that list and I realized the maybes
8:36
Speaker 1: weren't humility. They weren't me being flexible or open-minded. They
8:40
Speaker 1: were armor. They were me building a wall around my
8:42
Speaker 1: own desire so that if I didn't get it, technically
8:44
Speaker 1: I never asked for it. Mistake number four, punishing consistency
8:49
Speaker 1: for not feeling like chaos. You go on a date
8:51
Speaker 1: with someone who's actually kind. He texts when he says
8:53
Speaker 1: he will. He makes plans and keeps them. He's interested
8:56
Speaker 1: and he shows it directly. And you feel nothing. Or
8:59
Speaker 1: something close to nothing. Something you interpret as nothing. And
9:02
Speaker 1: you tell your friend, I'm just not feeling it. And
9:04
Speaker 1: she asks, what would it take to feel it? And
9:07
Speaker 1: you pause because you don't have a real answer. Because
9:09
Speaker 1: the truth, the thing the wound keeper doesn't want you
9:11
Speaker 1: to look at directly, is that love has been calibrated
9:13
Speaker 1: for uncertainty. Your nervous system learned that love comes with adrenaline,
9:17
Speaker 1: with waiting, with not knowing. Steady attention doesn't have that chemical.
9:21
Speaker 1: So steady reads as nothing happening. The abandonment wound calibrates
9:25
Speaker 1: to intermittent attention. Hot and cold. available and then gone.
9:29
Speaker 1: That pattern registers as intensity, and your body mistakes intensity
9:32
Speaker 1: for connection. So the consistent man feels disappointing, and you
9:35
Speaker 1: call it low chemistry, and you move on, and you
9:38
Speaker 1: go back to the one who makes you uncertain, and
9:40
Speaker 1: it feels alive again, and you think, see, that's what
9:42
Speaker 1: real feeling is. Yeah, it's real feeling. It's also anxiety.
9:47
Speaker 1: The wound keeper reframes familiarity as failure, and it does
9:49
Speaker 1: it so smoothly you almost can't catch it. Let me
9:52
Speaker 1: paint you a picture. First date. He's on time. He listens.
9:56
Speaker 1: He asks follow-up questions he texts you that evening to
9:59
Speaker 1: say he had a nice time and you feel flat
10:01
Speaker 1: you tell your friend you're just not feeling it she
10:03
Speaker 1: asks okay so what would it take and you pause
10:06
Speaker 1: and underneath the pause is something your inner voice says
10:08
Speaker 1: quietly that love is supposed to feel like something is
10:10
Speaker 1: at stake like there should be a risk like the
10:13
Speaker 1: rug could get pulled and you describe him to her
10:15
Speaker 1: he's just so steady and your friend looks at you
10:17
Speaker 1: and says That is literally what you asked for. And
10:20
Speaker 1: she's right. You did ask for that. You asked for
10:23
Speaker 1: it out loud more than once. And now that you
10:25
Speaker 1: have it, the wound keeper is calling it boring. Five
10:28
Speaker 1: more mistakes are coming. And number six is the one
10:31
Speaker 1: nobody wants to admit out loud because it means looking
10:33
Speaker 1: at something that feels uncomfortably close to home. Okay, babe. Five.
10:39
Speaker 1: Let's talk about number five. You don't just say what
10:42
Speaker 1: you want. You build a whole case around it. You
10:44
Speaker 1: give him the history, the context, the footnotes, the list
10:48
Speaker 1: of reasons why this need is actually reasonable and not
10:50
Speaker 1: too much. And by the time you're done, he has
10:52
Speaker 1: every possible off-ramp from having to just hear you. You
10:55
Speaker 1: know what I mean? You've done this. You start with,
10:58
Speaker 1: I know this sounds like a lot, and I totally
10:59
Speaker 1: get if this is too much, but maybe if it
11:01
Speaker 1: works for you, could we just talk a little more often?
11:04
Speaker 1: And he says yes, but he looks a little overwhelmed.
11:06
Speaker 1: And you clock that look. And immediately your brain goes, see,
11:09
Speaker 1: I am too much. But here's the thing. You weren't
11:12
Speaker 1: too much. You were too complicated. You turned a simple
11:15
Speaker 1: request into a courtroom and then you blamed him for
11:17
Speaker 1: not being able to follow the case. The wound keeper
11:20
Speaker 1: believes that a need that's defended is a need that
11:22
Speaker 1: might survive. But real intimacy doesn't need a defense. It
11:26
Speaker 1: needs a sentence. The mistake is that you feel unheard
11:29
Speaker 1: and he feels managed and both of those things happen
11:31
Speaker 1: at the same time. And both of them make sense.
11:34
Speaker 1: You presented a brief instead of a feeling. He didn't
11:36
Speaker 1: get to respond to you. He responded to your argument.
11:39
Speaker 1: And somewhere underneath all of that lawyering, The sentence you
11:42
Speaker 1: never actually say out loud is the simplest one. Just
11:44
Speaker 1: say yes, please. That's it. That's the whole request. But
11:48
Speaker 1: the wound keeper won't let it out that naked, so
11:49
Speaker 1: it gets wrapped in qualifications until even you can't find
11:52
Speaker 1: it anymore. Let me tell you something embarrassing. My first
11:56
Speaker 1: real relationship, early 20s, I would write out what I
11:59
Speaker 1: needed in my notes app first. Full draft. Like I
12:01
Speaker 1: was preparing for a presentation, I'd edit it, soften it,
12:04
Speaker 1: remove anything that sounded too urgent, send something that barely
12:07
Speaker 1: resembled the original message, and he would respond fine, and
12:10
Speaker 1: I would feel completely cheated. Not because he did anything wrong.
12:13
Speaker 1: Because I had edited out the real thing and sent
12:15
Speaker 1: him the safe version. He was responding to the version
12:17
Speaker 1: of me that didn't scare me. And that version? She
12:20
Speaker 1: wasn't getting her needs met. Because she never actually said them.
12:23
Speaker 1: So the fifth mistake is over-explaining your needs so he
12:26
Speaker 1: can disprove them. And I want you to notice where
12:27
Speaker 1: you do this. It's not always in the big conversations,
12:30
Speaker 1: it's in the small ones too. It's the way you say, no,
12:33
Speaker 1: don't worry about it, I'm fine, when you are very
12:35
Speaker 1: much not fine. It's the way you open every difficult
12:38
Speaker 1: sentence with, I know this is probably nothing, but that
12:41
Speaker 1: opener is the wound keeper doing its job. It's preemptively
12:44
Speaker 1: discrediting you before he gets the chance to. You're protecting
12:47
Speaker 1: yourself from rejection by rejecting yourself first. And it costs
12:50
Speaker 1: you being known. Every single time. The check your body
12:54
Speaker 1: does on this one is noticing how it feels after
12:56
Speaker 1: you've sent the edited version. There's a specific kind of
12:58
Speaker 1: hollow that comes with it. Not relief. Hollow. Like you
13:02
Speaker 1: swallowed something you needed to say. Your body knows the
13:04
Speaker 1: difference between a thing expressed and a thing managed. The
13:07
Speaker 1: hollow is the signal. And next time you feel it,
13:09
Speaker 1: that's the cue. You sent the safe version again. And
13:12
Speaker 1: the relationship stayed a little smaller for it. Right? Now,
13:17
Speaker 1: number six. The one nobody wants to admit. Makes sense
13:20
Speaker 1: that I'd save this for after the teaser, because this
13:22
Speaker 1: one requires a second. He doesn't text his usual afternoon check-in.
13:25
Speaker 1: It's not even a long silence. It's like four hours,
13:28
Speaker 1: maybe five. But by four in the afternoon, you've written
13:30
Speaker 1: and deleted six messages. You've told yourself you're not going
13:33
Speaker 1: to spiral. And you do the noble thing, which is
13:35
Speaker 1: sit with the discomfort for about 40 minutes. And then
13:38
Speaker 1: by six, you are spiraling. You're not texting him. You're
13:41
Speaker 1: proud of that. But internally, you have run through the
13:43
Speaker 1: entire arc of this relationship ending. You've thought about what
13:45
Speaker 1: you'll tell your friends. You've thought about who gets to
13:47
Speaker 1: keep the group chat. And then his first text back
13:49
Speaker 1: comes in and it says, sorry, long day, want tacos.
13:53
Speaker 1: And you almost laugh. Because the whole breakup you rehearsed
13:56
Speaker 1: evaporated in three words. And your inner voice had been saying,
14:00
Speaker 1: he's probably pulling away. And the answer was tacos. He
14:04
Speaker 1: was quiet because it was Wednesday and work was bad.
14:07
Speaker 1: That's the whole reason. But your nervous system doesn't know that.
14:10
Speaker 1: It's been watching for disappearance since before you were old
14:12
Speaker 1: enough to name it. And it cannot tell the difference
14:14
Speaker 1: between tired and gone. That's not a character flaw. That's
14:17
Speaker 1: what the wound keeper does. It's got one job and
14:19
Speaker 1: it takes that job seriously, which is to scan constantly
14:22
Speaker 1: for signs that someone is leaving. And so an ordinary
14:25
Speaker 1: Tuesday becomes a data point. His silence becomes a signal.
14:28
Speaker 1: And you are solving a problem he doesn't know exists.
14:30
Speaker 1: You are exhausted by 6pm from a relationship that is
14:33
Speaker 1: actually fine. He is just hungry. The mistake is assigning
14:37
Speaker 1: a meaning to his quiet day that he did not
14:39
Speaker 1: put there. And I want to say that gently but clearly.
14:42
Speaker 1: You are not reading him. You are reading your wound.
14:45
Speaker 1: Those are different things. He came home normal. He wanted tacos.
14:48
Speaker 1: The breakup that you lived through in your head was
14:50
Speaker 1: entirely yours. And that's worth sitting with, not because you
14:53
Speaker 1: did something wrong. But because that is an enormous amount
14:55
Speaker 1: of emotional energy going toward a disaster that wasn't there,
14:58
Speaker 1: you deserve to not live in that. You know? I'll
15:01
Speaker 1: tell you something from my current relationship. My partner had
15:04
Speaker 1: a quiet stretch, two evenings in a row. Didn't say much,
15:07
Speaker 1: a little distracted. And I had already privately decided something
15:10
Speaker 1: was wrong. I had a whole story about what it meant.
15:13
Speaker 1: And I finally asked, carefully, the way I've learned to.
15:16
Speaker 1: Everything okay? And my partner said, just tired, why? And
15:20
Speaker 1: I said, no reason. And that no reason was the
15:22
Speaker 1: size of a small country. The reason was sitting right
15:25
Speaker 1: there on the couch next to me in the form
15:26
Speaker 1: of an entire narrative I'd built about distance and withdrawal.
15:29
Speaker 1: And none of it was real. My partner was just tired.
15:32
Speaker 1: That's the sixth mistake, equating his ordinary day with pulling away.
15:35
Speaker 1: And it is so exhausting to live inside. Does that
15:38
Speaker 1: make sense? Okay, seven. This one's a little different. You
15:43
Speaker 1: make the relationship public before it's actually real. Four weeks in,
15:46
Speaker 1: maybe five, you change something visible. You post something. You
15:48
Speaker 1: tell everyone. And I get it. I really do. Because
15:51
Speaker 1: external proof feels like insurance. Like if other people can
15:54
Speaker 1: see it, it's harder to take away. If there are
15:55
Speaker 1: witnesses to this thing, it's more durable. The wound keeper
15:58
Speaker 1: believes that visibility is protection. But here's what actually happens.
16:01
Speaker 1: You've built an audience for something that is still figuring
16:03
Speaker 1: itself out. And when it doesn't work, you grieve it twice.
16:06
Speaker 1: Once privately and once in front of everyone who saw
16:08
Speaker 1: you post about it. You have to do the breakup
16:10
Speaker 1: and the public narrative management at the same time. It's
16:13
Speaker 1: a lot. Let me paint you a picture. Four weeks in,
16:16
Speaker 1: you change something visible online. Nothing dramatic, just enough. Your
16:20
Speaker 1: friend calls. She says, so things are serious? And you say, yeah,
16:23
Speaker 1: pretty much. And she says, have you talked about that?
16:26
Speaker 1: And you pause because you haven't. You've talked about everything
16:29
Speaker 1: except the actual shape of this thing. And somewhere in
16:31
Speaker 1: the back of your head is the line you don't
16:33
Speaker 1: say out loud. If it's out there, he can't pretend
16:35
Speaker 1: it never happened. That's the wound keeper's logic. Witnesses make
16:38
Speaker 1: it real. Witnesses make it sticky. But the stickiness you're
16:41
Speaker 1: after isn't about him. It's about the fear that without documentation,
16:45
Speaker 1: without proof, without people knowing, it might vanish. And so
16:48
Speaker 1: you announce it instead of building it. And that's the mistake.
16:51
Speaker 1: Not the posting. The why behind the posting. Right? And
16:56
Speaker 1: the real cost is that you skip the part where
16:58
Speaker 1: it gets to just be yours for a minute. Before
17:00
Speaker 1: the opinions, before the questions, before your aunt comments something.
17:04
Speaker 1: There's something that happens in the quiet early weeks of
17:06
Speaker 1: something real when it's just between two people and it
17:08
Speaker 1: hasn't been narrated yet. The wound keeper rushes past that
17:11
Speaker 1: part because that part feels too fragile to trust. But
17:14
Speaker 1: that part is actually where the thing forms. You can't
17:16
Speaker 1: build something solid while performing at the same time. Yeah? Yeah? Eight. Okay.
17:22
Speaker 1: This is the one I carried for a long time.
17:23
Speaker 1: Measuring love by how much it costs you. If it
17:26
Speaker 1: was hard one, if you waited for it, if you
17:28
Speaker 1: cried over it, it must be love. Easy love feels
17:30
Speaker 1: like the other person doesn't value you enough. Like there's
17:32
Speaker 1: no story. Like you didn't earn it. And I want
17:35
Speaker 1: to say this with love, babe, because I am saying
17:37
Speaker 1: this to a version of myself that took years to
17:38
Speaker 1: hear it. You've been in love with the struggle. Not
17:41
Speaker 1: always with him. With the struggle. The wound keeper equates
17:44
Speaker 1: difficulty with depth. Pain became your unit of measurement, and
17:47
Speaker 1: now calm reads as shallow and easy reads as not enough,
17:50
Speaker 1: and you find yourself chasing the complicated one because at
17:52
Speaker 1: least that one feels like something real is happening. You're
17:56
Speaker 1: on the couch six weeks into something good. He's been
17:58
Speaker 1: straightforward from day one. No games. He texts when he
18:01
Speaker 1: says he will. He shows up. And you tell your friend,
18:04
Speaker 1: I don't know, it feels too easy. She says, too
18:07
Speaker 1: easy how? And you say, like, there's no story. And
18:10
Speaker 1: she says, what kind of story do you want? And
18:11
Speaker 1: you don't answer. But inside you're thinking, I just want
18:14
Speaker 1: to feel like I earned it. Like I worked for it.
18:16
Speaker 1: Like the difficulty was proof of the value. And that's
18:19
Speaker 1: the wound talking. Because what it learned early is that
18:21
Speaker 1: love is something you survive. Something you endure. Something that
18:24
Speaker 1: costs you. So when love doesn't cost you, it doesn't
18:26
Speaker 1: register as love. I have to tell you this story.
18:30
Speaker 1: Weeks after the breakup that broke me, the one that
18:32
Speaker 1: genuinely broke me open, I sat in my apartment making
18:35
Speaker 1: coffee at 7 in the morning, and I went back
18:37
Speaker 1: through every hard thing he had ever done. Every canceled plan,
18:40
Speaker 1: every cold stretch, every time I cried in the bathroom
18:42
Speaker 1: at a party. And the stranger part? I missed him
18:45
Speaker 1: more for each one. I cataloged the suffering like it
18:48
Speaker 1: was evidence, like each painful thing was proof that what
18:50
Speaker 1: we had was real. And it hit me that I
18:52
Speaker 1: had confused the cost with the meaning. The hardness had
18:55
Speaker 1: it made it love. It had just made it expensive.
18:57
Speaker 1: And I'd been paying that price and calling it depth.
19:00
Speaker 1: That's the eighth mistake. And it's the quietest one. Sound familiar?
19:04
Speaker 1: And then nine, the last one. And the one that
19:07
Speaker 1: swallows all the others. You have the insight. You do
19:09
Speaker 1: the journaling. You name the wound keeper. You say out
19:12
Speaker 1: loud to your friend, to yourself, in your notes app,
19:15
Speaker 1: never again. And you mean it. You genuinely mean it.
19:18
Speaker 1: And then about two months later, you're deep in a
19:20
Speaker 1: talking stage with someone who texts at midnight and never
19:22
Speaker 1: answers a direct question directly. And here's the thing. The
19:25
Speaker 1: wound keeper is smart. It knows how to make debate
19:28
Speaker 1: look like a lesson. This one is different, it tells you.
19:31
Speaker 1: This time you understand yourself. This time you're going in
19:33
Speaker 1: with eyes open. And your friend sits across from you
19:36
Speaker 1: and you show her the message thread and she closes
19:38
Speaker 1: her eyes. And you say, I know, I know, but
19:40
Speaker 1: this one is different. And she's heard that before. And
19:43
Speaker 1: so have you. Let me paint you that picture. You
19:46
Speaker 1: have the insight. You call your friend, genuinely lit up,
19:49
Speaker 1: and you say... I really think I finally get it.
19:51
Speaker 1: And she says, that is huge. I'm so proud of you.
19:53
Speaker 1: And three weeks later, you show her the new message thread,
19:56
Speaker 1: the midnight texts, the half answers. And she doesn't say anything.
19:59
Speaker 1: She just closes her eyes. And your line is already
20:01
Speaker 1: out of your mouth before she opens them. I know,
20:04
Speaker 1: I know, but this one is different. That's the ninth mistake.
20:07
Speaker 1: Because recognition is not recovery. Naming the wound keeper is
20:09
Speaker 1: the first inch. It's a real inch. It matters. But
20:12
Speaker 1: changing what you do in the body, in the room,
20:14
Speaker 1: in the actual text thread, in the moment when you
20:16
Speaker 1: feel the pull and you choose differently, that is the
20:18
Speaker 1: rest of the work. And here's what's underneath all nine
20:22
Speaker 1: of them. All nine mistakes have one root. One belief
20:25
Speaker 1: running the whole show. And it didn't start with him.
20:28
Speaker 1: It started somewhere earlier than that. So stay with me,
20:31
Speaker 1: because this is the part that actually matters. The wound
20:34
Speaker 1: underneath all nine is the belief that your need for
20:36
Speaker 1: closeness is inherently dangerous. That wanting love is the thing
20:40
Speaker 1: that will cause you to lose it. Not the person,
20:42
Speaker 1: not the relationship, just the wanting itself. That's the one,
20:45
Speaker 1: that's what's running the show. And it wasn't formed in
20:48
Speaker 1: your last relationship, it was formed in a room where
20:49
Speaker 1: you were small. The first time you needed someone fully
20:52
Speaker 1: and learned, through whatever happened or didn't happen, that needing
20:55
Speaker 1: was too much. That you were too much. And the
20:58
Speaker 1: self-concept that came out of that room is this. I
21:01
Speaker 1: am someone whose needs drive people away, so I will
21:03
Speaker 1: manage them. I will minimize them. I will test instead
21:06
Speaker 1: of ask. I will leave first. I will manage them.
21:10
Speaker 1: I will minimize them. I will test instead of ask.
21:12
Speaker 1: I will leave first. I will manage fracture or problem.
21:15
Speaker 1: I will shrink the need before he can say no.
21:17
Speaker 1: I will do all of it, over and over and over,
21:20
Speaker 1: until nobody can ever prove that the original belief was true.
21:23
Speaker 1: The wound keeper isn't a saboteur, my love. It's a
21:26
Speaker 1: child who learned an impossible rule and has been following
21:28
Speaker 1: it ever since. Loyal, exhausting, and convinced it's keeping you safe.
21:34
Speaker 1: And here's the concept I want you to hold for
21:36
Speaker 1: a second. Your self-concept in love. The story you believe
21:39
Speaker 1: about who you are in a relationship, not who you
21:41
Speaker 1: want to be, who you believe you actually are. That
21:44
Speaker 1: story was formed early. It's running automatically. And it shapes
21:47
Speaker 1: what you allow yourself to want, what you allow yourself
21:49
Speaker 1: to receive, and how much of the good thing you'll
21:51
Speaker 1: let yourself keep before the wound keeper decides it's too
21:53
Speaker 1: dangerous to trust. Most of us have never looked at
21:56
Speaker 1: that story directly. We've just lived it. We've called it
21:58
Speaker 1: our type, our standards, our pattern, our bad luck. But
22:01
Speaker 1: it's a story, and stories can be rewritten. Not quickly,
22:05
Speaker 1: not easily, but they can. And if any of what
22:07
Speaker 1: I just said feels like more than a pattern, like
22:10
Speaker 1: it goes somewhere deep and specific and old, that conversation
22:13
Speaker 1: with a therapist is worth having. That's the one place
22:16
Speaker 1: this podcast genuinely can't go as far as a real
22:18
Speaker 1: person can. Now, the hard truth. I'm going to say
22:22
Speaker 1: it plainly and then I'm going to stay in it
22:24
Speaker 1: for a minute, so don't check your phone. The wound
22:26
Speaker 1: keeper is not making you careful. It's making you unavailable.
22:29
Speaker 1: You've been waiting for someone else to be unavailable first
22:31
Speaker 1: so you can say, see, I knew it. But what's
22:34
Speaker 1: actually happening is you're guaranteeing your own version of abandonment
22:36
Speaker 1: by never fully arriving. He can't leave someone who was
22:39
Speaker 1: never fully there. That's not a strategy. That's the saddest
22:42
Speaker 1: possible way to be right. You get to say you
22:44
Speaker 1: knew it would end. And the cost is that it did.
22:47
Speaker 1: Because you made sure of it. Right? You're not protecting
22:51
Speaker 1: yourself from abandonment. You're performing a version of it in
22:53
Speaker 1: slow motion. From the inside, every single day you stay
22:56
Speaker 1: half present. Every time you refresh his Instagram before he's
22:58
Speaker 1: texted back. Every time you manufacture a problem during a
23:01
Speaker 1: good week. Every time you go quiet instead of saying
23:03
Speaker 1: the real thing. Every test you run instead of asking
23:05
Speaker 1: the actual question. That's not self-protection. That's a controlled demolition.
23:09
Speaker 1: And you've been calling it being realistic. You've been calling
23:12
Speaker 1: it not getting your hopes up. You've been calling it
23:14
Speaker 1: knowing how things go. And it is none of those things.
23:16
Speaker 1: It is the wound keeper doing its job so well
23:19
Speaker 1: that you can't see the job anymore. It just looks
23:21
Speaker 1: like you. The real brave thing, and I mean this,
23:24
Speaker 1: is not surviving abandonment. It is choosing presence, even though
23:27
Speaker 1: presence is exactly what the wound taught you not to trust.
23:30
Speaker 1: Showing up fully when it's going well. Staying in the
23:32
Speaker 1: room when it's easy. Saying the need plainly without the
23:34
Speaker 1: brief around it. Letting the quiet Tuesday be a quiet Tuesday.
23:37
Speaker 1: That's the brave thing. Not the dramatic exit. Not the test.
23:41
Speaker 1: Not the first to leave. Presence. And the wound keeper
23:43
Speaker 1: has a whole calendar full of reasons why that is
23:45
Speaker 1: a terrible idea. Because presence is where you could actually
23:48
Speaker 1: get hurt. But it's also the only place where you
23:50
Speaker 1: could actually be loved. And that is the tension the
23:52
Speaker 1: wound keeper can't hold. It'd rather skip the chance than
23:55
Speaker 1: risk the hurt. I should tell you, the wound keeper
23:59
Speaker 1: is very dedicated. It's got a packed schedule. Its entire job,
24:02
Speaker 1: since before you could drive, has been making sure nobody
24:05
Speaker 1: gets close enough to actually hurt you. And it has
24:07
Speaker 1: been working overtime. I genuinely respect the commitment. But also,
24:11
Speaker 1: it's time for a long vacation. The other side of
24:14
Speaker 1: all of this is not fearlessness. I want to be
24:16
Speaker 1: clear about that. Nobody on the other side of this
24:19
Speaker 1: work woke up one day without the signal. The chest
24:21
Speaker 1: tightening is still there. The pull to go quiet is
24:23
Speaker 1: still there. The urge to run a test instead of
24:25
Speaker 1: ask a question, still there. The difference is she's learned
24:28
Speaker 1: to read the signal accurately. She feels the tightening and
24:30
Speaker 1: she asks herself, is this information or is this old noise?
24:34
Speaker 1: And sometimes it's information. Sometimes something is actually off. But
24:37
Speaker 1: she can tell the difference now because she's practiced sitting
24:39
Speaker 1: with the feeling instead of immediately acting on it. That's
24:42
Speaker 1: not fearlessness. That's skill. Hard won, unsexy, absolutely worthwhile skill.
24:47
Speaker 1: She says what she needs without wrapping it in a
24:49
Speaker 1: legal defense. She lets the Tuesday be a Tuesday. She
24:52
Speaker 1: stays in the room when things are easy because she
24:54
Speaker 1: has decided on purpose that easy is allowed. That good
24:57
Speaker 1: is allowed. That a man who texts when he says
24:59
Speaker 1: he will is not boring. He is functional, and functional
25:01
Speaker 1: is something she gets to have. It may feel flat
25:04
Speaker 1: at first. It may feel like nothing is at stake.
25:06
Speaker 1: That's the recalibration. The nervous system is getting used to calm.
25:10
Speaker 1: And calm isn't nothing. Calm is the prerequisite for actually
25:13
Speaker 1: knowing someone. You can't know someone when you're always scanning.
25:16
Speaker 1: You can only scan. She stops scanning long enough to
25:18
Speaker 1: actually look. Let me paint you the picture of what
25:22
Speaker 1: one moment of this looks like in real life. You
25:24
Speaker 1: feel the pull, the familiar one, the urge to go quiet,
25:27
Speaker 1: to withdraw, to create a little distance so you can
25:29
Speaker 1: watch and see. And instead of doing it, you say
25:32
Speaker 1: out loud, I'm having an anxious moment and I'm not
25:33
Speaker 1: sure it's about you. Just that, no full explanation, no
25:37
Speaker 1: defensive brief, just the true sentence. And he says, okay,
25:40
Speaker 1: tell me. And you don't have the full explanation ready.
25:43
Speaker 1: You haven't prepared it. You say, I don't totally know yet.
25:46
Speaker 1: And he says, that's fine. I'm here. And something about
25:48
Speaker 1: that lands differently than any test you ever ran. Because
25:51
Speaker 1: no test result ever felt like that. The test results
25:53
Speaker 1: felt like relief. Two days of relief, and then you
25:56
Speaker 1: set up the next one. This feels like something else.
25:58
Speaker 1: It feels like being in the room with someone. Actually
26:00
Speaker 1: in the room. Right? Okay. Four moves. And I want
26:05
Speaker 1: you to actually do these, not just nod at them. First,
26:08
Speaker 1: name the mistake you recognize today. Write it down as
26:10
Speaker 1: a behavior, not a feeling. Not I feel scared. I
26:13
Speaker 1: go quiet. I manufacture a problem. I over-explain until he
26:16
Speaker 1: has an out. Behavior. Specific. Yours. Second, trace it. Write
26:22
Speaker 1: one sentence about the first time you remember doing this,
26:24
Speaker 1: and it does not have to be from a relationship.
26:26
Speaker 1: Maybe it's from a classroom. Maybe it's from a dinner table.
26:29
Speaker 1: One sentence. Where did this start for you? Third, pick
26:33
Speaker 1: one of the nine, just one. And this week, do
26:35
Speaker 1: the opposite in the smallest possible version. If your move
26:38
Speaker 1: is testing, ask instead. If your move is leaving during
26:40
Speaker 1: a good week, stay and notice what happens in your
26:42
Speaker 1: body when you stay. Small, doable, one time. And finally,
26:47
Speaker 1: say one true sentence to someone this week. Not the
26:49
Speaker 1: edited version. Not the defended version. Not the version that
26:52
Speaker 1: sounds okay and leaves you feeling hollow. The actual version.
26:56
Speaker 1: The one you usually swallow. Say that one. And while
26:59
Speaker 1: you're doing moves three and four, notice whether calm feels
27:02
Speaker 1: like nothing. Notice whether easy feels suspicious. And let yourself
27:06
Speaker 1: stay anyway. That noticing is the work. That's where the
27:09
Speaker 1: recalibration happens. In the moment you feel the flatness and
27:12
Speaker 1: you choose to stay in it instead of manufacturing a
27:14
Speaker 1: crisis to feel alive again. I'm going to say what's
27:17
Speaker 1: really underneath this. The wound keeper learned its job a
27:20
Speaker 1: long time ago, before you had words for it, before
27:22
Speaker 1: you knew enough to know something was being learned. And
27:25
Speaker 1: it's been loyal, genuinely, exhaustingly loyal. You don't fire it.
27:29
Speaker 1: You retrain it. You say, I hear you. I see
27:31
Speaker 1: what you're doing. And I'm going to try something different
27:33
Speaker 1: this time. None of the nine mistakes makes you broken.
27:36
Speaker 1: They make you someone who learned to survive. Someone who
27:38
Speaker 1: got good at managing the unmanageable by controlling what you could,
27:41
Speaker 1: which was yourself and your exits and your needs. That
27:44
Speaker 1: made sense once. It kept something safe that needed keeping.
27:47
Speaker 1: And now it's running a script that doesn't fit anymore.
27:49
Speaker 1: Which of the nine did you recognize? And what would
27:51
Speaker 1: actually change if you stopped mistaking self-protection for self-respect? Take
27:55
Speaker 1: that question with you this week. Sit with it. Write
27:57
Speaker 1: it down if you need to. And if someone came
27:59
Speaker 1: to mind while you were listening, someone you love who
28:01
Speaker 1: is in this, send them this episode. They might not
28:04
Speaker 1: be able to name it yet, but hearing it helps.
28:06
Speaker 1: Follow so you don't miss the next one because we've
28:08
Speaker 1: got more of this to work through together. Okay, my loves,
28:11
Speaker 1: take care of yourselves out there. And maybe let someone
28:14
Speaker 1: take care of you a little too. That's the whole lesson.
28:16
Speaker 1: Right there. The Wound Keeper? Absolutely deserves a small severance
28:21
Speaker 1: package and a long vacation. It has been clocked in
28:23
Speaker 1: since before you could drive. It's earned some time off.
28:26
Speaker 1: Let it rest. You've got it from here. This show
28:30
Speaker 1: is made by Oba Media.