Passion For Or Addicted To? (Season 4)

It's time for The Stuck Stops Here.

This is season 4,

Episode 4.

Long way from anywhere I can't see and I can't feel.

Lost inside everywhere This is how I got real.

If money measured honesty You're the poorest one I know.

Giving up was hard for me Had nowhere else to go.

Today's podcast is called Passion 4 or Addiction 2 followed by some question marks.

How many question marks?

Three and a half.

So my name is Tammy and you are?

LWNOLI.

We are happy to be here.

Post election day.

Yes.

The post election results are as messy as the first 40 years of my life.

And we still have no idea what's going on.

Exactly.

So moving along from anything inflammatory.

So today I'm calling this Passion 4 or Addiction 2 because I want to talk about addictive behaviors that we learn by the time we're three.

As a result of toxic parenting.

So when parents emotionally ignore their children by the time they are three they can't verbalize it but they feel invalidated,

Disempowered,

Disconnected,

Nullified,

Not valued and no self worth.

That is such a young age though.

It is.

And I read talks about how powerful that early impact is because parents with unhealed emotional wounds they are unable to authentically connect with their children and that lack of authentic connection leads these three year olds to spend the rest of their lives questioning their worth.

So they learn very early on that there is no inner truth,

There's no inner self,

There's no core or authenticity.

They have to go to the outside world for forms of validation and reassurance because they are raised to believe that will cure that perpetual pain of rejection that gnaws at you from the time you were very little until you decide to heal.

It's like a bucket with a hole in it.

It's a horrible cycle and it never ends because you will never get any peace or contentment from anything outside.

So if you grew up believing you had to work hard and jump through hoops and prove yourself to be seen,

To be loved and to be valued,

You will apply that pattern throughout your entire life and it's an unhealthy relational dynamic with yourself,

Your partner,

Your career,

Your social circle and your children.

I used to think something was wrong with me until I realized I was carrying the enormous weight of unresolved generational trauma and in my mid-40s I decided that that was going to end with me.

I realized that myself and a lot of other people are addicted to escaping reality and the obvious signs of our desire to escape reality is substance abuse,

Eating disorders,

Gambling addictions,

Alcoholism,

Workaholism,

Money and materialistic overconsumption and sleep disorders.

Those all make sense to us but there's also other addictions that mask themselves as passion.

I have a list of eight and there's probably 20 million but I can't write 20 million.

I narrowed it down to eight that I could relate to.

So socially accepted and normalized responses to toxic upbringing,

Extreme defensive behavior and hyper reactivity.

So we are hyper vigilant to your surroundings,

You easily hold that short fuse,

Freaking out.

That's all normal.

They freaked out because of this,

They freaked out of that,

They didn't sleep because they were concerned about that.

That seems normal and it's not normal and it's not healthy but so many of us have that behavior addiction that it seems normal.

Number two,

Not speaking up for yourself and regretting it later and people pleasing.

That's also called codependency.

I think that was me.

Me too,

Me too.

And there were so many times I didn't want to hurt people's feelings and even if someone hurt me,

I didn't want to speak up and hurt their feelings.

I still was so concerned.

Even now,

If somebody says to me something like,

Oh,

I'm so sorry,

I did this and that and I'll make an excuse for them like,

Oh,

You know what?

We all do that.

We all go through that.

That's one of the things I do.

I like to make everybody feel better.

It's keeping the peace at enormous self-sacrifice.

Been there,

Done that,

Didn't work.

Didn't work.

Not for me.

Totally get it.

Again,

Very common and socially accepted.

It's not healthy.

But you feel powerless afterward.

You walk away and you say,

Why didn't I stand up for myself or why did I back down like that?

And I'm about to tell you why.

Tell me.

But yes,

You're absolutely right.

You're absolutely right.

Number three,

Blame.

There is a perpetual lack of accountability in toxic families.

So your history is a result of your reactions to experiences.

And your parents blame everybody else but themselves.

And so you learn to.

And then it's a form of,

I would say,

Blame and a refusal to take responsibility is a form of toxic self-centeredness.

So we don't ever take a look at ourselves and the role we play in our own unhappiness.

You're trying to people please because you don't know any other way and you're addicted to it.

And then you get mad because nobody appreciates what you do.

You are now playing the role of a victim.

And I excelled at that for 40 something years.

Did you?

No more.

But yes,

It's a very easy thing to do and be blind to how unhealthy it is.

Number four,

Busyness addiction,

Also called fear-based distraction.

So if you are running 100 miles an hour,

Chasing anything,

Striving,

Perfecting,

Measuring,

Counting with a frenetic mindset,

You're avoiding what you'd be forced to acknowledge if you slowed down.

That quiet is frightening.

So we like to fill up that with noise so we don't ever really have to deal with the pain we're in.

We rely on others and use every situation to bring happiness.

You know,

The situations and experiences now become transactions.

What am I doing?

What am I getting out of this?

What's this doing for me?

So if you're not being productive every second of every day,

Then you're failing,

Which is not true at all.

Right.

We talked about perfectionism also a long while back about how it's the death of creativity.

And I actually see it in some of my young students.

I can see their mind going as they're doing their art and they stop themselves to criticize themselves over and over again.

And it's like such a self-defeating behavior because they never get through.

They never finish anything because they keep stopping and criticizing themselves because they don't.

They were not taught that the process is okay.

We are not our flaws or mistakes,

But we think they do define us.

If we just said,

Oh,

The process is a little bumpy.

Okay,

We'll navigate that.

But nobody ever learns to do that because it goes back to parents and grandparents in a hypercritical environment.

So yes,

I can understand why those kids are repeating what they've been taught.

Yeah.

I mean,

You don't wake up one morning and are suddenly an expert in anything.

You have to go through the process and have failures and good things and mistakes and mistakes are good too.

And just go through the process.

That's what it's about.

It's not about the destination.

And how do you learn that at three?

By the time when the messages that you have received and absorbed are not that.

It's negative and it's judgmental.

So we learn to dislike the process.

And regardless of what career you're in or what kind of relationships you choose,

It's toxic and it is self-limiting.

Yes.

Number five,

Avoiding challenges to toxic limiting beliefs.

We always read everywhere that getting outside your comfort zone is critical to success and happiness.

Well,

If you fear mistakes and you despise flaws,

Then trying to stretch your comfort zone is an impossibility.

It's not even on your radar.

If the message is sent to you that you are of no value and you're not going to amount to anything or you've been criticized and compared,

Then the comfort zone is a terrifying place.

Number six,

When you are riddled with anxiety,

With the way I was,

That gets channeled into shame,

Blame and resentment,

Both towards yourself and to everyone around you.

Because you cannot manage your own anxieties and fears,

What that does is spill over into situations,

Experiences and relationships because they despise feeling vulnerable.

They were taught it was a bad thing.

And so they will do anything to get rid of that feeling.

Again,

Focusing on the outside instead of inside.

So when your boss criticizes you,

Your partner criticizes you,

When your kid fails,

It now becomes you feel vulnerable,

You feel threatened and it's intolerable.

So you lash out.

Number seven,

Associating and trusting the wrong people.

So for me,

This applied to some poor business decisions I had made.

I would say career decisions too.

If you are raised by parents that don't value,

Respect or care about you,

Then that will be comfortable to you,

Even though it makes you miserable.

So you will have- You surround yourself with those kinds of people.

So you surround yourself with unhappy,

Critical,

Negative people,

Narcissistic bosses,

Friends that don't really make you want to be better.

They drag you down.

Getting sucked into toxic relationships with colleagues at work.

That could be an unhealthy friendship.

It could be an affair.

It could be all these negative situations that are unhealthy,

But you're used to it.

So you just keep putting yourself in there.

That's your comfort zone,

Right?

That's part of the comfort zone.

And when you get out of your comfort zone,

You'll start associating with and trusting the right kind of people that raise your spirits,

Raise your vibration.

But how do you know?

Like how do you know that you're surrounded by the wrong people?

When you're in the middle of it,

How do you know that it's a bad thing?

Great question.

And there is no quick answer to that.

The healing journey,

As we've said,

Is not linear.

If you are perpetually unhappy and chronically depressed and consistently anxious and you cannot sleep,

Where is that coming from?

It really comes down to being brave and courageous enough to face that this is not a good place for me.

What changes can I make?

And that's how I started,

By searching the internet and reading books and watching videos because by people who were further along in their healing journey,

They can give you a path to get started.

Well,

It's also nice to know that you're not alone.

Like when we spoke to Marissa in our last podcast,

And she was pretty much alone in the world,

But she sought out help and she had to sort of secretly get help.

So she didn't want her parents to find out.

And when they did find out,

They were furious at her.

But she was very brave to do that at a young age.

And I do think there's a lot more mental health availability now with the things that are online.

And there is a stigma that's slowly getting chipped away associated with it,

Which makes me very happy.

Yes,

Me too.

And number eight,

The last one I'm going to focus on,

And again,

I want to repeat that this is just a snapshot of behavior addictions that I'm covering.

Comparing yourself to others in ways that crush your confidence and suck the energy out of you.

You know,

A lot of us are raised by people who like to criticize and compare because that was done to them.

So it's all they know.

And no matter how miserable it makes us,

We repeat the patterns anyway because we don't believe we have the power to change it.

And it really comes from being afraid to be still,

To be quiet and acknowledge that you're in a lot of pain.

There's something really beautiful about authenticity,

You know,

About a person really being who they are quirky warts and all they say,

You know,

It's like when you look at sometimes you see actors or musicians and they have their own style and people say,

Oh,

They have their own style.

How did they get that style?

But it's not,

They didn't get it there themselves.

That's who they are and that's who they've always been and that's who they'll always be.

And that's a beautiful thing.

It really is the pathway connecting to your own authenticity is the pathway to just being,

You know,

Content and satisfied and grateful.

You know,

When you compare yourself to your colleagues,

Your friends,

Your family members,

Anyone and you see yourself as coming up short,

There's no vibrancy associated with that.

It's depressing.

It's negative.

And there's no growth associated with that.

There's just wallowing in the same negative mindset that your parents wallowed in and that their parents wallowed in.

So,

You know,

These eight concepts are just some of the things that I did and that can be corrected and fixed with awareness.

It's true.

And with that,

We're going to take a short break.

We'll be right back.

Thanks to Got plenty of time.

Always lonely.

And we're back with The Stuck Stops here.

So the victims of continuous emotional abuse like myself will have a multitude of self-destructive symptoms.

So what happens is we react to triggers,

Current triggers,

The same way we did when we were three and we were four and we were five.

It's the same thing.

So we actually are re-experiencing the stress and the trauma over and over and over again.

And with awareness,

You learn to distance yourself from those toxic experiences by assigning some rational explanation and clarity to it.

If you never learn awareness and develop any emotional intelligence,

These memories play themselves over and over again,

Flashbacks,

Hypervigilant anxiety,

Constant feelings of blame,

Guilt,

Shame,

Fear,

Depression that comes and goes,

And constant feelings of isolation and powerlessness.

So we have more power than we give ourselves credit for,

But we don't know how to get there.

It all comes with facing that pain because you were rejected by your parents in many different ways before you were three years old.

And once you start to learn and discover the reasons for that,

Then the healing can begin.

But that's a hard discovery.

That first discovery when you realize it,

It's like,

Wait a minute,

What?

What did I just realize?

So I have,

I'm going to put this bluntly,

I have a funeral in my head every day for the parents that I wish I had and the childhood that I should have had.

It's only a minute or two long,

But it's necessary because grieving the loss of people who are still alive is confusing.

But the challenging path to get there is worth it.

So when we fall into negative patterns of habits and behavior addictions and months and years go by and nothing ever changes,

Except we get more miserable.

And that's what I decided that I was going to avoid.

So you saw yourself just getting more and more miserable to the point where you just couldn't take it anymore.

Yes.

The catalyst for that was partnering with somebody that was honestly a terrible person and a malignant narcissist.

Was that the thing that made you realize,

That made you think about like,

Why did I partner with this person?

What prompted me to do that?

So yes,

You know,

It was a dark day in February 2014 when I realized that I couldn't go on living this way.

So I had a choice to face what was wrong with me or face the fact that I didn't know what was wrong with me and I needed to find out or just give up.

And I chose to face it,

Which is not easy.

It's not easy.

It takes a lot of courage and a lot of strength.

It does.

So there's a shame that I think that wanting to grow and develop and be different and be better,

There's a shame associated with that because our culture doesn't reward that.

They reward the promotion.

They reward coming first in that roadways.

They reward being thin.

They reward,

You know.

But do they?

But do they really?

Because if you look at human nature,

There's this kind of jealousy factor.

You know,

Somebody may look at you and say,

Oh,

Look at her.

She got a promotion or look at you,

You lost all that weight.

But then in the back of their mind,

They're mad about it.

They're not happy for you.

Yes.

But having somebody be jealous of you because you've achieved something is a form of validation.

It's an external validation.

Oh,

I see.

For you.

It's external validation.

Yeah,

I get it.

So and then,

You know,

You watch TV and let's talk about the commercials,

You know,

That they talk about being better,

Being stronger,

Feeling more connected.

And then they tell you to get,

You know,

This new mascara.

You know,

So we believe that that's the growth.

There's the spiritual connection I've been looking for.

It's L'Oreal did it.

Well,

I mean,

They'll do anything to sell a product.

Of course.

But why do we believe it?

And I'm not bashing marketing.

I'm not saying that.

But I'm saying I'm oversimplifying our connection to outside things to give us self-worth.

And I'm being,

You know,

Very simple about it.

You know,

It's a very benign example that I'm giving.

But there's always that little voice telling us that something needs to change and we ignore it.

And that ignoring that is what fuels a lot of depression,

Anxiety.

And then we find comfort in our toxic,

Rigid responses to everything.

So when you go through painful,

Crushing times,

There's lessons to learn.

And I,

You know,

I think I'm living proof of that is it's easy to miss the point when things are falling apart.

I used to wallow in constant regret about what I should have done.

But when I stopped,

You know,

Wallowing in bitterness and blame and regret,

I started to gain some clarity on my role in my own unhappiness and the role that I can play in waking up,

You know,

Fostering acceptance and becoming overall more content.

You know,

It definitely was a lot of quiet time.

That's been very important in,

You know,

My healing.

Every mistake I made was not because I wasn't good enough.

It's because my toxic behaviors and negative mindset kept pointing me in the wrong direction.

So the outcomes that kept happening were made to say,

Okay,

You're not,

This is not the right path for you.

And it happened over and over and over and over again,

Particularly professionally.

And it's like reliving the same day over and over and over again.

It is.

It is.

When you learn a lesson,

When you're willing to maintain some grace and dignity and clarity during horrible times,

You will learn the right lessons and you will feel actually more empowered,

Uplifted and stronger rather than defeated.

So if we don't get outside our comfort zone,

Make a shift,

Make a positive change,

Then you'll bang your head against the same brick wall until you die.

And I don't want to do that and I want to stop other people from doing that.

The one question that you can ask yourself to sort of decide if you want to start making a change is when you're 90 years old and looking back,

What do you want to have contributed,

Achieved,

Created?

What kind of legacy do you want to leave?

What kind of example do you want to set for your children and your grandchildren?

Ask yourself those questions.

And if you don't have any answers or the answers upset you,

Then take that first step.

It's always like anything.

It's always the hardest.

And listen to my podcast.

I got selfish there for a second.

Sorry.

No worries.

That's good advice.

Oh,

I hope it helps.

Me too.

All right.

Anything more?

Let me see.

Let me check my notes.

No,

No,

I covered everything.

I checked every box,

But in a good way.

Not in a hypervigilant way.

You dotted every eye and crossed every T and checked every box.

Yes.

I'm not stressed and without perfectionism.

All right.

And while ballots are still being counted,

We bid you adieu until next time.

This talk stops here.

Adios peeps.

Long way from anywhere.

I can't see and I can't feel.

Lost inside everywhere.

This is how I got real.

If money measured honesty,

You're the poorest one I know.

Giving up was hard for me.

Had nowhere else to go.

Yeah.

I can't stop.

Why you're leaving.

Come on,

Let your sunshine.

Got plenty of time.

Always lonely.

Never ending.

Stuck here at your throne.

So cold inside.

We pretend.

Can't stay here.

It's got to end.

Move on.

I can't stop grieving.

Why you're leaving.

Come on,

Let your sunshine.

Got plenty of time.

Move on.

Let your sunshine.

Move on.