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19 | Why You´ll Lose Your Friends After Leaving High-Control Relationship · 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 unfuck with the ball.
• 0:14
  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.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Hello again, welcome to the Messy Middle podcast.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is your host, Erica Leon.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's dive in.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: This episode is all about the friend group and family group fallout that no one warns you about.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: When you leave, you lose more than him.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the truth.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I wish someone had told me this, or at least warned me a little, that in my experience of doing this more than a decade and having 10,000 hours of client coaching behind me in this specific niche, my estimation is around 80% of the current group that you move in, you will lose.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so sorry if that breaks your heart because you're at that phase where this stuff is new to you and you've already dealt with so many blows that you think you can't handle anymore.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: But hear me out.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you know this in advance, and I'm telling you this in advance, so that you can work on not internalizing it so much as something that is yet another thing you think you did wrong.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is what survivors do off the bat.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're always doing self-inventory.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost the opposite of the person who does the high control, the coercive control, or the abuse.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're always doing self-inventory, always looking for ways how we could have avoided that, why we shouldn't have reacted that way, how we made them do it.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to save you at least from this shame spiral that you can go down when person after person in your group doesn't stay the same.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so hopeful, and it breaks my heart for you.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it was awful at the time it was happening to me.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: But allow me in this episode to talk you through it and to promise you at the end that actually this will be one of the things you look back on and think some of it was a shame.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I'm quite glad of most of that shit.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So here goes.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: I will preface this by saying this is something that nobody really prepares you for.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I end up telling people when I speak to them all the time, and everybody is shocked, but can understand it because they're in it, and everybody is relieved to hear that it's not them.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the reason this episode exists.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: When you leave an abusive or high control relationship, you think the loss is just going to be that person, and it's not just them.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be up to 80% of your social world that quietly evaporates.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I have spoken to clients who indeed it in it's higher than that.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that loss hurts almost as much.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not because you want them back, it's not because you didn't expect to lose some things in this process, but it's because you didn't expect to lose everyone else in the process, also.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that is shocking.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: That first shock, when you leave, you kind of assume my friends will understand, I'm sure they will.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: My family will rally around me, people will see what happened, they'll see the truth.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what often happens instead is that people get really quiet, they get really awkward.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a disclaimer.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: People can be intolerable when they're going through this.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm speaking about myself here.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: If I look back at the conversations I constantly had with my then friends, no wonder you can get fed up with it.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I totally get it.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're consumed with it, you're consumed with the injustice of it, you're consumed with the damage limitation of it.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to make sense of how this person could have done any of this to you, bearing in mind you thought they were your person and they had your back.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: It is so shocking, so blindsiding that it can take over your life.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you get selfish, you get survival moded, you forget to ask how other people are.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not good for those other people.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not nice.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I totally hold my hands up to that.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure any of you that have done it and come through the other end will say the same thing.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely had my apologies to do after all of this.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And with that said, these people might say things to you also while you're going through it that are quite activating.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like it takes two, and I'm sure you both had your issues, and I don't want to pick sides.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, they seem nice to me.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't really want to get involved.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that sounds mature, right?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: We all think of that towing that middle line as being we're emotionally mature.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna assess everything, see how it goes.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna judge, I'm gonna remain neutral.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all well and good in some of these situations.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: I totally get it.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Switzerland can be helpful, but in situations of coercive control, neutrality almost always protects the person that caused harm in the end.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's an amazing quote by Eli Weisell to that effect, which I can't remember off the top of my head.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: But go look it up.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because abuse does thrive in ambiguity, and people love ambiguity, right?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: It means they don't have to be uncomfortable over a period of time.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have to be uncomfortable for long at all, and they can just go back to their lives.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: But let's talk about something that's maybe hard to admit and hard to say out loud, but most people do choose comfort over truth.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because they're evil.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, sometimes they are, for sure.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And let's look around at the world right now and we can clearly see that, but because discomfort is inconvenient, it's really inconvenient.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: If they side with you fully, they feel like they have to admit they missed red flags, they have to admit that they liked them, they have to admit that they invited them into their homes, they laughed at his jokes, they admit they didn't see it or didn't want to see it, and that is really uncomfortable for people.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So instead, they go down this 50-50 down the middle, it takes two to tango bullshit.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember having that comment a few times, it takes two to tango, and it felt like a gut punch.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: It felt like another punch in the chest for people that really don't understand it.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: It takes two to tango is a phrase that you'll hear coming up a lot.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And coercive control is not a fucking tango.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, people don't understand abuse dynamics in the main out there in the world, or even if they do, they can't verbalize it.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: But coercive control is not a tango, it's 100% led by the abuse, whether through subtle means or not so subtle means, you are not somebody who's an active participant wanting this to happen.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not symmetrical, it's not mutual emotional immaturity.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: It is a dynamic of dominance, manipulation, and conditioning.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: But calling it that would require people to really confront that reality so they dilute it down, and any dilution to you will feel like betrayal.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that is normal.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: This whole thing will make you re-evaluate all the relationships you have, all the ways that you feel about people and dynamics.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: You will effectively be required to strip everything down as though you were rebuilding an engine from scratch.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is also a bigger topic, so excuse me digressing for a bit, but I've got five sons.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about teaching boys not to harm, but we don't really teach boys to intervene.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at the stats, honestly, we're not teaching boys not to harm, we're not doing that very well at all.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: As a country or as a world, and I'm sorry if that offends you, but go look at the amount of women who are killed and girls by men they know in their lives.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's undeniable.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'm really talking about here, which feeds into what's going to happen to you in these situations, the fallout with your friend group, is that we don't teach bystander intervention.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: We don't teach boys to intervene.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: We don't teach men to say that's not okay in the locker room.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: We don't teach them to fend off casual misogyny.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Men holding other men accountable and boys holding other boys accountable is going to be the difference between the accepted violence against women and not, because women can say it all they like.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have the impact that it does from other men.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And with this in mind, we're talking now about the fallout when you leave your abuser.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: We don't really teach friends to step in either.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Bystander intervention really isn't taught to most people.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Can you remember being taught it?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm 54, or am I 55?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: I just had a birthday, but I was not taught that.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: I remember people saying, do the right thing, no matter the cost, when I was very young, when they were talking about people like Martin Luther King, but I really haven't heard that in a very long time because it's dangerous and people think it's not their business, and there's litigious reasons, also.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the friends are going to have this uncomfortable conditioning almost built into them.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: In most situations where a woman is uncomfortable, unsafe, or being undermined, people don't step up, people don't say anything.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: That same bystander paralysis shows up socially after you leave your abuser.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: People don't want to intervene, they don't want to pick a side, they don't want to disrupt the group dynamic, so they freeze and shut down.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And freezing in the face of harm still unfortunately benefits the person causing it.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's true that you can't really know a person's relationship fully when you're in it, unless you're in it.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I totally understand the reticence.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: But where you have friends that are really close to you personally, and it's not just a friendship of convenient circumstances, like people who play tennis together, people who are in the same school, or more like a situational friendship.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: You are really going to be looking for them to stand beside you, shoulder to shoulder, no questions asked.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that is something that you will probably have to face and have to evaluate.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: A brutal irony to this is there's secondary isolation.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the abuse isolates you when you're in it, and leaving isolates you again, but differently.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: So while you're in it, you were slowly distanced maybe from some friends, some family, or some support system.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them may reacted badly, some of them may have just been hands-off and stopped calling you less and less or checking on you less and less.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly the mutual friends pull back, for sure.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is very common.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And couples who socialized with you both, they tend to disappear.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: The group chats go very quiet, invitations stop coming, because that's awkward too, right?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's a strange stigma about a divorce woman.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do with that when we're all couples?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow it's thought of as maybe being a little bit like cougar-ish.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard varying experiences here, but people feel awkward when they're all coupled up.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you're over there left thinking, oh, did I do something wrong?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe it is me.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm the problem here.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you disrupted that status quo.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: That comfort that everybody had, that everything being the same, familiarity equals comfort, right?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you removed yourself from a narrative that made everyone else comfortable, and comfort is a powerful glue.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And let's not forget polite society.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: As a Brit, this has been rammed so far up my ass since I was a zygote that I can't ignore it.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Polite society has been demanding that we sweep things under the rug since forever.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Remaining neutral is almost lauded as being this emotionally mature decision.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I totally get that being Switzerland in some things is appropriate.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: In the case where a survivor of abuse is already being gaslit to the nth degree and gaslit by themselves, they're doubting themselves and they have no one to stand up for them.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And who's been tricked into thinking your attorney will be the one to stick up for you and come out swinging?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, they are just another person.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, attorneys out there, but I hear this every day from clients, and it was my personal experience, so might want to do some self-work on this.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: But it can be a devastating blow to an already crushed spirit when more or less everyone who has promised a good game to stand with you does not.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you really see it in the cold light of day.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is heartbreaking.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is like injustice upon betrayal upon heartbreak.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it sucks.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you'll even hear them change things around a bit and say that you've changed.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: That you've changed narrative really is heartbreaking too.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what they mean by saying you've changed is you're not participating in the dynamic that we're used to.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're not smoothing things over, you're not laughing off these comments, you're not being accommodating, you're not pretending, you're not just going along like everything is normal.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes people really uneasy because in every walk of life, your growth requires them to adjust.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you've heard all of that in these buzzy podcasts and whatnot, and it's absolutely true.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Many people don't want to adjust.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: You hold a mirror up in those circumstances, especially when you start to thrive or deal with very difficult things.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: You hold a mirror up to they're being static, they're being stayed, they're being maybe a little bit stagnant.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: People don't want to see that.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So instead, they'd rather drift away.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they might reframe you as the dramatic one or the bitter one, or the scorned women, the angry women, the difficult one.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, no one has ever done anything of any kind of benefit to this world without being all of those things.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: So fuck that.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: But it is a lot easier than confronting reality, which I understand, I'm sure you understand, it just very much hurts in the moment.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And let's add a little bit of nuance here.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Some friendships were proximity-based if you really analyze them.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them were built around just the couple identity or I don't know, shared barbecues, kid sports, flag football, that was a big one when I was a mom of little kids.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Holidays, soccer, convenience.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Not that much depth.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Although it felt nice, not that much depth.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not exactly shared values or certainly emotional safety.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: So when the couple dissolves, that structure holding these friendships also dissolves.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't mean that you imagined a connection that wasn't really there.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: It just means the foundation was different than you thought.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that realization can sting as well.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: But it is clarifying.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what I really want to get across here is that one of the most painful parts of this is the victim doubting.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's not sometimes like they're outright calling you a liar.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's just this weird soft skepticism of, well, he's always been nice to me, or I never saw that side.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or are you sure it wasn't just stress or just uh an isolated incident?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Was he going through something?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that subtle questioning lands in your body, like, here we go again.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like that horrible feeling where your throat drops all the way down to your stomach because you've just escaped gaslighting and now you're facing more gaslighting, social gaslighting.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And even if it's unintentional, that compounds the injury.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's fuckery, it's douchebaggery.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna lie.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let's be real about it.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: People, if you're listening out here that are trying to support a survivor right now, you don't even have to solutionize right off the bat.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to witness, you just have to listen, you just have to believe them.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can move on to how you can help.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I've talked a lot about the shitty side, suck.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go on to the other side.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes losing 80% of these fuckers is a relief because some of these people, without you maybe putting two and two together at the time, enabled him, minimized you, normalized behavior that wasn't normal, benefited from you being the easy one.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that social collapse that you're going through is like a purification, it's like a fire purification where you come out of the ashes and are like, fuck no, I don't want these kind of shallow, shitty relationships in my life.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: I want real people.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's painful, yes, but it is clarifying.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's what forest fires are about, right?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: The ones that are started by the park rangers.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Can I just qualify?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then you start seeing who's reaching out, who's checking in, who risks their discomfort to support you.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And those people right there, they are your golden people.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And also, I want to make a note here: other people who are going through shit, I give them ultimate grace because I know what that's like myself.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean with true friendships, you can dip in and out and still be in exactly the same spot when you resume.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Part of giving love to yourself and love to other people is that shit happens and give them grace.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very fine line you walk when it you're in this activated phase when it's all just happening.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that you'll figure it out.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you have space where you feel like you've reacted badly a while back, you can go back and correct that as best as possible and at least say you're sorry and take some action.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the rebuilding phase, it is slow.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: It can feel lonely.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to know that so that you're prepared and so that you don't always internalize this stuff as somehow you're fucking up or you're wrong or you're some horrible person.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: But you are starting from scratch.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And often where I meet people, it's not just in the messy middle of the process, it's in midlife too, which is already very confusing.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you're that only single one, likely, in a sea of couples, and you don't fit where you used to.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a real grief to that, not a dramatic kind of grief where you might not realize it all at once.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't come rushing in and knock you off your feet, but it gradually creeps up on you the more your people drift away, or the less calls you get, or the less text check-ins you get.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's real.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: But there is also another side to this that's true.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: When you rebuild, you do rebuild as you wish to.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're very much more discerning about who is aligned with you and what you're looking for.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of that comes from knowing what you won't accept, right?
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of power knowing what you're never willing to accept again, or at least at this juncture.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of power in knowing what you do want so you know what you don't want.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Often that is a way easier way to funnel down to harsh choices than it is to create some lofty, this is the person I want.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna be like this and like this.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually often much more real to build it from fuck no.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: If it's not a fuck yes, then it's a fuck no.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about proximity, it's not about performance, it's not about appeasement.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: You definitely choose differently when this happens to you.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it does change everything.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And when I look back now, and for all of the people I can categorically say who I work with on a long-term basis, who were doing all of the stages, including the ones where they get back out there and they're over the big hump.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody is glad that they had that adjustment in their friend group.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's just very lonely and very sad at the time.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you there is light at the end of the tunnel.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: The people you will get coming toward you will suit your new found confidence, your newfound courage, your getting back to yourself and that connection you have with yourself.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: I guarantee it.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if you left and your world got smaller, this one is for you.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: It does not mean you made the wrong choice.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: It just means you disrupted some comfort and sadly often sides with power, not truth.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're not crazy for feeling hurt.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: You are not dramatic.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Please don't listen to people that say that.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're not dramatic for feeling abandoned.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're not wrong for expecting people to take a stand when they don't.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's hurtful.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: But there is a quiet strength in all of this that I want you to know is coming for you.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: When you choose that alignment over approval or make the same choices that you've always made on rote, your inner child and all of the things we always talk about, like your inner critic, those versions of you that needed someone to stand up for you, you end up being the person that stands up for you for all the previous versions of you.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And every time you choose that alignment over the approval of someone else, or do something that is to make someone else comfortable, but it hurts you.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you have a microaggression because of it that sits in your body, in your nervous system.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Every time you choose differently, those versions of you get a little more healed.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a beautiful thing.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that alignment will cost you people, but it does give you yourself back.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that, my friends, is a trade worth making, I guarantee.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope that it's helped someone in any small way.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: As usual, if you want to ask me questions about your particular situation and anything that we've covered here, please do fill out the little form wherever you listen to your podcasts.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I will answer you in some upcoming episodes.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking about you.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: I love you lots.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Goodbye.