Trigger Crappy & Toxic Shame (Season 1)

Every time I wake up I'm at a break in the bend Don't know how I got here or when It's a deja vu,

It's a catch-22 And I could use a friend And you do have a friend here.

You have two friends here at the Stuck Stops Here podcast.

I'm LW No-Lie and I'm here with Tami Resita-Atman and we are here to talk about triggers today.

The title of this podcast is Trigger Crappy and Toxic Shame.

Tami,

You are clever.

I try,

I try.

If I could make money on how clever I was,

I'd owe people a nickel.

Here's a dollar.

I'll pay you for funny.

Thank you.

Okay,

So let's talk about emotional triggers.

Now you were telling me earlier that you don't.

.

.

You looked at me funny,

I'm already triggered.

Don't do that.

I'm sorry,

I triggered you.

Your left eye was right here.

It's my fault.

I did look at you funny.

I made a funny face.

I did.

It's my fault.

Probably because I got something hanging on my nose.

Okay,

Everybody,

That was an example of what happens when you blame somebody else for triggering you.

Your fault,

My fault.

Okay,

So let's talk about emotional triggers.

Tami,

You go first.

What are emotional triggers?

Okay,

These are crazy super reactive places deep inside you that become activated by someone else's behaviors.

Comments,

Anything.

There are many ways to trigger.

You could withdraw,

You get angry,

You could be aggressive.

And these are very intense.

This is a very intense response.

And the bottom line is when you are triggered,

It means the past is not in the past.

It's still in you.

It's still there?

It's still there.

And it comes up like vomit every time you get triggered,

Right?

Oh,

It is.

They are intense wounds that need to heal.

Now,

If I said something or did something that brought up an old memory of yours,

Something that happened before we even met,

Would you say that that's my fault what happened to you just now,

This trigger?

No,

It's how I interpret what's going on right now.

It's how I'm interpreting the experience.

But in many relationships,

People might blame their spouse,

Best friend,

Sister,

Brother,

Parent,

Whoever for the trigger.

They might say it's your fault because you made me think of something that upset me.

They absolutely do that because they've been so externally based in their life.

Everything's been,

They've been hyper reactive their whole lives.

They were raised that way.

So everything is outside in.

So anytime something happens outside of them that reminds them of pain,

Shame,

Fear,

It's not based in reality.

It's based on what happened a long time ago that you have never addressed.

Right.

Right.

How do we become aware when we're triggered of something?

You know how something happens and then you think it's so real.

You're so sure in your mind it's real.

I know it's real.

That person looked at me funny or she said something that was mean and she meant it.

How do we deal with that?

How do we talk to our brains and talk ourselves down from the ledge?

So a perfect example I can come up with and it's very benign example,

But it's clear and concise.

So I was waiting in line to go through security check and a guy cut in front of me.

And the old me would have lost it.

Swear it at him,

You know,

Anything to bite you back harder than you bit me.

I didn't look at I looked at it as you know,

You're doing something to me.

So but this time on my healing journey,

I didn't say anything.

And I knew my husband,

Who was three or four people ahead now,

Was going to turn around and say,

What are you doing back there?

So which he did.

And he turned around,

Said,

Why are you all the way back there?

And the guy immediately looked guilty or bad and turned around and said.

I'm sorry.

And I said,

Oh,

No problem.

But can I go up and go through security with my husband?

He's like,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Sure,

Sure.

You know,

So he had just kind of like realized he had made a mistake.

But he didn't know that he triggered you.

He didn't know what he did when he cut.

He did not know he was rude.

It was what he did.

But he didn't wasn't doing it to.

Oh,

You know,

Oh,

Look at that.

Look at that person.

I think I'm just going to cut them off just to piss them off.

That's probably how he operates all the time.

I think the realization for you that it wasn't personal,

That it had nothing to do with you,

Was really the aha moment there.

One hundred percent.

And it would not have gone that way five or six years ago.

So I just would have yelled at him and he would have yelled back.

And two people.

In rage mode,

Would have accomplished absolutely nothing.

One hundred percent.

And I wouldn't have felt better,

You know,

Chewing him out.

And then,

You know,

Even if I chewed him out and he grumbled,

Sorry,

And I went ahead,

I really wouldn't have felt better.

Right.

You think you do,

But you don't.

So in your daily life,

Do you find yourself being triggered?

I use quotations in the air for that often.

Yes,

But not in the way that you interferes my daily life the way it used to.

So I don't make decisions.

Or react when I am triggered.

You recognize I recognize the right that it's happening,

And that's the difference is I don't know if it'll ever really go away.

You know,

I definitely have this strong,

Intense dislike for passive aggressiveness.

And when people aren't straight with you,

You know,

A minor example could be I invite a friend to lunch and she doesn't get back to me for five days and then responds with.

Sure.

That's an example of passive aggressive behavior.

Maybe.

It's more a little unusual to wait five days and then a normal response would be sure what day works for you or yeah,

I would love to.

But to wait five days and say sure.

And again,

That's a whole,

You know,

That's a whole,

You know,

Text texting,

You know,

Social norm,

You know.

So that's something that'd be like,

Well,

If you don't want to go,

You can't go say,

Hey,

The next couple of weeks are busy.

Don't do that.

But what makes you think that she didn't want to go or was being passive aggressive?

Maybe she just didn't get to her.

She didn't get to it.

Like maybe,

You know,

You get a lot of texts or emails and they just sometimes get to the bottom of the list and then you forget about it.

Absolutely.

I mean,

I think a better response for her might have been like,

Oh,

My God,

I just saw this.

I didn't realize it took me so long to get back to you,

But she just went,

Sure.

So I don't know.

Maybe she's a little discombobulated.

It could be.

And that could be it.

It's not typical of this.

That's an example.

It's not typical behavior of this person.

But whatever.

You know,

That's the type of thing because I had there was just so much passive aggressive behavior,

Manipulation and,

You know,

Over controlling as well as just dismissive.

That is so exhausting.

You know,

I got to tell you,

I don't know how many years ago,

Maybe 20 years ago,

I took one yoga class.

And at the end of the class,

The teacher said something and my brain opened up and said,

Oh,

My God,

I don't have to stay friends with people I hate.

And it just changed my world because I realized I didn't have to surround myself with people who were toxic or passive aggressive,

You know,

Unless I'm related to them.

But even then,

I don't know.

That's why I'm on low contact.

Right.

But isn't that a great feeling?

It's a freeing feeling when you can sort of like,

You know,

Separate yourself from people who are toxic.

Absolutely.

And I need to,

You know,

I need to do better that when I see a behavior like that.

Is OK.

That's them.

You know,

And even if it was a passive aggressive way saying,

No,

I don't want to go to lunch or I'm too busy or couldn't be straight with me saying I've got other stuff going on.

You know,

And I don't even get angry.

I'm just aware I look at it and I'm like,

All right.

It's it's them.

It's not me.

That's really good.

And when we come back,

We're going to talk about identifying your emotional triggers.

So we'll be right back.

Welcome back.

Before we get into identifying the emotional triggers.

You know,

How can you tell when you're being triggered can be a variety of ways,

You know,

You know,

Clenching your fists,

Heart racing,

Chest pain,

Shutting down like this feeling of detachment.

Like you almost like go cold,

Almost like somewhere between blood boiling and then just going cold,

Almost like freezing.

It's like indifference.

Like you just don't want anything to get in to touch you.

You're just so protective of yourself.

Absolutely.

I mean,

My face would get red when I would get enraged.

Which was attractive,

By the way,

In case you're wondering.

So,

You know,

There's it's a very visceral and physical reaction to it.

So.

When you identify your emotional triggers,

You know,

The way I've I have and will continue to it makes things clear as to what is provoking these extreme responses from you.

So as I pointed out,

I was caught.

I was a puppet most of my childhood,

Constantly being manipulated by anger,

Guilt,

Fear,

And try to address it again.

I'm going to use that term passive aggressive behavior.

And even though it wasn't obvious.

Inside,

Everything was very turbulent.

And I was just I did I self sabotaged over and over and over again in different ways.

Never really with my kids,

Because I you know,

I talk about the role playing that I used to do.

I compartmentalized.

But it I made some very,

Very poor career decisions.

And I made myself physically ill on a number of occasions.

So the more aware you become,

The less you will be controlled by that unconscious,

Unhealed wound inside of you.

Yeah,

It's like it's like having kind of like a giant gash in your stomach that heals on the outside.

But then every time you're triggered,

It's like ripped open again.

Absolutely.

And if you're not aware of the things that,

You know,

Get your blood boiling or get your you know,

Get you disassociating,

Disassociating.

I mispronounced that sorry.

Dissociating,

Which is walling off,

Shutting down,

Feeling nothing.

Both are just as bad.

You know,

Whether you're freaking out or freezing,

It's unhealthy.

And you know who suffers from that besides yourself is all the people around you.

The people who love you and that who you love are the ones who suffer the most from from that.

And if you don't know what's driving you crazy,

They can't help you either.

It's true.

They can't help you either because you can't communicate.

You're pointing out to them the wrong things.

You know,

You're triggered me.

You know,

They won't you won't even use the word trigger.

You're just getting mad while you're freezing,

Walling off or you're doing.

You are reacting to all that chaos inside of you and there's no clarity to it.

So you don't know what's going on.

And the people who care about you don't know what's going on.

I feel like it's a broken record,

You know,

That keeps playing over and over again and broken record.

And it's it's a negative loop.

Yeah.

Endless.

Unless,

You know,

That's where that endless negative loop.

That's where the words break in the bend in this song,

You know,

Sort of reflect that is a break in the bend could be breaking that negative loop or break in the bend could mean you're going along in life and you're all of a sudden you're triggered and you break.

You snap.

So as a dual meaning,

You wrote those lyrics.

I did write those lyrics.

Yes.

Very good.

Thank you.

I love compliments.

Helps me with my triggers and helps trigger crappy.

Yes.

You know,

We always have the word trigger happy,

Trigger crappy because of the subject.

These are triggers we don't like.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So and also I in the show notes,

I actually want to do a quote.

That's OK.

Yeah,

Please go ahead.

So quote from Dr.

Janice Webb,

Who coined the term childhood emotional neglect.

And we will devote a podcast to that in the future.

But this quote is perfect in describing how any conflict,

Major or minor can trigger you.

And the quote goes like this again,

Dr.

Janice Webb,

To deal with a conflictual situation in a direct and capable way.

You have to have skills.

First,

You must be comfortable with someone who is angry or hurt.

Second,

You must be comfortable with yourself feeling angry or hurt.

Being able to feel what you feel and stay in the situation and communicate into words is not something people can do because they weren't raised that way.

When you grow up with childhood emotional neglect,

You have no opportunity to learn these skills.

And then when you are hurt by someone or something or a situation,

You realize you have no toolkit to rely on to manage the situation.

Instead,

You use a strategy,

Whether it be avoidance and you pretend everything is fine or you lash out in a rage that's not commiserate to what's happening.

And that was Dr.

Janice Webb.

And I have I will put a link into those notes as well as an additional link regarding triggers.

This would be two links for that.

And then I think we can move on to toxic shame.

That's OK with you,

L.

W.

?

Absolutely.

We're going to come right back and we're going to talk to you about toxic shame.

They say time heals all wounds.

I disagree.

I threw away all the bags.

That's when I was free.

Hello again.

Did you miss us?

OK.

Toxic shame.

Toxic shame has its roots in trauma.

And I need to explain trauma.

There's large T trauma and small T trauma.

And we'll get into that into another podcast.

I'm doing podcast till I'm 99.

Let's hope so.

For the purposes of today,

Large T trauma is physical or sexual abuse,

Which is horrible.

That was not my experience.

My experience was small T trauma,

Which,

You know,

Is emotional abuse,

Verbal abuse,

Emotional neglect.

You know,

Any kind of non physical and non violent mistreatment.

So the small T trauma,

If your parents shamed you,

Criticized you and delivered what I would call passive punishment,

Not physical punishment.

You internalize these hurtful and untrue criticisms and their marginalizing and dismissive behaviors.

As there's something seriously flawed with you.

Healthy shame is,

Oh,

I hurt this person's feelings by accident.

I'm sorry.

I forgot to invite,

You know,

Johnny to the party.

You know,

Those are things that you feel bad about or I misbehaved in class.

You know,

Those are things healthy shame to feel sorry for.

You learn how to behave properly and it passes very quickly.

Toxic shame gets into the root of your soul and it makes it sends a message that you are completely and totally worthless and unlovable.

That's what toxic shame does.

And that has its roots in small T trauma.

Because as a kid,

You wouldn't you would be able to recognize the fact that the person who's doing that behavior,

Who's shaming you or,

You know,

Abusing you verbally is mistaken.

They must be.

They're my parent or or elder or whoever.

And they know best.

So it must be me.

Absolutely.

And there's no there's no way to know that they're wrong until you're much older.

And that when you're older,

That becomes a choice at that point,

Because if you're chronically miserable,

You got to figure out why.

For sure.

You got to figure out why.

You know,

Toxic shame also arises from feeling constantly guilty and responsible for other people's happiness.

I got a quote here from Hillary Jacobs Hendel.

She's written a couple of books and fantastic.

The two of the books that I read is that the feeling of not enough and the other is it's not always depression.

I highly recommend you read them.

So the quote from Hillary is.

We are not born feeling inadequate life experiences and emotions create that sense within us in a variety of creative ways.

For example,

When we were little and we felt afraid or anxious,

Our mind told us something was wrong with us,

Not with our environment.

That's why children who are emotionally abused or emotionally neglected grow up to be adults who carry so much shame.

Yeah,

Her book is amazing.

I'll put the link in the show notes.

And there's a whole list that she covers of toxic shame behaviors.

You know,

The three that I'm most familiar with would be a,

You know,

A lack of self-love.

So like you tell yourself you don't deserve to be loved.

You don't even overtly do that.

It's just something you believe without knowing you believe it.

You know,

Toxic shame.

You suffer from low self-esteem,

Overt or covert self-loathing,

Self-sabotage,

Poor coping skills and so much more.

I can see where the poor coping skills because you can't you if you're going to get triggered and you don't know you're being triggered and then you're just going to overreact and take it personally when somebody does something.

It's there's no coping there.

And that lack of self-love combined with toxic shame,

You can become codependent,

Which is what we talked about,

A people pleaser.

You can actually become a narcissist.

Both can happen depending on your environment and the way you know,

You're hardwired.

Wow,

Those are not occupations,

Folks.

Yeah,

Right.

It's dirty work for the rest of us.

So the other toxic shame behavior that I was chronically empty and I was lonely.

I was constantly pouring from an empty cup and you again that goes back to people pleasing and not having boundaries where you know,

You sort of immerse yourself in somebody else's problems or situation.

And it was really unhealthy.

And then sometimes if I wasn't,

You know,

People pleasing I'd be walled off and stone cold and feel nothing.

Wow,

It was really unhealthy.

And the other one was perfectionism.

I always say perfectionism is the death of creativity.

It is.

It's the death of your soul because you know,

Children grow up to be perfectionists when they are held to unrealistic standards and overtly or covertly punished for failing to meet them.

And that was,

You know,

I had parents that expected to be treated like parents,

But they acted like children.

So when you are a parentified child like I was that and we'll get into parentification and podcast number 72.

You know,

My mother,

As I said,

You know,

Had a very severe hearing impairment and she used that like a weapon.

So I grew up being her ears and her,

You know,

Gateway to the world.

And I always felt I cannot fix her hearing.

And I was raised to believe that I could.

That's impossible.

That's a heavy load to bear.

I was one huge boulder on my shoulder.

You know,

Perfectionism,

Just going back to that for a second.

I think that it would really be great for people to understand that perfectionism is impossible.

And I think that if you realize that,

Then maybe you won't hold yourself up to such an unrealistic standard and,

You know,

Try to enjoy your life and make things good rather than feeling like it always has to be perfect.

Yeah.

The perfectionism ties into our next podcast,

Human Doings versus Human Beings.

We'll get into that.

And that directly ties to perfectionism because being a perfectionist,

Everything is,

Again,

Externally based outside in.

So you're you set these high standards in a way to make yourself feel better.

And it's filling a leaky bucket.

But you can never get past a certain point because you're constantly trying to perfect something and you get stuck.

I see this a lot in some of the people I work with.

They get stuck because they know it's not good enough.

I have to do it again.

I have to do it again.

And then they lose the initial good,

Good take or good feeling of what they just did by this constant trying and doing of making it perfect.

And it's never going to be perfect.

Yeah,

It goes into,

You know,

I talk about this in the book,

Is a destination addiction,

You know,

Where happiness,

Inner peace is at the next win,

The next accomplishment.

And that's where that addiction to perfection is,

You know,

Oh,

I'll be happy when I do this perfectly and somebody notices or maybe nobody has to notice.

You just have to say that was perfect and nothing is.

Right.

And the truth is,

I mean,

It's like,

You know,

People always say,

Oh,

I'll be happy when I lose 20 pounds or I'll be happy when I make a million dollars.

But that it actually isn't true.

I mean,

You you won't be any you may be happier for a minute,

But then you'll go back to who you are and what your baseline for happiness is.

So just waiting for the time when this happens or that happens,

The best thing to do is heal your emotional situation.

I remember being at the beach a couple of years ago and it was sort of,

I would say,

A large group of us.

And,

You know,

Some of us knew each other,

Some of us didn't.

But there was this one very unfriendly,

Clearly very uptight woman.

This was really funny.

I wish I got this on video.

And you really wouldn't talk to anybody.

We're all having a good time.

And I have no idea why she was so miserable and unfriendly.

Didn't matter.

But I saw her doing sit ups on her lounge chair.

I really wish I was making this up.

I almost want to get I think I know that person is.

There's a lot of them.

I always want to go up to her.

All right.

If I can count that 12 pack,

We'd come over and start having some fun.

I'll never get as we'll get a quick workout.

This is I'm not going to talk to anybody.

I never forgot that.

That's really funny.

Yeah.

But so those are,

You know,

It's everywhere.

And even if it's not violent or physical or tragic,

You know,

It does affect,

You know,

Triggers and toxic shame do interfere can interfere in our daily life.

Oh,

For sure.

And,

You know,

When you grow up with,

You know,

The kind of childhood that I had as other people.

I'm not sure that the triggers ever really go away,

But they don't have to control you.

Yes.

I always like to say that if you are in charge of your mind,

You know,

You don't have to let those things control you.

If you're aware that the mind plays tricks on us,

You know,

It comes up with these crazy schemes.

She said that he's looking at me funny.

Why is that happening?

And the truth is that if we can be the master of our minds and really,

You know,

Ask ourselves,

Is that really true?

Is this true what I'm thinking right now and really be in charge of it?

I think that we can be more in control of some of these crazy things that come up that may not be real.

And these relatively simple daily experiences that we talk about,

I mean,

They happen all the time.

So if you're somebody is not triggered,

You're going to be reacting or dissociating all the time.

Yeah.

Because somebody's going to cut you off in traffic.

Somebody's going to cut you off at the airplane line.

Someone's not going to respond the way you want them to.

Your co-workers going to be.

You can't control the world.

You can't control what goes on around you.

You can only control your reaction to it.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And it is very hard to do that when as a child,

You were not given a toolkit to deal with things that don't go your way.

Yes.

Many people would say that today's youth may not have that toolkit in the sense that their parents tend to be saving them,

Tend to be paving the way and kind of saving them from hurt.

Well,

One of the,

You know,

What teacher that I'm friendly with mentioned that it's not helicopter parenting.

It's like lawnmower parenting now.

Right.

And by that they mean is they when you use that term paving the way.

The helicopter is side by side.

A lawnmower,

According to this teacher,

Is,

You know,

The they're controlling right.

Clearing the path so that there's not one iota of difficulty.

Right.

I mean,

We don't want to see our kids get hurt or fall down or but,

You know,

How is it going to affect them in the future when everything's been done for them and the path has been cleared?

I don't know the answer to that question.

I may be guilty of that,

Too.

It's well,

To some extent,

I would say that I I definitely have helicoptery,

You know,

Tendencies.

But,

You know,

I try to I often try to say,

You know,

I can't solve this for you.

I can't live your life for you.

I try to preface that so that in case I when I'm talking to my daughters,

I try to say that so that that I'm not trying that,

You know,

That I'm only trying to,

You know,

Guide them,

But not control them.

And I try to preface that so that,

You know,

And I will say that to them,

You know,

If you sense that I'm controlling you by the words I'm using,

Let me know,

Because that's not my goal.

Right.

That's not my goal.

Did you pay anyone to take the SAT for them?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My my daughter's an expert crew rower.

That was a nice get him into that school and they will figure it out.

That would definitely be like,

You know,

A lawnmower and a helicopter combined.

For sure.

For sure.

Unfortunately,

It doesn't end well.

Well,

You know,

I don't want to go to jail.

Certainly not.

So,

OK,

So so let's begin our wrap up of this this subject of of triggers and trigger crappy and toxic shame.

So what advice are we going to give?

And again,

I want to tell you,

We are not licensed therapists.

We are not life coaches.

We're just two women shooting the shit who know what we know and we're sharing it with you.

And hopefully our perspective and our ideas will give you some ideas on how to begin your journey of healing and finding the ultimate happiness that you can have.

It's there.

It's there.

So how are we going to guide people or give them some advice on how to heal,

How to begin to heal?

So I want to first add on to what you said.

You know,

I see my role is a doorway,

A gateway to options of thinking better.

Thinking differently.

You know,

I could I'd like to call it the starting line rather than a finish line.

I don't see myself as a solution.

I see myself as a messenger and a starting line.

So that's sort of how I see myself.

So the two most important things that I hope you take away is next time your fists clench,

Your blood boils or you go into flight or fight mode,

Whichever.

Ask yourself,

Is this true?

What is really happening here?

Is this intentional?

Is this really about me?

And for toxic shame,

I highly recommend you check out the resources that I've put in the show notes,

Because that's a that's a very debilitating and exhausting way to live.

If you are able to recognize that you are feeling unworthy and loved,

That's a first step in maybe reducing that toxic shame that might be,

You know,

Guiding you into areas you really don't want to be in.

Healthy shame,

I said you get over very quickly.

Toxic shame lasts for years.

So and that's the difference.

And you have to listen to people that get that that get through to you.

And if that's not me,

Fine,

You know,

Read read something else.

I mean,

I have on my web on my website,

All these links to other resources that that can be very valuable into,

You know,

Stepping through that threshold.

Absolutely.

Just know that perspective is really important.

I think that sometimes,

You know,

You can change your perspective and the whole world will change around you without even changing.

It just happens.

Well,

You are you're right.

Your interpretation of what's going on is more realistic.

You know,

When you are raised with toxic shame,

You are not capable of really judging anything realistically.

It's based on on fear and pain from long ago.

Again,

The past is not in the past.

And when you start to chip away at that,

You'll start to see things differently and in hopefully a healthier way.

And you won't feel so irritated or unhappy or sad or depressed or anxious.

You know,

You want to try to reduce some of that.

You know,

You don't want to you know,

You don't really want to spend the next 30,

40,

50 years,

Whatever you got feeling the way I did for so long.

You know,

Took me way too long.

You know,

That's what I'm hoping is that,

You know,

People find figure it out way before I did.

Yeah.

And,

You know,

Also,

I think that you can give the people around you a break,

Like rather than holding them accountable for whatever trigger they caused you that caused you pain and you think they did it on purpose.

There's a good chance they didn't.

There's a good chance they're innocent.

They don't even know what happened.

They don't know what hit them.

What happened suddenly.

So I think that if you think about that,

There are people around you who love you and who you love and give them a break.

Don't don't hold them accountable for your shit.

Accept responsibility for your shit and and make it better because you can.

Absolutely.

Take a deep breath.

And again,

At the moment that you start to feel rage or freezing your fist clenching your blood boiling.

Anything that is reflective of of something inside you and not really outside,

You know,

If somebody wants to cut you off in traffic.

I used to do that.

You know,

I mean,

I used to get mad at that.

And,

You know,

OK.

Who cares?

Like,

It's exhausting to get mad about it.

You're not going to follow them down the street and then pull them over and be like,

Why did you cut me off?

You bastard.

And then they'll be like,

What?

Who are you?

What are you talking about?

And what does that accomplish?

Yeah,

It's you're just looking to let off steam that's.

Sitting there,

That's just sitting there and you'll do it for the road rage,

You'll do it at the airplane,

You'll do it when,

You know,

Your significant other does something that they don't like or,

You know,

Your kids.

And actually,

That brings up a really good point.

So when you have daughters,

They tend to be somewhat,

I would call it,

Erratic and emotional between the ages of 13 and 18.

And I remember them,

You know,

Coming home.

Hysterical for different reasons,

Whether it was grades or exams or,

You know,

Pressure or a boy or a friend,

Whatever.

And let them vent and they might yell at you.

Don't take it personally.

And I said this.

What happens is they want to be valid.

They want to feel what they feel.

They want to be validated,

Even if they're not using the right words or the right tone.

You got to let it go.

You got to let it go.

And I think I've talked to so many mothers that will be talking about,

You know,

Their daughters,

They're yelling at me,

They're yelling at me,

They're yelling at me.

No,

They're not.

They're 16.

And figuring it out,

Along with their,

You know,

They love to use the term hormones.

At the same time,

The prefrontal cortex does not develop and fully develop until you're 25 years old.

And that's your,

You know,

That's your decision making area.

And we'll get into that in episode 62.

But again,

So there's a lot of physical things going on that they don't necessarily have control over.

That's true.

And that's funny.

When my oldest learned that in her psychology class,

She came home.

This was in high school.

And she goes,

She didn't apologize.

She said,

See,

It's not my fault.

And then I got triggered.

Well,

My brother likes to laugh about the fact that when we were in high school,

I had severe PMS.

And I guess I would cry every day on the way to school.

And he would always say,

Oh,

PMS again.

And of course,

I thought it was real.

I would be no,

You don't understand.

And yeah,

I mean,

I guess it was.

And it's hard to be a woman.

What am I going to say?

It's yes,

It's it's it's not easy.

But.

But I don't think I want to be a guy either.

I don't you know,

I don't I don't want to be that.

I think we're just happy with who we are.

Well,

We got to be,

You know,

We're trying to be.

You can change if you want to.

You know,

Absolutely.

What's the way there's there's a phrase out there talking about change,

About men.

They're like it says to all my some sort of meme,

Meme,

Whatever they say to all to all my sisters.

You know,

It says if he's not wearing a diaper,

You can't change him.

That was fun.

That's really cute.

Which I actually disagree with.

But it was very funny.

Well,

I think,

You know,

Changing.

It's all about awareness.

And I think one of things that I learned is that if I change myself at my perspective on things,

A lot of things change around me.

And it's you know,

It can be infectious to those around you as well,

Because suddenly your perspective has changed.

It's like when,

You know,

When the mom goes on a diet and then like the whole suddenly the whole family's on a diet because they're following suit.

Right.

Especially because she's the cook too sometimes.

So it's you know,

That can be infectious in a good way.

So,

Yeah,

Gandhi said,

Be the change you wish to see.

Right.

And if you fix yourself,

It's true.

And I and I've experienced this.

Everything around you,

You know,

Falls into place.

Not as quickly as I wanted to,

Because I'm still battling that impatient destination addiction.

But I'm working on it.

You sure are.

I am working on it.

It's really great.

And we are all works in progress anyway.

I mean,

There's no,

You know,

You want to get to the top of the mountain.

There's nowhere to go but down.

So we keep climbing.

That's right.

And on that note,

We're going to wrap up this episode of the Stuck Stops Here.

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We have some exciting episodes coming up.

One of them is going to be an interview with a life coach.

And we're going to talk about how to deal with toxic families during the holidays.

So that's going to be in December.

We have a lot to say about that.

Talk about triggers.

Oh my God,

Seriously.

Don't talk politics.

How about the dinner table,

Everybody?

Thanksgiving,

Please.

Oh,

God.

And with that,

We're going to say,

See you next time.

Don't miss us.

Every time I wake up,

I'm at a break in the band.

Don't know how I got here or when.

It's a deja vu,

It's a catch 22 and I could use a friend.

Every time I wake up,

I'm at a break in the band.

Oh,

Will this chaos ever end?

I've been up,

I've been down,

I slept on the ground.

I can't go through this again.

They say time heals all wounds.

I disagree.

I threw away all the bags.

That's when I was free.

Here I am,

Wide awake at a break in the band.

Thought I'd never be here again.

I rode a train to nowhere,

Crashed my car,

Didn't care and I could use a friend.

Oh,

I could use a friend.