Latest / Back Porch Confessions / Giving the Anger Back Episode 1 of 4
Transcript
- Gravesb41: Sometimes my soul is just tired, tired of being strong, tired of carrying the heaviness, tired of fighting battles nobody else can see. And maybe you know that kind of tired too. The kind of tired that doesn't come from sleep, the kind of tired that settles deep in your heart, your mind and your spirit, the kind that comes from surviving, enduring, holding it all together and still showing up when your life had tried to take everything out of you. But here's the truth. Being tired does not mean you are weak, it does not mean you are broken, and it does not mean your story is over. At Renewed Mind we talk about the hard things, the hidden heaviness, the silent battles, the trauma, the grief, the healing, and the fight to keep going when your soul feels weary. This is the place where strong people can finally tell the truth, where healing gets honest, where pain is spoken out loud. And where the ones who have spent their whole lives pouring into others can find a space to breathe, be seen, and remember they are worth the battle too because sometimes the healer needs healing. Sometimes the strong ones need somewhere soft to land, and sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is admit you're tired and keep choosing to heal anyway. This is renewed mind, real talk, real pain, real healing. One honest conversation at a time. If you're looking for beautiful, meaningful, and custom-made creations that tell a story, Little Butterfly Design and Print is where creativity and compassion come together. Cheryl specializes in personalized designs that celebrate life's most important moments, from custom shirts and prints to heartfelt gifts, memorial pieces and unique creations made just for you. Every design is crafted with intention, care, and a personal touch that you can feel. Whether you're honoring a loved one, supporting a cause, building your brand, or simply want something one of a kind, Cheryl brings your vision to life in a way that feels truly special. Little Butterfly Design and Print isn't just a business. It's a reminder that even the smallest ideas can transform into something beautiful. Support a small business that pours love into every detail. Find Little Butterfly Design and Print by Cheryl A. Harlan online and see how she can create something meaningful just for you. Back Porch Confessions: Before we begin, I want to say something. This podcast isn't about blaming parents. It's not about keeping people angry. It's not about staying stuck in the past. It's about understanding how our earliest experiences shape the way we see ourselves. So we can finally stop carrying shame that was never ours to carry. If your story is different than mine, that's okay. I hope you'll listen with an open heart and simply take what helps you on your own healing journey. My prayer isn't that you leave here angry at the people who hurt you. My prayer is that you leave here with compassion for the child who survived them. May you stop measuring your worth by someone else's ability to love you. May you stop apologizing for taking up space. May you laugh again. May you rest again. May you trust again. May you discover that peace isn't something you have to earn. It's something you're allowed to receive. And wherever life takes you next, I hope you'll remember this. There was never anything wrong with you. There was a little child who deserved more than she received. And now there's an adult who gets to choose something different. May God bless you. Keep you, strengthen you, and remind you every single day that you are deeply loved. Gravesb41: Welcome to Back Porch Confessions, where the sweet tea is strong, the stories are stronger, and no topic is too taboo for the porch. Grab a seat, kick off your shoes, and let's get into the kind of conversation your mama warned you about, but you listen anyway. Back Porch Confessions: Hey, welcome to Back Porch Confessions. I'm going to do a four-part series on giving the anger back a child who thought there was something wrong. I know that many of you will resonate with us, and so I look forward to putting this series together. And seeing how many people I can reach in the process. So honestly, all my life I thought I was the problem. So welcome back to Back Porch Confessions. if you're new here, I am Barbara and I want you to know that today isn't just another conversation. This isn't just another podcast about healing or trauma. Today we're going somewhere that many people spend their entire lives trying to avoid. We're going back to the little child inside of us. Not because we want to relive the pain, not because we want to stay stuck, but because healing asks us to understand where the pain came from before we could decide what we want to do with it honestly. Today I want to start with something I wish someone had said to me years ago. There there was never anything wrong with you. I'm gonna say it again. There was never anything wrong with you. Because some of you needed to hear it more than once. I know I have. There was never anything wrong. How do I say this? There was never anything wrong with you. That's just plain and simple. There was never anything wrong with you. But for years I believed there was. Most of my entire life I believed there was. And I didn't even realize it. I thought I was too emotional. sometimes too loud, too sensitive, too needy, too broken, too difficult, too much. maybe even sometimes. Not enough. Oftentimes I felt not enough. Maybe if I had just made better grades. Maybe if I wasn't such a tomboy. Maybe if I had cleaned the house better. maybe if I had been quieter. Maybe if I had been even just prettier, not the ugly duckling. Maybe if I hadn't cried so much and whined that I was bored and didn't know what to do with myself. maybe if I just didn't ask for so much, maybe if I just didn't ask her to love me, maybe then maybe then my mother would have loved me differently. Do you know how many children grow up believing that? I did. And it's not because someone sat them down or sat me down and said, You're not enough. It's not at all how it happened. it's because Children themselves. We don't understand emotional neglect. Like it's not something that children understand. Children don't understand personality disorders. Children don't understand addictions. Children don't understand trauma. Children don't understand mental illness. They don't understand emotional immaturity. Children only understand one thing. If my mom doesn't love me the way I need, it must be because something is wrong with me. That belief becomes from the lens through which children see the world, the way I saw the world. And if nobody challenges it, then what? I carry it, you carry it, children carry that into adulthood. Children always make themselves the story, right? Isn't that it? One of the most heartbreaking things I've learned both personally and professionally is that children almost always make themselves the explanation. for what is happening around them. It becomes their fault. Think about it. A four year old doesn't think my mother has unresolved trauma. A six year old doesn't think my father struggles with emotional regulation. a sip sorry, Tommy is outside messing with the mower. Go figure. A seven year old doesn't think my parent is emotionally unavailable because of their own childhood. No. No. Children don't think mom yelled because I was bad. Dad left because I wasn't worth staying for. Children think. I don't know what I said. I feel like I said don't think because there was a pop-out psych. Anyway. Nothing like having distractions as usual. Move and I still get distractions. Dagum it. Anyway, back to it. So no. My parent is emotionally unavailable because of something I did. Or they're emotionally unavailable because of their own childhood. No. What children actually think, and what I'm trying to say before the boomy distraction, is mom yelled because I was bad. Dad left because I wasn't worth staying for. I think I have this right now. She didn't hug me because I wasn't lovable. She ignored me because I was unimportant to her. children don't have adult reasoning. What they do have is survival reasoning. And survival reasoning reasoning asks one question. When do I have to what do I have to do, rather? What do I have to do to make the people I depend on love me? What do I have to do to make the people I depend on love me? Because to a child, love isn't just emotional. Love is survival, it's food, it's a roof over their head, you know, shelter, protection, comfort, even connection. Children look for connection. So when those things feel inconsistent. A child's brain goes to work trying to solve the problem. A child's brain is trying to solve this problem. And often in the child's brain, the child becomes the problem. They have no way to process all of this. So they feel like they're the problem. I felt like I was the problem. Not because it's true. It's because it feels safer to believe if I change, maybe I'll finally be loved. Think about how heartbreaking that is. Imagine a little girl spending years trying to earn something that should have been given freely. Not because she wanted to be perfect. But because she wanted to feel safe. I wanted to feel safe, loved, wanted. I want you to pause with me for just a moment on this. If you're driving, just listen. If you're sitting at home with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, bottle of water, maybe try closing your eyes for just a second. And picture yourself at six years old. not who you are today. But who you were then. What did The six year old you believe about yourself. Did you think you were lovable? Did you think that you mattered? Or did you already believe that you had to earn love? That love was somehow a reward. Sometimes the beliefs we carry today didn't start yesterday. Sometimes they've been traveling with us for 50 years. They have with me. The lies that become your identity are Here's something that fascinates me. We don't remember every single thing that happened to us as children. We just don't. Thank goodness. But our nervous system remembers how we felt. Maybe you don't remember every argument. Maybe you don't remember every insult. Maybe you don't even remember every time you were ignored. But your body remembers. It remembers what it felt like to wait for a hug that never came. It remembers the silence. It remembers the tension. He remembers wondering if today would be a good day or a bad day. The body remembers learning to read facial expressions before words ever came out. It remembers becoming hyper-aware of moods, not that we knew what hyper-aware was. It remembers walking on eggshells. And over time, those experiences become beliefs. I remember laying in bed. With the radio on. When I got older, because I was molested between nine and thirteen by five of my mother's brothers. Not all at once. But I didn't sleep as a kid. Not much. I learned to sleep very lightly. But I do I do remember My body be intense. I remember not being able to rest, wondering who was gonna come through the door, if anybody was gonna come through the door, if somebody was gonna slip their hand under the covers, if somebody was gonna slide into the bed next to me. And I wondered if I was gonna be threatened that if I ever told. Something bad would happen. You know, I already been through enough bad I didn't want anything else bad to happen. So with over time those experiences become a belief, not facts, but beliefs. There's an important difference. A fact is something that is true, whether you believe it or not. A belief is something your mind accepted because it helped you make sense of your world. For example, I'm hard to love. It's not a fact. It's not a fact, but it's a conclusion. I'm too much. It's not a fact, but it's a conclusion. I have to take care of everyone. A conclusion. If people really know me, they're gonna leave. It's another conclusion. And the problem is that when we believed these things for decades, they start to feel like facts. We stop questioning them. We build our lives around them. We choose relationships based on them. We parent from them, we even work from them, and the way we love is from them. And we don't even realize they're there. Why does the brain do this? Why does it do this? Let's talk for a minute about why our brains work this way. So your brain has one primary job. Not to make you happy, not to make you successful, not to even help you heal. Its first job is to keep you alive. That means it is constantly scanning for danger. When you're a child and emotional pain keeps happening, your brain starts making predictions naturally, right? So if I speak up, I'm gonna get criticized. If I speak up and talk about these uncles and what they're doing, I'm either gonna get slapped, I'm gonna be talked to like I'm a whore, or I'm gonna be ignored. If I cry about it, I'm gonna get ignored. If I cry, I'm gonna get ignored. If I ask for comfort, I'll be rejected. So your brain says, let's stop asking. Not because you don't deserve the comfort, but because your brain thinks it's protecting you from more pain. That's survival. And what protected you at eight years old may be hurting you at 50. Seems odd. But hold tight, you'll understand. This is where I want to share something with you guys. Those who know me know about this, but for years I thought my anger was the problem. I thought everything, the rage that I held inside of me, was a me problem. So I spent so much time trying to rid myself of the anger. But I never stopped to ask where it came from really. Where is this anger coming from? Where is this explosive feelings coming from? Where are the the thoughts that race through my brain? Where is it coming from? I judged it. I fought it. I prayed it away. I don't know how many rosaries I've gone through. I felt ashamed of it. I didn't want to talk to people about it. I didn't want to admit it. I don't have anger problems. But one day I asked me a different question. Because my counselor said to me one day when I first started seeing her She says, Do you know what you've been feeling your entire life? I sat there for a second and I was like, Well That I don't that I'm not enough. That I'm not enough to love. And she said no. I just looked at I was like, what? What she said next made me sit back. She said, You always felt like there was something wrong with you. Holy cow. Holy cow. That th that just made everything change. Everything. So when I asked the different question Not why are you not enough? Or even now, what's wrong with me? But I asked what happened to me that my anger has been trying to protect. And that question changed everything. Because suddenly that question changed it all. My anger, my anger was wasn't the villain anymore. My anger was the messenger. It was carrying decades of grief that never had words. Hear that. It was carrying decades of grief that never had words. I was carrying rejection, carrying abandonment, loneliness. I was carrying a little girl's heartbreak. And that little girl had been waiting a very long time for someone to finally ask her why she was hurting. How do we end up becoming Children. in these positions. I don't know. I have a lot of different ideas of why it happens. When I finally asked myself why I was hurting and and took and unpacked all of that for myself and Turned that anger and pain into healing in this journey that I'm on. I truly was blessed to be able to come here and have these conversations and have whole human relatable content to give you, truth to give you. so when we move from okay, why why do we have this pain? Why are we hurting? And we figure out what that is, then we go into a whole section of the child who learned to earn love. How many of you, especially as Gen X children, feel like you had to earn love? I wanna ask you something. And I don't want you to answer me with your head. I want your answer. I want you to answer it from your heart. So if it takes you a minute to pause this and sit for a minute and get your answer from the heart, that's what I want from you. When was the first time you remember believing you weren't enough? Not the first time someone said something hurtful. The first time you believed it. Because there's a difference. A big difference. Sometimes one comment doesn't create a wound. It simply confirms what we've already started believing. Think about it. Maybe it happened when your mother looked at you with disappointment instead of delight. Maybe it happened when your father wasn't there, was supposed to come, but he didn't show up. Maybe it's because you didn't even really know who your father was. Always missing. Maybe it happened because every achievement was expected but never celebrated. Your brother's achievements were celebrated. I love my brother. You guys know I love my brother. This was not his fault. But yours, they were not celebrated. You were not celebrated. Maybe it happened because no matter what you did, someone always found what you did wrong instead of what you did right. Maybe nobody ever looked at you and simply said, I'm so glad you're mine. Can I tell you something? Children don't need perfect parents. Simply don't. And h here's another funny part. You know, my mom has said, I'm grateful for you and your brother. You've been blessings for me and all these things. so her words don't match her her actions. And so she will Talk great about how proud she is of this or that and this that I'm doing and whatever. And the first time I ever noticed that when I told her I was working for the town newspaper when I got out of high school. it was, you know, supposedly this big, beautiful thing, and she was so proud of me and she tells everybody. Mind you, my mother lived in Arizona and I hadn't seen her since I was fourteen and that was around nineteen and Because I wanted her to love me so badly. I believed those words. And over the years I have believed those words when she spoke quote unquote proudly of me. Different things. But what I've learned is those words were to inflate her own ego because it was her daughter that was doing these things. It was her son that was doing these things. And so she somehow is this amazing mother because her children turned out to be so freaking amazing. But to our faces, not so much my brothers, but more fine, was quite the opposite. Like in person it was quite the opposite. Anyway. Children don't need perfect parents. She certainly was not one. they need parents who make them feel safe enough to be imperfect. They need someone who says, You made a mistake, but I still love you. You are still loved. I'm upset about what happened, but I'm not upset that you're my child. If you ever felt that way, nothing you could ever do would make me stop loving you. Evidently that sentence wasn't correct when it came to my mother. But anyway, when a parent actually says these things and they genuinely mean it, that is unconditional love. Unfortunately, many of us grew up with conditional acceptance instead. That's right. Not unconditional love, conditional acceptance. Love always felt tied to a performance. If I did this and did that and become this and become that, she's gonna be so super proud of me. It makes her talk nice of me. So I can strive to do more and more and more and more. I got so many licensures and certi certifications under my belt, y'all. I just can't even get ready to to do a crash course and saving marriages and relationships. Anyway, that's a whole nother subject. But when love felt tied to a performance. to obedience, to keeping every everyone else happy, to staying quiet, to not rock in the boat. How many of you have become professional not rocking the boaters? To not having needs, squashing your needs. Some of us became the good kids, some became the caretakers, some became invisible. Some and I I probably had a few characteristics of this because I still can be this way. Some have become comedians because making everyone laugh was safer than letting anyone see us cry. Now I want you to stop and think about that class clown. Why were they the class clown? What's going on at home? Some become perfectionist, you know, the OCD people of the world. Some become people pleasers. I have, but not. One of my daughters is definitely that. Some became overachievers. Me. Some became angry. I do have a lot of anger. Moments of it. Attached to certain things. We all had different survival strategies. But the same wounded child. Does any of this relate to any of you? How many of you are sitting there nodding? I wish I could like interact with you guys right now. Gosh, feel free to send me a message. I would love to hear it. But yes, we all are the same wounded child. Just different survival strategies. I am so sorry about the Moriol. I just can't even right now. Anyway, my anger about it just show up overnight for that. And for other things. People have asked me before, Barbara, why were you so angry? Why are you so angry? Why do you hate your mom so much? Why did did your mom not want to keep you? Why, Why do you feel the way you do about your mom when you had a perfect childhood and you guys had this great relationship and all this stuff? And bullshit if you know me, I said bullshit. That's bullshit. And no. And no. There was no perfect relationship, only the relationship she portrayed to everybody that was very much not perfect. But she portrayed it to everybody in the world that we had a perfect relationship. Hmm. Honestly, for years I didn't even know. I thought I was just an angry person. I thought there was something inside of me that was broken, and that no matter what I did in life, I was never gonna be happy. Nothing was ever gonna make me happy. I thought if I prayed harder, went to church, did all the things. read more books, read self-help books, went to more counseling, talked to more people, and just tried to smile more and you know just stuff the feelings deeper that eventually the anger would just disappear. And it would kind of quiet down in moments. But it didn't stay gone. That's not how healing works, though. It's not. Healing doesn't begin when we silence our emotions. Healing begins when we finally are willing to listen to them. Hear that again. Healing begins when we finally are willing to listen to our emotions. Because anger really has a language. Probably never thought about it that way before, have you? Anger says what? What does anger say? That you're hurt? That that wasn't fair? That I deserved better? That someone crossed a line. That you were failed. That you were abandoned. You were rejected. Anger Isn't always screaming. Sometimes anger is the woman who can't sleep. Let that settle. Sometimes it's anxiety, sometimes it's in panic attacks, sometimes it's in chronic tension in your shoulders, sometimes it's crying over something so small that you don't understand why you're crying. Your nervous system has been carrying something huge. Sometimes it It's becoming emotionally numb because feeling everything became too exhausting. And that's where addiction and there's all sorts of addictions. I'm not talking just about drugs. There are all sorts of addictions. That's where addiction comes in. You emotionally numb out because feeling becomes too exhausting. You don't know how to process it. You were never taught how to. Sometimes It's insane I'm fine when you're anything but fine. The anger wasn't trying to destroy me. It was trying to get my attention. It's trying to get your attention. But we fail to see that. We fail to understand that. We fail ourselves in that manner. But we didn't know. We don't know. You don't know until someone speaks it to you. How many people are listening to this that are having aha moments? My anger has been trying to get my attention. What is my anger attached to? That is where healing begins. There is a cost to carrying unspoken pain. A very big cost. Here's something that I wish more people understood. Pain that has nowhere to go. It doesn't disappear. It goes somewhere else. It settles into our bodies. It ends up in our relationships. It ends up in the way that we talk to ourselves and to others. It's our fears. It ends up in our marriages, our friendships. It ends up in how we parent. It ends up in our health because unhealed childhood trauma shows up, starting from your gut out. where all the autoimmune are showing up for people. it shows up in your nervous system. There is more people on some type of anxiety medication than there are not. Think about carrying a heavy backpack every single day for years. Yeah, you know, at first you know, you notice how heavy it is. And eventually you stop noticing the weight, right? Just like a woman who carries a bag that's got everything but the kitchen sink in it. Someone else grabs it for us and says, Dang. Is there a a dead body in this bag? You know, nowadays it's kind of iffy on whether or not you should say something like that. But anyway. Yes. Not because it got lighter. We just carry the bag everywhere. Not because it got lighter. Because you adapted to carrying it. You adapted to carrying the weight of your childhood trauma. Maybe he's done. And then one day someone asks you. Would you like to put that backpack down? And at first, you know, your response is gonna be, what backpack? Whip purse. What backpack whip purse? You've carried that weight so long that you've mistaken it for a part of yourself. And that's what's happening emotionally. We carry rejection for so many years that we think that rejection is our identity. We carry shame for so many years that we think shame is our personality. We carry abandonment for so many years that we think independence is our only option because we're afraid of commitment, because somebody might abandon us. We don't realize we're exhausted because we've never known what it feels like not to carry that weight. We've never known what it feels like not to have that burden on our back. Never. It's always, always been with us. It's so very heavy that oftentimes when we're carrying it from relationship to relationship and we don't take the time to meet somebody, first you have to do your own kind of healing and learn to love you and see that there's healing that needs to be done. But you also have to find a partner that is willing to take that luggage that's full of all that weight, that backpack, that purse, whatever. You have to find that person that's willing to unpack that luggage one piece at a time, one heavy burden at a time, one survival at a time. And you they have to be committed to you through this process completely. I almost want to pause this. But I'm gonna keep rolling. Can I invite you into something? Not to judge yourself. But just to become curious, I want you to ask yourself: what emotional backpack have I been carrying? What emotional backpack have you been carrying? Is it rejection? Is it abandonment? Is it fear of failure? Fear of being abandoned. fear of being wrong, fear of not being enough. People pleasing. Perfectionism, control, hyperindependence, the what if world. All of those things. Just just what if what if those aren't your personality? What if they're your survival skills? That changes everything. 'Cause personalities are who we are. Survival skill survival skills are what we learn to do. And if we learned them, we can also what? Learn something new. We can unpack all of that and learn how to not feel all of those things and think that that is who your personality is, that's who you are. It was a question that changed my life. It's been a couple actually. It really kind of shifted my healing completely. So instead of asking why am I like this, I started asking what happened that taught me to become this way? Hyper-independent. fear of abandonment, fear of failure, fear of rejection. Fear of not being enough, not realizing that I thought really I was there was something wrong with me. What happened that taught me to become this way? Can you hear the difference? One question is full of shame. Right? Why am I like this? Full of shame. That's pointing it directly at me. Why am I like this? So instead say what happened that taught me to become this way. The other one, what taught me to become this way, is full of compassion, understanding, empathy. So one assumes something is wrong with me or you. The other assumes there was a reason. Trauma-informed healing doesn't excuse harmful behaviors. That's what you're doing when going through this process. What it does is it helps us understand it. Because understanding creates what? Choices. Understanding creates choices. And in those choices, we create freedom from it. So for years I thought my anger meant I was failing. I thought my anger meant there was things wrong with me. Now I understand that it meant my heart had been carrying a grief. That had never been witnessed. It had been carrying a burden that wasn't mine to carry. So during that process, when I started asking different questions. And I've talked about this on my TikTok lives a few times and I think in some of my podcast. When you have that conversation then with your younger self, I've had to put my mom in in the conversation with with her younger self, trying to understand why she is the way she is. Sometimes I picture myself walking back into my childhood. Not to change it. Mm mm. No. My childhood made me who I am. I can't change it. I don't want to. But I can change what happens now. I imagined finding that little girl sitting there alone. She isn't crying anymore. She's past crying. She's just quiet. You know, that kind of quiet. Quiet that comes after you've stopped expecting anyone to hear you. The quiet and the pain that you see in the eyes of that child. The emptiness, the loneliness, the heartbreak. I sit beside her. I don't rush her. I don't tell her to cheer up. I don't quote Bible verses before listening. Bible verses are great, so don't take that wrong. I'm not certainly telling her to forgive. I don't tell her it's stupid stuff like someone had it worse and it could be worse or whatever. I just simply sit. I sit with her. Because sometimes healing doesn't begin with answers. Sometimes healing begins because someone finally stays. Someone finally sees you. Then you gently ask. I gently ask. Tell me what happened. Tell me what happened. Not what's wrong with you, but what happened to you. And maybe for the first time in my life, in your life. To tell the truth. tells me how lonely she felt as a little girl. How confused it felt. How badly I wanted someone to just choose me. I really hope you all can hear me over the noises. I just can't even with this right now. You're slowly watching me have a meltdown. I wanted so badly for someone to choose me, to finally choose me. How I wondered every single day for years throughout my childhood on whether or not I mattered. And I just take the time to just hold that little girl. Just show her the love that she needed. Because children don't need to be fixed. I didn't need to be fixed. I don't need to be fixed. Children need to be loved. Unconditionally loved. Seen and heard and felt. I mean this is exactly where he is in the backyard. Well that makes a lot of sense. He's right here. Right outside the window on the back patio. Go figure. Sorry you guys. Anyway. When we Take the time to listen to ourselves. To feel what we felt as a child. During that process, we also learn one of the biggest lies that trauma ever teaches us. One of them that I was taught anyway. My trauma taught me that if my own mother couldn't love me the way I needed it, then no one else truly could. I think that's in part why I picked the wrong people, why I picked the wrong partners. not that there's, you know, anything wrong wrong with the the grown men that I had relationships with. but they weren't meant for me. And I'm sorry, y'all. Anyway, you know that belief that belief that we have that no one else can love us because our own mother couldn't love us, it quietly shapes our friendships, our marriages, our confidence. thank God he's walking away with the backpack blower because he evidently had to blow dry the lawnmower. for the love of Jesus help me. Welcome to my my therapy and comedy hour. Anyway, back to it. Remember what I was talking about. it creeps anyway, it quietly shapes our friendships, it shapes our marriages, it shapes our confidence, our boundaries that we are able to set in life, and it even actually can shape your relationship with God. Because some people will will feel that even God can't love them. They're not good enough to even be loved by God. And I think it's time we changed that lie together. That lie for me is if my own mother didn't love me. Who could? Who could? One of the deepest wounds a child can carry is not of ph of physical abuse. It's not of all the yelling fights. Sometimes It's actually believing they were never fully wanted. I believed and I still do that I was never fully wanted. I know there are people listening today who Who have never said those words out loud. Here he comes with that stupid backpack again. I'm gonna need a drink and I don't drink that much. Anyway, I know that there are many of you that are listening today, hopefully you can hear me, that have never said those words out loud. Maybe you've carried them your entire life. Maybe you've hidden them so well that even your spouse doesn't know that they're there. Maybe you've convinced yourself you're over it because I don't know, you've learned to stuff it away because you're fifty, sixty, seventy years old. But then out of nowhere, something happens. Someone rejects you. Someone doesn't call. Someone forgets your birthday. Someone criticizes you. Someone decides to walk away from you. I mean, there's all sorts of things that can happen that can trigger it. Then all of a sudden, here you are. That little girl, that little boy inside of you. Isn't fifty years old anymore? They're six, seven, eight. They're standing in the kitchen wondering. Why doesn't my mom love me? The way other mothers love their children? That's the thing about trauma. Trauma doesn't always respond to today's circumstances. Sometimes it responds to yesterday's memories. That thing that happened in the past, that's what's opening up that wound. That's why you're having such a big reaction. The situation today may be small. But the big reaction is because of the wound, not because of what's actually happening today. The feelings are decades old. Have you ever noticed that? Have you ever caught yourself thinking, why am I so upset about this? Why is this such a big deal for me right now? Maybe your friend cancelled lunch. Maybe your husband forgot something you told him. Mine does routinely. Maybe i y your adult child didn't answer your text message. Logically you know it's probably not personal, but emotionally emotionally Your heart reacts as if you've been abandoned all over again. Think about it. That's because your nervous system isn't just responding to today. It's responding to every yesterday that looked and felt the same. Jesus take the wheel. Sweet Jesus, please take the will and make this man be done with this business. Please. I can't. I can't with this. Y'all. I'm gonna lose my mind. Like what are the odds? I think the devil likes to mess with me. I think that's what this is. I rebuke you. Anyway, the wound beneath the wound. And then I'm gonna try to finish this up. This is only episode one of four. So often tell people that the argument you're having today usually isn't about today. The tears you're crying today are often about yesterday, yesteryears. The fear you're feeling today isn't always about. Today. It's about the wound underneath the wound. So you got this little surface wound, and you got this great big wound that's underneath it. Think of it like this. Imagine you scrape your knee, and tomorrow someone accidentally bumps the same knee. They're not causing the injury. They're touching a wound that's already there. Emotionally, that's what happens to so many of us. A comment from your boss may actually be about your boss. A comment from your friend may actually be about your friend. It may awaken every moment you felt criticized growing up. A disagreement with your spouse may awaken every moment you felt unhurt. Every moment. A friend forgetting to call you may awaken every moment you felt forgotten. That's why healing isn't just learning better communication. Healing is asking, what old wound did this touch? I'm gonna say it again because you probably can't hear me. Healing is asking, what old wound did this touch? Because if we only deal with today's problems, we miss we will miss yesterday's pain. You know, I did tell him I was gonna be recording this. I bet he's not even thinking about the the racket that he's making outside. I thought he was going to do this out front. Nope, he chooses to do it right outside the window here. Mm-hmm. Cause that makes complete sense. Yeah. Anyway, we're gonna move on a little bit. So the lie that followed me into adulthood and follows many of you. I want to be honest with you. There was a belief that I carried for years that I didn't even realize was running my life. I didn't. Kinda sounded like if my own mother couldn't love me, why would anyone else? If my own mother couldn't love me, who else could? If my own mother couldn't love me, how am I ever gonna be good enough for anybody? Why would I be anything to anybody? Wasn't to my own mother. I never said it out loud. But I lived it. I've questioned compliments, kindness, people's loyalty. I've questioned when people truly loved me. Just waited for them to stop. Somewhere deep inside, I believed love always had an expiration date. Maybe some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. You wait for the other shoe to drop. You just keep thinking. Once they really know me, they'll change. Or they'll leave. Or they'll change and then they'll leave. Or they'll change and start treating me bad and I deserve it. Once they see my flaws, they'll change their mind. They're only here because they don't know the real me yet. But can I tell you something? Those thoughts didn't come from my identity. They came from injury. They came from trauma. They came from a wound that That started talking. And after enough years. I mistook that voice that was talking, that wound that was talking, to be my own voice. If you want to think about your relationships for a minute, not just romantic ones, or I want you to think about it anyway. All of them. Any kind of ship that you're on, as you hear me say. Friendship, familieship, church ships ships church ships. We're gonna roll bloopers and all. Anybody that you come in contact with, ask yourself honestly. Do I have a hard time believing compliments? Do I push people away before they can leave me? Do I overgive because I'm afraid people won't stay? People please her? Do I apologize for everything? Do I feel responsible for everyone's emotions? Do I become anxious when someone is quiet? What's wrong with you? Are you okay? Did I do something? Do I assume I've done something wrong when I'm asking those questions? If you answered yes to several of these. I don't want your first thought to be, what's wrong with me? No, no, no, no, no. We're gonna reword that. I want your first thought to be, what happened that taught me this? There's compassion in that question. There's hope in that question. Because if something was learned, something new can also be learned. Right? So here's something that surprised me in my healing recently. I thought I was dealing with the anger. I wasn't. I was dealing with grief. The anger was simply the armor. Underneath the anger was sadness. Underneath the sadness was a longing, and underneath that longing was love. Love of a little girl who simply wanted her mother. That's what made it hurt so much. Not because I hated her, because I loved her. Children don't stop loving their parents because they're hurt. Most children spend their lives hoping. Maybe this time she'll see me. Maybe this birthday will be different. Maybe this conversation will finally change everything. Maybe if I explain it better. Maybe if I love her enough. Hope is really beautiful. But hope can also keep us standing in front of that empty well, waiting for the water that never comes. Living on hopium. There comes a point in your healing where We have to actually lovingly ask ourselves, am I waiting for someone to become who they've repeatedly shown me that they're not, that they can't be? That's not giving up. That's accepting reality. And acceptance hurts. But acceptance is also what sets us free. Because we stop spending all of our emotional energy trying to change someone who is who never wanted change. Wanting someone to see us for something that we're not. Wanting them to see us for something that we are, wanting something from them that they're not is what I'm trying to say. Again, distractions with noises. So we begin using that energy to heal ourselves. Healing ourselves is so important. So I wrote a letter to the little girl. And I wanna read it for you guys. Sometimes in my mind. I imagine writing a letter to the younger version of myself. Not to tell her everything will be okay, not to promise that life will be easy, but to tell her something she desperately needed to hear. Sweet girl. None of this was your fault. You didn't cause someone's inability to love the way you needed. You were not too emotional. You weren't asking for too much. You were asking for the right person. You were asking, sorry, I can't even read my own writing. You were asking the right person for something they simply didn't know how to give. There's a difference. You weren't wrong for needing comfort. You weren't wrong for needing affection. You weren't wrong. For needing encouragement. Children are supposed to need those things. That's not weakness. That's healthy development. The tragedy isn't you. The tragedy sorry distractions. The tragedy isn't that you needed them. The traged tragedy is that many of your needs went unmet. As I close this episode out. I want to leave you with one thought to sit with until I continue next week. What if? What if the reason you've spoken? What if the reason you've spent your in your whole life trying to prove you're worthy? Is because a little child inside of you never realized she already was. Not because someone finally told her or you. But because no one ever did. And maybe, just maybe, it's time for the adult you to tell her what she should have heard all along. You were always enough. You always deserved love. You were never the problem. Take a deep breath. We got this. When I come back to the next episode, I'm going to talk about the emotion that so many of us fear, and that's anger, and why it may have been one of the most faithful protectors we've ever had. We're going to explore why anger isn't the enemy, why it's been trying to say all these years, and how listening to it with compassion can become one of the first steps towards genuine peace. Because anger was our protector. When you hear the word anger, what comes to your mind? Do you picture someone screaming, throwing things, losing control, being mean, bitter, and hateful? What's anyway, that's what most of us were taught. We were taught that anger is ugly, that anger is dangerous, that anger is sinful, that anger means you're out of control. And because you believed those things, many of us spent years trying to bury it. Trying to bury that anger. Especially those of us who grew up in homes where expression expressions weren't allowed. Any of emotion expression of emotion wasn't safe. Maybe you were told, Stop crying, I'm gonna give you something cry for. You're too sensitive. Could being dramatic. I'll give you something to cry about. Good Christian girls don't act like that. Maybe every emotion you expressed was treated with disrespect, dismissed. So what did you learn? You learned to swallow it. You smiled when your heart was breaking. We've smiled when we've wanted to scream. You've said, I'm okay, I'm fine, while silently begging someone to notice that you weren't. Eventually all of those swallowed emotions, they have to go somewhere, right? Because emotions don't just disappear. They wait, sometimes for years, sometimes for decades, waiting for someone to finally ask. What have you been trying to tell me? Anger is an alarm system. I want you to imagine your home. If your smoke detector went off in the middle of the night, what would you do? Would you grab a broom and smash the alarm? Probably not. Because the alarm isn't the problem. The alarm is trying to tell you something. You would ask, What's causing the alarm? Is there smoke? Is there fire? Is my family safe? The alarm isn't the enemy. It's your warning, right? I believe anger works the same way. Anger is emotional smoke. It tells us something important has happened. A boundary was crossed. A need was ignored. A wound was touched. You something was devalued. You were disrespected. you weren't protected somehow, you weren't heard somehow. I mean, a ton of wounds. Someone someone wasn't loved the way they deserved to be loved. The question isn't how did I get my anger? How do I get rid of it? The better question is what is my anger trying to project? What is it trying to protect me from? Because every time we silence the alarm without looking for the fire, the fire keeps burning. So I'll go more into this on the next episode. that's it for today. I thank you guys. As always, I wish that you will please, please take the time to Go to TikTok. Like my page. Like my stories. Do the things. I ask that you also Pay attention to all the commercials that I have on here. I know this is a long one. They're probably all gonna be long. Stay along for the ride. Send me an email to backporchconfessions at gmail.com. Make sure you comment on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you're listening. Comment, give me, give me a review. at least do the five stars. Share me out, even if it is just sharing it out to yourself somewhere else, share me out. It helps me, it helps to promote my podcast. and to get me in front of people because I really do feel divinely led to do this. I thank you all for being here. As always, have a wonderful day. I love you all. Gravesb41: Y'all, let me tell you about one of my favorite little gyms back home in Robinson, Illinois. If you're looking for boutique style that feels good, fits right, and doesn't break the bank, you have to stop by Polished Boutique, owned by my sweet friend, Mindy, and her two friends, Jennifer and Valerie. And it's ran with heart, y'all. Polished is one of those places where you're not just shopping, you're family. From on-trend outfits, cozy everyday staples, statement accessories, and deals that make your wallet smile, Polished has something for every woman, every season of life. So if you're anywhere near Robinson, Illinois, go see Mindy and her girls at Polished Boutique. Tell them Back porch confession sent you. And don't be surprised if you leave feeling a little more confident than when you walked in. Polished Boutique, where style meets heart. Hey beautiful people, it's Barbara here from Backport's Confessions. You know, I am only gonna share what I truly love. And y'all, this one's a game changer. Our Way Skin by AYXA is a simple, luxurious skincare created with real women in mind. Think clean ingredients, formulas you can see and feel, smoother texture, that healthy glow and confidence looking back at you in the mirror. Whether you're juggling family, work, or just need a little self-care moment, Ixa's products give you spa quality results right at home. I'm obsessed with Our Way Skin and the way it makes my skin feel buttery soft. Go check out Our Way Skin by Ixa at ourwayskin.com and tell them Barbara sent you because your skin deserves to be cared for your way. That's a wrap on this episode of Back Porch Confessions. Where the tea is hot, the stories are real, and we never apologize for keeping it honest. Produced and edited by the magic makers over at Zay Media. Until next time, keep your porch talk spicy and your secrets safe, mostly.