Emotional Baggage Left Over From Toxic Relationships

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47:00

Emotional Baggage Left Over From Toxic Relationships

by Lisa A. Romano

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Emotional baggage refers to the negative energy and scars we carry around with us from experience to experience. Learning to release our emotional baggage helps to set us free, raise our vibrations, and heal our minds, bodies, and souls. Life Coach Lisa A. Romano breaks it down in this episode.

Meet your Teacher

New York, NY, USA

Meet your Teacher

New York, NY, USA

Transcript

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast. My name is Lisa A. Romano. I am a life coach, Bestselling author, YouTube vlogger, Meditation teacher, And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse. I am a believer in the power of an organized mind. My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life. May your heart feel blessed, Your mind feel expanded, And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast. So today we're going to be talking about emotional baggage left over by toxic relationships and some of the things that you can do to get past it. So emotional baggage, It sounds pretty horrible to think that so many of us could be carrying around emotional baggage. It makes us feel like we're damaged goods, But the reality is we're not damaged goods at all. We're human. And when we have a painful experience and that experience is unresolved emotionally and psychologically, Then yeah, We carry the scar of that experience. And I have found in my own life that emotional baggage that I continue to repress and suppress and deny and not look at for a plethora of reasons only made this emotional baggage even heavier. So if you think about emotional baggage as luggage, Luggage that you're carrying around from relationship to relationship, I've also found that unresolved childhood trauma will surface inside interpersonal relationships that I have as an adult. And if I'm not careful about my patterns, If I'm not careful about my fears, If I don't observe what I observe or witness what I witness in the mental field, Every once in a while something from the past can creep in and I can actually respond to someone in the now the same way I did when I was younger, When I was struggling more with things like codependency and unawareness and a lack of self-awareness. And so it's definitely an ongoing process to learn how to deal with emotional baggage. I don't consider anybody who has emotional baggage damaged goods. What I do consider them is people, People who love and the more emotional baggage that you carry, Sometimes that's an indicator of just how deeply you have loved. I mean, Think about it. You love someone, You trust them, This person betrays you, This person lies to you. You find out that this person isn't who they said they were. I mean, That is devastating when you have opened up your heart to someone. When you have met someone who is highly charismatic, As in the case of a narcissist or grandiose narcissist and they love bomb you, They idealize you and you trust this person. You don't understand that there could be a hidden agenda or an ulterior motive. You open up your heart. And if you're somebody who craves validation, Craves connection, Then unfortunately you're going to be a target for a relationship like this with a narcissist because you need to feel seen. And that's the hook. A narcissist will make you feel seen very early on in the relationship in the hopes that you will trust them, Drop your guard, And then they can move into the heart space and where they do the most damage. And so if you've survived a toxic relationship, I mean, Like I said earlier, You've been cheated on, You've been marginalized, You're like, What's up? You've been financially abused. You have been put through the wringer when it comes to mind games. If you have experienced toxic abuse by a parent, This is particularly devastating because these are the people that were supposed to protect you and that has not taken place. And as a result, You're struggling with this childhood trauma, Which can be seen as emotional baggage. Now we all take what happens in the past into future relationships. As it is below, So shall it be above. So if I have these fears that are below the veil of consciousness, Those fears just don't disappear. I personally believe that there is no such thing as separation. You can't separate my non-physical self from my physical self. And when you go deeper and you realize that every atom in your being that makes you matter is 99. 999% space. So human beings are far more non-physical than we are physical. But because we live in a physical 3D world and our eyes can only see a very small portion of what's really happening all around us. And because we see, We tend to, Well, We think we see through space and we do, We have this illusion that space is empty, But space is filled with interstitial stuff that we can't see. It's quite fascinating. And the reason I bring it up is because we need to understand that we're mostly space as human beings. So our non-physical stuff, The stuff that we can't touch, Our emotions, Right? It is mostly us. So people say, Oh, You're overly emotional. Well, That's because I'm mostly non-physical and my emotions are non-physical, Although they create an onslaught of physical chemical reactions in my body and in my mind. And although my brain is this, It's an organ, It can be seen as physical, It behaves when triggered with certain body responses. So I could have had a traumatic event when I was three or four, Have a similar experience as a 56 year old woman. I could smell something, See something, Experience a flash from the corner of my eye. And suddenly I'm feeling the way I did when I was three years old. That's emotional baggage. But it's also normal considering the situation that I was in and I am in today. So a lot of us feel shame when it comes to emotional baggage. I know that when I was dating, Before I was married, I heard from one man in particular say to me, You're damaged goods. And that really insulted me because I didn't see myself as necessarily damaged. I mean, I knew I had some stuff I had to deal with, But it certainly didn't feel right to be assaulted verbally that way by another human being who had just as much damage as I did in my humble opinion. And so I think it's important that when we think about this idea of emotional baggage, We understand that it's unresolved trauma. And that's not our fault. If I'm in a relationship with someone who is abusive, Who is toxic, Who is narcissistic, Yes, I have to discern and yes, I have to set boundaries. But if I was lured in by somebody who said they were someone and they turned out not to be that person and I trusted this person and I'm hurt as a result of this person not being who they said they were, I don't feel ashamed for the scars that that person has left on my being or on my mind. Is it my responsibility to face it and to deal with it? Sure. But I'm not going to carry a whole lot of shame around me because I'm bearing the scars of a deceptive person or I'm bearing the scars of someone who was deceptive and who was abusive in other ways. I'm not going to add or layer upon this emotional baggage that I have with shame. It's hard enough dealing with the after effects of a toxic relationship. It's hard enough dealing with childhood trauma on a day to day basis. It's difficult enough to deal with triggers. It's difficult enough to remember the names that you were called. That's difficult enough. Adding shame on top of emotional baggage. In my opinion, Just isn't necessary. Although many of us will struggle with this, Especially if we've attracted someone into our life that we have trusted. This is a big, Big red flag. If you trust someone and you share with them a boo boo of yours, If you share with them a childhood traumatic experience, If you let them in on some secret of yours and they use it against you, In my humble opinion, That is a huge red flag of narcissism. This idea that someone knows that you're already wounded in this spot and they come along and they stick their finger in it, Pour some salt in it, Add some vinegar and swirl it all up. I mean seriously, Where is the decency in that? Where is the empathy? There's very little empathy from someone who can do that to you. So I think that's something to really pay attention to. So it's bad enough that you're dealing with the aftershock of a toxic relationship. You don't need to feel guilty or ashamed that now this is what you're dealing with. So emotional baggage means that there's stuff within us that has caused us to be afraid. Maybe we are, These are some of the signs that you're carrying toxic baggage or emotional baggage. You live in fear that you're not good enough. You live in fear that people are going to leave you. You find out that you're hypersensitive. So you're always analyzing what your partner is saying or what your friends are saying. You're trying to figure out what the meaning is behind what they said. And this is not just with one person that you don't trust. This tends to be a trait now after this toxic relationship has ended. So it's sort of like you trust no one now. So you have this hypervigilance, If you will, Regarding what people say and what they think. You can be controlling. You could want to know where are you going? What are you doing? Who are you talking to? Give me your phone. Give me your Facebook password. Give me your Instagram password. If you trusted me and if you loved me, You'd let me see everything. So there's this control thing. So the control thing is really tied to you not wanting to get hurt again. So we can be controlling after we've experienced deception in a prior relationship. We can find that we're very needy. We're very clingy. Like we don't want to be alone. So we can be jittery and jumping and want to acquiesce to everything our partner has said, Everything that our partner wants us to do. We're so needy. We're so afraid of upsetting this person or we're so afraid of abandonment that we think that if we do everything this person wants us to do, Then we won't go through this situation again. Another sign that we have some emotional baggage that needs to be dealt with after a toxic relationship is jealousy. So imagine that you were never a jealous person and you discover that this narcissistic man or this narcissistic female or this friend of yours did something behind your back. So if you're in a relationship, You discover that your partner cheated on you. If it's a friend situation, You discover that your friend is not who they said they were going to be. You discover that in your marriage situation you've been cheated on. So you can discover within yourself envy or jealousy. So you can be envious or jealous that your friend has other friends or you could be jealous that your wife is talking to other people and you might feel threatened by that. But if you've never been a very jealous or envious person prior to a toxic relationship and you've been put through the ring or by this really ridiculous toxic relationship and you discover that you're suddenly jealous, You need to know that this is baggage. You're afraid that if you drop your guard that the new person is going to cheat on you and you might miss the signs. So that's an important indicator that there's stuff that you have to deal with. Another sign that people carry around with them is this idea that they're constantly wanting to get inside their partner's head. So it's almost like they feel or you feel like you're threatened by not knowing what your partner wants and is thinking all the time. So if you're carrying emotional baggage, You might be the one that's saying, Well, What do you think? What do you think? How do you feel? Like there's this constant desire to get inside the other person's head. You want the person to reveal themselves to you. It's frightening for you to feel like they're not sharing with you. It's like the space between the two of you becomes terrifying. You don't want this thing to happen again. You don't want to be cheated on. You don't want to be the last to know. You don't want to be the laughing stock again. And so you wanting to know what your partner is thinking all the time is a way that makes you feel like you're less powerless, Less off balance and more in control. What this is really indicating is a sense of powerlessness. This relationship, This new relationship is making you feel afraid and insecure and as much as you want it, It's also this mixed bag of emotional baggage or this emotional pain or this unresolved trauma. So that it's this mix, Right? So you want this person, But you don't want to be made a fool of. You want to trust this person, But you really don't. You want to trust this person, But you're afraid to trust this person because you don't want to be caught off guard again and you're afraid of being cheated on again or lied to again. And so there's this really this mix of wanting to trust, Being unable to trust and really toxic behaviors of your own, You know, In lots of cases sabotaging what could be a new relationship, But you don't really know that you're doing it if you're not aware that this emotional baggage has become a thing. And so this is something that we really need to look at and we really need to figure out how can I look at this so that I don't sabotage the next relationship. Another sign that you're carrying emotional baggage from a toxic relationship is your emotional unavailability. So when you discover that you have, You've met someone and they're trying to get to know you and you think you can trust them, But you sense in yourself that you're holding back. You may sense that you're holding back. Your partner may even say, You tend to feel distant. I feel like you're pushing me away. That's something to really look at. What I'm talking about when I say emotional unavailability, I'm not talking about healthy boundaries. I'm talking about the ability to recognize in yourself when you're in a relationship and you're deliberately holding back from the partner, Even though, Even though you're sensing that you can trust them, You're sensing that no, No, No, No, I'm going to hold back. I'm not revealing myself. Now you can't have a healthy relationship unless you're willing to open up and reveal yourself. So this is another sign that you're carrying emotional baggage from a toxic relationship because when we're holding back and especially if we've not been this type of a person before, Especially if we've always been someone who could open up, You know, After a toxic relationship, Especially with someone who is highly manipulative and deceitful, We are scarred. And so we might find that, You know, We're on the dating app, So we're meeting different people, But we're very reserved and we're finding it very difficult to break through and open up and share ourselves with this person. So if you're tending to find within yourself that you're emotionally unavailable, It's really, Really difficult for you to open up and let people in. This is a sign that you're carrying toxic emotional baggage. Another sign that you are carrying emotional baggage is that you tend to treat people poorly. You expect people to hurt you. You are not trusting and you treat people like they're criminals. You treat people like they've done something wrong when they haven't done anything wrong. And this is a way that you might be feeling, At least in the moment, In control. You're afraid of being in position number two or even equal. You're afraid of having your, You be caught, You know, With your pants down. You're afraid that if you let go and trust this person that they're going to hurt you. And so you staying on top of them, Where'd you go? What'd you do treating them like they're a criminal really puts this person in the position where they're always defending themselves. So it is a bit of a mind game. And this new person is paying for the sins of the last person and that's not healthy. And we really need to look at that when it comes to emotional baggage. Another sign that you're carrying emotional baggage is that you keep talking about your ex. So you're with a new partner and you just find your mind wandering to the ex partner. What are they doing? Who are they with? And you find that it's very difficult for you to let go. And you are also finding it difficult to not bring the old partner up in the new relationship. And so what this does is that the new partner will eventually start to feel invisible, Start to feel like a replacement for the ex. They'll start to feel like you're really not emotionally available. You're not in the right head space to have this relationship and be there for me as you're partner. And this can be really troubling in a new budding relationship if you continue to bring up the ex. And while it might be normal in the beginning to talk about past relationships, If this is something that's ongoing and you're not able to release within the relationship, Then you have some work to do. And the good news is that anything that you can see in yourself is something that you can change. When we live below the veil of consciousness and we're constantly looking outside of ourselves, Which most of us do, We have pain on the inside and we think that if these people on the outside would just shift, Then we would be happy. I know that that's a very immature way to view the world and that's the way I viewed the world for three and a half decades. I just could not wrap my head around this idea that the people that I love, That I was trying so hard to please, Wouldn't do the same in return for me. I didn't understand this idea of empathy, That some people are empathy impaired, Where other people seem to have tremendous empathy, Naturally slip into the skin of other people, Naturally want to make sure that everybody's okay, Naturally caretaker, Or naturally nurturing, Or natural givers. I just thought that everybody in the world, If you treated people nicely, Very immature and very one-sided way to view the world, But that's what I thought. I thought if you were nice to people, People would just be nice in return. There really was no idea of narcissism at that time. And I was just beginning to understand codependency when I was diagnosed as codependent by a psychotherapist, Which changed my world. And being able to recognize that there are people who are very different, Very different than you, Really helped me take a step back and learn to observe myself. And in observing myself, I was able to piece together these ideas that allowed me to finally understand that what was wrong was not me, It was my programming. And that really allowed me the ability to open up my mindset and really look at what I was doing wrong in relationships. So there were times where I was ready to be in a relationship, But in most cases I wasn't. In most cases, Especially right after the breakup with my ex-husband, I was in no way, Shape, Or form ready for a relationship. I had tremendous emotional baggage. And the real shocker for me was thinking that there was still more work to do. Every relationship after that relationship proved to me that there was still more work to do. But the good news is you can do this work if you can see these traits in yourself, If you can be honest with yourself, That you're not very trusting, That you tend to be controlling, That you can be hyper vigilant when it comes to your partners, That you can be needy, That you can be clingy, You can want constant reassurance, You can be sabotaging this relationship. If you can see that in yourself, Then you can start to unpack this emotional baggage. So when we think about baggage, Think about luggage, Thinking about going on vacation. You're going to go to a completely different country, You're going for six months, And you have all of this baggage that you're bringing with you on this airplane. What happens when you get to the hotel or you get to your new location? You unpack it. You open up the suitcase and you start taking out whatever needs to be taken out. So if you're thinking about all these clothes, These shoes, And your toiletries and everything that you're bringing with you on vacation, If you think of them as emotional baggage or the things that you need to unpack, Then it's easier for your mind to recognize that keeping it concealed, Keeping these emotions packed, If you will, Really is not helping you. Because my view is that we've come to resolve these psychological conflicts, What a lot of people refer to as cognitive dissonance. And I don't believe that we can separate ourselves psychologically or spiritually, Mentally or physically. I feel like it's just one continuum, Right? It's like the entire universe is a quantum field and we're all a part of it. I am a cell in the organism that is about us as you are. So we're all these tiny cells and we all interact with one another through the field, Through the quantum field. And so it doesn't make sense to suppress these emotions because the emotions are there, Non-physically, Emotionally, And they will affect me physically. How? They'll manifest in my day-to-day relationships. And so keeping them stuffed isn't going to help me. The idea is to open up the suitcase and unpack it. So I think it's important that we recognize that the goal really is to resolve our own emotional baggage. And it starts with loving ourselves and being kind and compassionate with ourselves and recognizing that emotional baggage is basically unresolved stuff. It's unresolved trauma. And it is not your fault if you've been in a difficult relationship with someone who took advantage of you, Someone who exploited you emotionally, Someone who betrayed you, Someone who lied to you. It is not your fault if as a child you were born to dysfunctional people who did a terrible job at nurturing you or who were abusive. It's not your fault if you've carried this weight with you, But it is your responsibility as an adult if you want to have a healthy relationship with another healthy adult because the universe is indifferent. So if you're unhealthy and you're carrying emotional baggage and you want to trust someone and you want to be trusted but you don't, The universe is only going to mirror back to you what it is, What is your frequency. And sometimes people say to me, Oh, What do you have to bring frequency into it? Because it's the whole basis of reality is frequency. It's wave particles. And at our core, We're more wave particles than we are matter. And so understanding ourselves at a subatomic level and how our thoughts affect our atomic energy just makes sense to someone like me. And I hope it resonates with many of you. This idea that the energy that we're giving off, Regardless of the cause, Will impact what shows up in our life today. And so if I can shift the way I feel on the inside, So if I can face my stuff, If I can unpack my emotional baggage, Then that's going to allow me to show up at a different frequency. I'm going to carry a different vibe. My partners will feel that I have a different vibe. We all know when we're dipping into negative frequencies or negative thoughts. They're one and the same. And we all know when we're moving out of it. We can all tell. And so I think it's important if you're someone who is willing to look at, Well, What is my emotional baggage? How can I deal with this now so that my future relationships are healthier and I'm a part of that? So the first thing you want to do is you want to recognize what's going on. You want to forgive yourself and you have to make a declaration to yourself. You have to promise yourself that you're going to do everything you can to heal or unpack this emotional baggage so you don't carry it into the next relationship. Why? So that you can experience what it means to be in a fulfilling relationship with another human being. If this is something you do so desire. Studies prove that human beings who find themselves in healthy long-term relationships are actually healthier physically and mentally. We tend to thrive better when we're in healthy relationships. And I think that the healthier we are, The healthier our relationships. It's like our gardens. Anthony and I are just putting in a beautiful garden and we're tending to the soil. We're watering the soil. We're making sure that the soil gets enough sun. So the healthier the foundation, The healthier the trees, The healthier the bushes. It just makes sense. So the healthier you are, The more loving you are to yourself, The more compassionate you are to yourself, The more empathy that you have for the self, The better your future relationships with being will be. And that's a beautiful thing because you deserve that because you're enough. We're all enough. We just have to unpack our stuff. And so you want to make sure that you're not shaming yourself. If you are shaming yourself for being wounded, That's no bueno. That's something dear one that you have to just decide, Turn it off. I'm not doing it. It's hard enough, Like I said earlier, Carrying the scars of a toxic prior relationship. Try not to layer. It's a term that I use. It's not accepted, But it's a term that I use to help explain this thing that we do when we layer shame on top of an emotional wound. So imagine someone who's been abused in childhood and they said, Here's the abuse. Here's the original wound. And on top of it, There's shame as if the child is responsible for the wound. They're not responsible for the wound. But imagine if we took shame out of the picture and we just sat in the feeling space of what actually happened. That is what it means to unpack. It's to look at what I'm afraid of. So if I am controlling, If I am trying to always get inside my partner's head, If I am needy, If I am codependent, If I'm chasing after approval, It's only when I stop, I hit the pause button and I acknowledge this is what I'm doing and I go deeper. Then I ask myself, Well, Why am I doing this? One of the questions that I ask my clients and many people in my 12 week class is ask yourself, Why do you think you do that thing that you do? What are you avoiding? What are you trying to control? What don't you want to happen? What are you in resistance to? If you're like me, Oftentimes you discover that what you are in resistance to often shows up. So the exact thing that you don't want to happen, That you try so hard to avoid happens. We see this phenomenon when we say, I'm late for work, I'm late for work, I'm late for work and we get stuck in ridiculous traffic, Traffic like we've never seen before and we're hitting every red light going to work. We've never hit every red light in five miles, But on this day, When I'm telling myself, I can't be late, I can't be late, I can't be late, I'm late. Or I need to get out of the doctor's office by three o'clock and it's probably going to be such a wait and I don't want to wait and I don't want to wait for this doctor, You end up waiting hours. So it's almost like all of the energy that you put out resisting this thing happens. And I think we need to pay attention to what we are in resistance to and get more realistic about our expectations and try to find a way to be non-resistant to everything. And that brings me to my next point. When you are in a relationship with someone, The reality is you can get hurt. When you love someone, You are opening yourself up to that potential. I know that loving Anthony means that I could get hurt, But early on in our relationship, I could feel the fear coming up of what if he cheats on me? What if he lies to me? What if all of this is just a big act? So I had all of these thoughts run through my head because I was in a 12 year relationship that was very dissatisfying, It was unhealthy, Very destabilizing. And then I dated a string of people and found that many of them were untrustworthy, Not who they said they were. And so of course, These scars left me wounded and I had the energy of, Well, What if it happens again? And I really, Really like this guy. What if it happens again? And I could feel it start to stir within me. And I promised myself. I promised myself, I had a long talk with myself and said, You're not doing this. You're not going to live in fear of the what if. And then what I tried to do was I asked myself, Well, What can you control and what can't you control? I can't control what anyone does in my life. I can't control my children at this stage of their life. I could never control my children really. But we think we can, But we really can't in many of the situations. You can tell a three year old, Don't touch that button and that the minute you turn your back, That three year old is touching that button. It was the resistance to don't touch the button. And so we fool ourselves into thinking that if we engage in these behaviors, Then we're going to be able to avoid this outcome. In my situation with my ex husband, He actually admitted seven years after we broke up and said, I thought that if I basically destroyed you, You'd come back to me. So here he was trying to control an outcome he couldn't control. When we are married, We're dating people, At any point in time, This person can up and leave us and decide they no longer want to be with us. Or they may turn out to be someone that we didn't know they actually were. That's devastating when that happens. When I met my husband and I felt all of these fears coming up, I made a pact with myself and said, I'm not going to worry about what if and if this what if happens, Then I'll be okay. Because I'm going to show up 100% my authentic self. I'm going to give this relationship everything. And if this relationship doesn't work out because of something that he's done, I'll be able to look at myself in the mirror because I ultimately can't control his decisions. I can't control his belief systems. I can't control what he thinks or how he views me. But I can control how I show up and I'm going to give it my best shot. I wanted to know that the second time around when it came to marriage that I did it completely authentically. I wasn't playing games. I wasn't playing mind games and I wasn't going to be codependent. I wasn't going to say what someone wanted me to say and I wasn't going to hold back. So I accepted that I could be hurt the next time. Now when we're struggling with emotional baggage, We don't realize so often what's happening below the veil of consciousness is that we are living in fear of this thing happening again. So we're trying to control an outcome, An energetic outcome that we really can't control. And we don't realize often that we're sabotaging the relationship. That by experiencing this person as someone who's distrusting, And we don't even know if they're distrusting, Pushes them away. By being emotionally unavailable and playing mind games because we're afraid, Pushes people away. By not trusting, Pushes people away. By holding on to the ex. How many people have I coached who have held on to the ex when dating new people and the second relationship falls apart? They sabotage the relationship because they never let go of the ex. But they think that if the new person doesn't know that they're still talking or texting with the ex, That it's okay. Nothing goes unseen by the universe because everything is energy. And just because someone doesn't know that you're doing this thing, It's there. It's out in the ethers. And if we all learn to really value how we're showing up, I really think that could help us heal from emotional baggage as well. Because if I know that I'm afraid and I look at that lion in the face and I grab it by its mane and I say, Look here lion, You will not control me. Even if this outcome happens, I'm going to be okay. Emotional baggage, Think about emotional baggage as being stuffed in a suitcase, Right? And what do you stuff? You stuff all of your fears inside the suitcase. All of your concerns, All of your what if this happens and what if that happens is in the suitcase. And that's really what's causing this resistance in you and sabotaging a future relationship. And so what you want to learn to do is to open up. You want to communicate, Even if you're afraid. I would much rather deal with someone who says to me, Boy, I'm fighting the urge to ask you for your Facebook password. I know that's totally inappropriate, But my last girlfriend cheated on me with her ex boyfriend from high school and it started on Facebook through instant messaging. And it left a few scars on this boy's old heart. And I can feel myself wanting to even check your Facebook, But I'm not going to because I know that's my stuff. That's amazingly insightful. That's someone who recognizes that I have this dissonance and I have this fear, But I'm not going to act on it, But I'm going to give you an opportunity to share with you my fear and see what happens. What happens when you share your fears with someone? Does this person respond, Do they recoil? What happens with them? So I do think it's important that you open up about anything that's bothering you, That you tell the truth. So like if you were cheated on by your husband and he messed around with someone at work, Then talking about that is helpful. Talking about the anxiety around it is helpful. Not all the time, But certainly opening up to this new person so that they understand where your anxiety is coming from. It's not healthy, However, To use what happened to you as a way to manipulate the other person into satisfying your anxiety. You want to try to move into a place where you recognize that this is a trauma trigger for you, But not act on it. So it's stuff that you're working on. Having a therapist to work with that understands trauma from the past, Betrayal trauma, Abandonment trauma, These are very important concepts to understand when you're carrying them with you. And it's extremely important to work with someone who understands what it feels like to be this vulnerable, To be this raw, And to also be someone who's trying not to allow the past to dictate your future and sabotage a future relationship. It's really hard once your heart has been ripped open to imagine that there are people out there that you could really trust. There was a time where I just assumed that there was absolutely nobody trustworthy in the world. And I hear this in the Facebook groups often where men and women will kind of like make blanket statements like, There are no good women left or there are no good men left in the world. And I just don't believe that. Another thing that you want to do is you really want to check the facts. When you've been wounded by a partner in the past, It's really easy to paint this broad stroke and just assume that everyone is going to be like the last guy or everyone's going to be like the last woman. It's really difficult to get past that when this emotional baggage is so heavy. That's why it's so important to stay conscious. It's so important to become self-aware. I think journaling is an excellent way to stay on top of this. So how can you use this in your everyday life? Well, Let's say you're assuming that your partner never tells you anything. I hear that a lot too. My partner never talks to me. He never tells me anything. Now maybe you had a situation in the past where you had a partner that was very secretive, That was very deceptive, Opened up businesses in your name and you didn't even know it, Bought a house, Forged your signature and you didn't know it. And this person was very sullen and you didn't push too hard because when you push too hard, He or she got upset. So you walked around on eggshells and that was your life experience until it all went kaput and it fell apart. So now you're trying this relationship thing again and you meet someone and you find that you're saying similar things about this person and the new person says, That's not true. I tell you a lot of different things. At that point, What you want to do is you want to hit the pause button as I like to say and take some time and to journal. Be open-minded about this. Ask yourself, Is it true that my partner never tells me anything? And if you start to discover that that's not true and you have to understand that that was your trauma speaking, That was your fear speaking, That was a pattern, That was a program, It's literally wired into your brain. It's a neurological program. Your brain fears secrecy. Your brain fears your partner not telling you things because your brain has been scarred by the partner who didn't tell you things and who ended up being deceitful. So you can see how easy it would be to be in this situation and just assume people aren't telling you things even when they are. So be willing to fact check that. The next step, When you discover that you were being a little short-sighted and maybe a little bit unfair, Then you can actually take this as an opportunity to share with your new partner what you learned about yourself and to ask for forgiveness and to just explain what was going on with you and that you appreciate the fact that they are open. You appreciate the fact that they do share with things with you and you're going to do your best to make note of that more often so you're not walking around carrying this emotional baggage and the fear of being left out because of a situation that happened in the past. At the end of the day, What's going to help you most is to not sweep past emotional trauma under the rug. What is going to help you the most is dealing with it. Now one of the problems that you might find, And I found this in the healing community, Is so often times victims of emotional abuse have been so marginalized and told that they had nothing to be upset about that it's difficult to even recognize that you have been abused. So that's why I wanted to create this session and help people realize that if you're showing up this way in relationships, You've been scarred and it's totally okay to acknowledge that you've been scarred. You have to recognize that most people who emotionally abuse you are never going to admit it. That's all part of the emotional abuse. So emotional abusers don't say, Oh yes, I'm emotionally abusing you. So you think maybe it's you. You think maybe you're crazy. You think maybe you're seeing things incorrectly. You think maybe you're too much because that's what you've been told. You're too much. You're over dramatic. You're too sensitive. You're crazy. Why would I even listen to you? You're losing your mind and so on and so forth. I never said that. You made that up. So you're actually being gaslit and you are doubting your reality. And so that's why it can be difficult. One of the aspects of emotional baggage and why it's so difficult to heal is because if you're in a really toxic relationship with someone who gaslights you, Then your mind has been turned to mashed potatoes and you don't even know that the person that was abusing you was in fact abusing you because they sounded so concrete. They sounded so self-assured that they weren't abusing you. So you end up after this relationship thinking it must have been me. So until you can say, Yes, I was a victim of emotional abuse and this is the byproduct. This is the effect. The abuse is the cause and my jealousy, My control issues, My wanting to get inside your head, My neediness, My clinginess, My fear of the what if, All of that is the effect of this cause. Now it's within me. Now I have these behavioral issues I have to deal with. I have these distortions in the way that I'm thinking and I'm perceiving. I have to deal with that and that's not my fault. We don't want to lay our shame on top of this. We want to say to ourselves, I see this, I see how I'm behaving and this is what I'm going to do to fix it and this is what I'm going to do to correct it. This is an exciting time. Those of us, I can tell you, I swept things under the rug for my entire adult life. I mean, Well, Young adult life until I was about 35, 36 in that age category and I got sicker and sicker, Physically sick. So what I was carrying around with me emotionally, That's why I say you cannot separate your emotional self from your psychological self, From your chemical self. You can't from your vibrational self. You just can't. Everything's connected. So here I was stuffing all of these emotions and what happened? I was getting sicker and sicker and sicker and sicker. So there was a consequence and it wasn't until I started to unpack my stuff and in my case, I was highly codependent, I had childhood abandonment issues, Childhood trauma issues. I had relationship issues with my ex-husband and trauma from that relationship, Familial trauma and it wasn't until I began to unpack it that I started to feel better in my body and things began to clear. So this is an amazing time for you. So if you are somebody who is struggling with emotional baggage and you are brave enough and courageous enough and warrior-like enough to say, Yeah, That sounds like me, You are an amazing human being, Especially if you are willing to do everything you can to fix it and to unpack it. And I just hope that this session is helping you do that. The world needs you. We're all connected and every ounce of you that heals or every aspect of you that heals, Every layer of you that heals, Every layer of you that heals and becomes more light body activated if you will, It becomes lighter, The entire planet benefits because we're all connected through the quantum field. So thank you so much for being here and thank you for being someone who is willing to look within and heal your stuff and then take it out into the world and manifest a healthy relationship which then in turn quantifies the love that you are.