Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Healing Your Deepest Wounds: Why You Can't Let Yourself Be Loved

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

When we talk about abusive relationships, we tend to focus on physical abuse. That is why leaving a purely emotionally abusive relationship that doesn’t have any physical abuse can be very confusing. If you don’t have a black eye, is it abuse? If he doesn’t push you down or slap you, is it abuse? If she doesn’t throw things at you or put her hands around your throat, is it abuse? YES. Even if your partner never lays their hands on you, emotional abuse is STILL abuse. Emotional abuse is incredibly damaging and traumatic. Even after you leave the relationship, emotional abuse leaves its mark. It shakes your view of yourself and it threatens your ability to visualize a better future for yourself. It keeps you stuck in a pattern of being wounded and unable to move forward to healing. Today on “The Language of Love,” I am talking with a woman who bravely left an emotionally abusive relationship. Now, she is looking for ways to heal, but also for ways to co-parent with her ex. During our discussion, we uncover that my caller routinely finds herself in relationships in which the other partner is the one holding all the cards. She always feels more invested in relationship or as though she is an embarrassment to her partners. She was made to feel demanding or nagging, and as though she has unforgivable flaws that she has to hide or modify if she wants her partner to tolerate her. I can tell that this is a core wound that is stemming from her childhood, and we peel back the layers of her relationships to find out when these patterns first began in her life. Throughout our discussion, we also talk about how she can heal from her abusive past and effectively co-parent with the ex who tried to destroy her self-worth. Be sure to tune in to hear my advice, and then share your thoughts with me on social media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, and for the last 30 years, I've been helping people learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Sessions. This is where I get to work with you one-on-one, on air. You, my listeners, my goal in these sessions is to empower you to enjoy better relationships, both with others and with yourself, and to help you embrace how precious and sacred your body, your love life, and your sexuality really is. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. All right, Rachel, welcome. So tell me what's on your mind. How can I help?

Thanks so much. So I recently, in the past year, ended a relationship with the father of my son, and it was an emotionally abusive relationship and i'm in the process of recovering and healing from that and as part of that i suppose i've noticed that there's been a pattern of these sorts of relationships to different degrees so i'm really conscious conscious now that i want to kind of stop those patterns repeating again and really look within and i i'm doing some work already but i really find listening to your podcast and your instagram so helpful i'm very much aligned with the way you're talking about the healing you're doing and I've started doing little bits and I'm finding it really helpful but I just really want to to continue on um with that

with that healing not even necessarily for a relationship that's like way down the list of things I want to do but really it's just more so for me and for my son and just yeah to get strength again as well because I think I'm going to be facing a difficult co-parenting relationship road as well. So I just really want to strengthen myself up and really be the best version of myself that I can be. What a beautiful goal. And in my opinion, a realistic one. And I know how hard it is to leave what is an abusive relationship and how easy it is to drink the Kool-Aid that you kind of are being served about yourself that then disempowers you and makes you even more paralyzed. So it takes a tremendous amount of courage and bravery.

I want to tell you how much I appreciate that. Thank you. And how wonderful I think that is, not only for you and all aspects of your life, but for your son as well. Not because he shouldn't have a relationship with his father, but because in you, he has now the model of standing for yourself already. and also the model of healing and the model of resilience and the model one day down the road of what a loving relationship looks like. So those are all amazing gifts. Well, it sounds

like you're on the right track, right? I think so. I think it helps to have a future time goal, like a vision of yourself in full healing. And one of the things that I would just encourage you off the bat as I spew out downloads and insights and ideas that occurred to me for you, one is really, and this is true for all of us, is to get really, really clear in that future version of yourself. Because there's a lot of, for all of us, and especially someone who's been through trauma, and I'm sure this isn't, even as you alluded to, this isn't the first trauma you've been through, right? It's hard. You get very hesitant or even superstitious about claiming your future and your dreams. So I don't want there to be a, hopefully that's what happens.

You know, there's no caveats to that, right? So one of the things that I want to encourage you to do, and you'll get more and more comfortable doing with practice and with ongoing healing is to dream into what you at your most realized self looks like. Obviously, I'm all about healing, but one of the ways we get stuck in our healing process is in staying stuck in the wounds. And there is a part of the wounds that we have to go through and face, right? But we don't want to live in that dark cave. We want to also visit there and be there in service to what we're ultimately wanting to create. Right. So both are true. It's interesting. I feel like I've compartmentalized certain parts of my life and

with work or success in other areas, I'm very driven and I have no issue or problem with sorting those areas in my life out. But relationships are always the one thing that always seems to be problematic for me. Yeah. Well, that's where your wound is. For someone else, it's money. For someone else, it's family. Everybody has their, you came here as a soul. This is your thing. This is where your learning was meant to be, right? So that's where your self-destructive patterns are. It's a son you have. How old is he now? He just turned one. Aw, a little boo-boo. Okay. Yeah. And are you divorced or are you now going through a divorce? course? We weren't married. So we just have the child arrangements. Yeah. It's been

straightforward in that way. It's just really child related issues. Yeah. Yeah. It's a challenge under the best of circumstances, but when there's someone with whom you have a trauma history, and certainly if there's someone who's abusive, it can be really challenging. So I love your goal of being so fully in your power and in your clarity that that goes easier than it would otherwise. And so when you talk about the pattern, we're not even thinking about eventually dating again, although obviously all of the work you do is in service to that. But when you think about that pattern of getting involved with what, would it be emotionally abusive men, men who are abusive in some way? Where's the pattern? Yeah. I think I always seem to end up in longer-term relationships

with guys who, yeah, I always seem more invested in it than they are. And it always ends up in a place where they're not treating me very well emotionally like they're acting like I'm I don't even know how to put it into words but I end up feeling like I'm almost an embarrassment to them or something even though I tend to go for guys who actually you know are less successful than me yeah um but yet it somehow turns around that I feel like I'm the one that's in the wrong or at fault and they're usually the ones who in the relationship and in the most recent relationship that's actually been something that's given me strength is that I made the decision to leave and it was my choice. And I feel like that actually has boosted me in that way. But

I think I'm maybe a bit desperate for love or something in these relationships that I'm the one who's the needy one, who's the one who's looking for reassurance and never getting it. Does it start that way or does it start where things feel really equal and connected and then all of a sudden things start to shift and change? Or are you really more invested from the beginning? because there's two different types of people that you'd be attracting in in each of those scenarios. You see what I mean?

So yeah, no, it definitely starts that they're the ones pursuing me and to the point where I'm like, I don't think I'm really interested in them, but then they convince me, I get the love bombing, I get the brilliant and then things start to change.

Yes. And the roles reverse. Once you are fully engaged and you let your guard down and you're when you're vulnerable. Yeah. And that was definitely the case in my most recent relationship. I was the one really taking it very slowly. And then it was really only when I got pregnant that things started to change really. And with the relationships, when you say that there's sort of this theme of

I'm an embarrassment, is that something that they would say out loud or is it something that you're inferring and like, because they're withdrawn from the relationship? more inferring or from taking it up from subtle comments that you know they feel like i like i'm with it that i don't know the way things are the way things should be that i'm one relationship i had i was dating a younger guy and i almost felt like i was like an older kind of grandmother style figure nearly to him at one point like i was old and i was like outdated and i didn't really know you know what was cool or whatever so you're kind of clueless yeah what about in this last one where was the what was the story you had about yourself in his eyes towards the

end it was that I was you know this awfully difficult person to live with that I was always nagging him and you know constantly at him to do this and do that when really it wasn't the case he was flying off in rages over the slightest little thing if I asked him anything but it definitely was that I was too demanding that I was looking for too much so you're needy you're flawed. You're clueless. These are the kinds of themes. You have these unforgivable flaws about you, either in your character or your appearance or your age or your knowledge or your social skills or whatever. You are flawed to the point where I am tolerating you and putting up with you, which then, of course, as you feel that from them, whether it's true or not,

and I'm not saying it isn't true, then that, of course, makes you feel more insecure. and more needy, and then the cycle continues, right? So now tell me, this is always, especially when there's a pattern. When there's not a pattern, it's a one-off thing. I may not jump to this conclusion, but I'm jumping in your case. Where does this get reflected in your upbringing? Who was critical of you? Who was finding flaws? Who abandoned you emotionally or literally? Yeah. Well, I've done quite a lot of work on that, and I think I have it clear that my parents had a very difficult relationship they're still together but I always grew up thinking I don't want that sort of relationship for myself but of course I seem to have ended up

in it at times but um my dad is very emotionally cut off he has like zero capacity to engage emotionally and I do know he loves me because he acts it out he is very supportive financially and he will do things for me but he never says I love you we never really bond or connect so emotionally I'd feel like I don't really have a relationship with him yeah and then my mom is extremely critical and has always been and we had quite an enmeshed relationship for a long time where I felt like she was living through me and I was her golden child and I she pushed me into doing things that she wanted to do and it was really only kind of in my early 30s that I kind of had this awakening moment of like hang on a second I don't have to do everything my mother

says I don't have to agree with everything she said so I have been putting in you know trying to be putting in boundaries over the past few years with her but a lot of the recent stuff that's gone on has kind of brought my dependence on my parents back again again and that's brought up old stuff again as well so I suppose you know with my parents growing up I would have felt that like my dad wasn't very nice to my mum growing up and I would have been brought into the middle of it and to defend her and to like mind her and now as I get older I see it from a slightly different point of view where I feel like actually it's my mum that is causing a lot of the challenges in terms of playing the victim and the wanting attention and you know everything's about her and

so there's definitely some stuff there and so how has she been responding to you setting i know maybe you've eased off the boundaries in your current state of struggle but how has she been handling the boundaries if it goes very far and i actually have to get like cross with her over something she'll give me the silent treatment and be there like oh i'm just trying my best and you So that's some of the kind of sub story. And my sense is that when you were little, she would communicate that when you set boundaries or if just she was displeased with something about you and she really wanted it to hit home, she would emotionally abandon.

And so what you have to understand, because I feel it in the pit of my stomach right now, like if I were to say to you, if it's probably right in the tip of your consciousness, you can go there in a minute. But if I were to say to you to go back to a time in your childhood, and I sort of see this four or five-year-old version of you where it feels like your center has been ripped away and is never going to come back because she's upset with you about something that you weren't aware it was anything bad. It was an opinion or it was a refusal to do what it wasn't a big crime, even if it was a big crime, still not okay to do this, but it wasn't a big crime. And it was sort of your first sense or one of the first senses you had of her completely

being like, okay, I can withdraw my love from you. I can withdraw love from you and there's nothing you can do about it. And so for a child at that age, listening to me and looking at it through the lens of the adult you are now, but for a child who is five, six, seven years old, or even 10 or 11 years old, when their parent communicates this to them, like silent treatment, well, just forget it. No. And it's like the child no longer is there. Right. And then the child starts to wonder if they really even exist because especially at five or six, because that's still kind of a possibility in their minds. And they're dependent on that person for their very survival. They're not thinking, oh, mom's going to change her

mind and talk to me. She's just trying to prove a point right now. In that moment, there is the degree of terror that a child would feel if they were going to be left on the side of the road and have to figure out how to feed and shelter themselves. It's that kind of feeling because to lose the mother's love and protection and acknowledgement of you is to lose your survival or your means of survival because you're so little, you can't take care of yourself. So the terror that I feel in my stomach as I hold that idea and I see that image in my mind, I can only imagine what a powerful driving force that is behind these patterns you keep finding yourself in, right?

Now, this is not to say that your mother is a bad person or did any of this intentionally or nefariously. She reacted this way as a result of her own childhood trauma. Yeah, exactly. And she doesn't know, probably still doesn't fully know how to love or how to receive love. And of course she couldn't ever teach you because she didn't know, right? And you're changing that generational pattern right now by doing the healing and taking the steps you're doing. You are ending that, right? Not only for your children and children's children,

but for your past as well. You are doing this generational healing work. But if you just stop for a moment and try on what I'm saying, that terror, you know, very well what I'm talking about, right? Yeah, definitely. It's the same terror, a version of that. My guess is, can you feel it in your body if I mentioned it to you? So where do you feel it? You don't have to feel it where I feel it, but where do you feel it? Yeah, definitely like in my lower abdomen area. Yeah. new from Nespresso blend wellness into your coffee routine with the coffee plus range infused with functional benefits choose the coffee you love with added b vitamins like coffee plus b12 to help support immune function and coffee plus b6 to keep your day moving or go with the

flow and choose ginseng delight our new double espresso with ginseng extract whatever lies ahead don't change your morning let your morning change you discover coffee plus on nespresso.com And so can you connect that feeling that you have right now to the feeling you have or even had in this last relationship when your partner started to withdraw from you in significant ways and criticize you and shut down from you and treat you like a burden or someone who's discardable or an embarrassment, somebody doesn't want to acknowledge or see? the word that keeps coming up for me is like confusion it's like I don't know what I need to do what do I need to do to be okay or to be right or to be accepted yeah helpless terror there's nothing you can do this one in you is thinking right there's nothing I can do to save myself from this abandonment yes yeah so can you feel that terror yeah it's terror I'm not saying you're afraid for your life when your boyfriend is withdrawing from you. I mean,

can you feel the tone of terror from that little girl in there? Yeah, definitely. It's just a feeling of like a desperateness, a kind of a, what do I do? What do I do? Right. Your life is in danger. It's that kind of fight or flight or freeze reaction. It's really deep and much more significantly strong than the reaction that you have to your ex is much stronger than it needs to be or should have been or could have been had it not had that trauma underneath it, right? I mean, you probably wouldn't have even ended up with him or not for this trauma, but just to show you how it feels, right? Looking back on it now, come back into your head, not your body for a moment and then we'll go back into your body, right? If I were to say to you, okay, as the

woman you are now who's had the power and the clarity to leave a relationship where you're not honored and seen and cherished and treated with respect and value, looking back at the beginning or even during one of those worst times of him behaving towards you in such a disrespectful and a disempowering and minimizing way, there is another part of you, not that child part of you, this part of you, the one that left, right? Who probably feels it differently in her body when I ask you to think about it. You see what I'm saying? Where do you feel that in your body when I say that? More in my chest area. I cut my tightness there. It's heartbreaking that he's treating you that way and you feel compassion for yourself.

Mm-hmm. And can you feel grace for yourself there? Yeah. Yeah. I can feel definitely like it was wrong. It was definitely wrong. And I did the right thing. Yeah. Right. Because that's the grown up part of you who can see things clearly. That's the one in you who would be saying the same thing to a friend or a loved one who was in a similar situation. Right. And the way you can probably still even talk to yourself. It's the way you got to the point of being able to leave. But then there's this smaller part of you that, you know, like I like to say, drives the bus in love relationships. Definitely. Because when I look back now and I think of some of the scenarios that came up, I'm like, why didn't I just stay calm and like tell him no. But of course I couldn't

because I was triggered and I was emotional and it was the child in me that was reacting. Yes. You weren't in the building anymore, right? Because that core wound, which is the same wound that called him in and was attracted to him in the first place, right? So that one has been drives the bus from the moment you meet the person, that part of you smells arsehole, who's going to ultimately not turn out to be who he says he's going to be, is going to rip love away from me and is going to treat me like I'm discardable and too much or too little of something. And so, but this time I'm going to get it right. So I'm going to go for it because this feels really familiar and really good. And there's no other way to get this right because intellectually and

emotionally I'm five or six years old, and this is the only thing I can think of. So I'm just going to go for this guy and I'm going to make it because this time I'm going to be lovable enough and I'm going to do it right enough that he's going to behave differently, right? So all this is going on below your conscious awareness. Exactly. Because when I first met him, I was actively thinking, oh, he's so different to my father.

And, but then as it turned out, he ended up being like all of the worst things of my parents. Yeah. Because you were, even then you were choosing from your wound, right? You don't have to think that way when you're choosing from the part of you that is healed. And of course, the more of you you heal, the more of you chooses from there,

right? But when you're choosing from the healed part of yourself, it's not a choosing against something. It's like, oh, let me check in with my body who I'm now in communication with. How do I feel in the presence of this other person? Oh, let me notice my reaction to how they're talking to that waiter or even just talk to me right now. What are their relationships? I've noticed that my relationships with my friends are this way because I've done the work that I've done in these ways. Like what are his relationship with, you know, you just get curious and you feel the truth, right? Like there were so many warning signals when you met this last one and everyone before him that you just bypassed. A hundred percent. Yeah.

choose the coffee you love with added b vitamins like coffee plus b12 to help support immune function and coffee plus b6 to keep your day moving or go with the flow and choose ginseng delight our new double espresso with ginseng extract whatever lies ahead don't change your morning let your morning change you discover coffee plus on espresso.com and only in your relationship life it seems and this is true for many of us we can be extremely high functioning in almost all areas of our life. But then there's this place of the wound, right? So if you'd been someone who had grown up with an addict and all your wounds were based on that, or you were homeless and went from shelter, you would be having struggles in other areas of your

life, right? But because your struggle and your wounds are based in the most intimate relationship that is the core of your sense of grounding and safety from that very early wound, right? This isn't a high school boyfriend who did you wrong. This is your mother through her own wounds doing you wrong, not intentionally, right? So that's where your healing is. And so as you continue, the more that you can focus on really distinguishing, differentiating between those two parts we just tuned into a minute ago, right? One was your essential self, your true self, right?

Who you essentially are as the evolved woman, grown up that you are, who understands, who's done a lot of her own healing, who's attuned to her essential self, her soul self. And the other part who is just as beloved is the you that's been stuck in a shock bubble from this horrific, not just that once, but it still continues, right? There's so many versions of her in you, and that's why she's been so powerful in your romantic life. So the more that you can create a communication between those two parts of yourself and the whole you, the essential you, listens to, talks to, protects, stands for, attunes to, honors, shows up for that other part. Because the only reason she's been driving the bus so crazily and voraciously like a six-year-old at the wheel is because no one else is listening, right?

You haven't been there clearly enough to say, listen, there's so many other ways. You are safe. I'll take care of us. We can take care of ourselves. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. Connecting those two dots is such a huge part of your healing because then you can start to distinguish when you're in the moment, whether you're acting and speaking from her or acting and speaking from your essential self.

And one is not worse or better than the other, but one serves you better than the other. And we don't want to get rid of her. We want to integrate her into you, right? We want her to feel safe enough and held enough and seen enough and valued enough that she is the opposite of going to be discarded like she's been afraid of. She has a voice. Her fears matter. She deserves to feel safe.

And she's important. that's the part of you that needs to feel safe and valued and tuned into by yourself, that you can take care of yourself. Not that you don't need other people and will connect to other people, but that you are there for yourself. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Yeah. And it's definitely something I've been trying to do, but for some reason, it's hard to connect in with her. It's like there's something that stops me wanting to go there probably because I know it will be uncomfortable. Oh my God. I wouldn't want to go there. It hurts. Yeah. Yeah. Why would you want to go there? Of course, I understand that.

But it's like I just, I believe, put out a video. If it's not already up on YouTube, go and subscribe and it'll be up in the next week or so because I already filmed it. But it was a video about really getting to know your inner child and doing that work. And there's so many beautiful ways to do that. But the reason we're in resistance to it is because that part of us exists to encapsulate for the primary purpose of encapsulating the pain that we didn't want to feel, a huge part of their purpose. So until we're willing to feel it, they can't integrate and cease to exist. So the only way to integration is to be willing to feel the feelings of that part that you've disintegrated from, right?

That you've separated from. And it feels so yucky and scary. And from the outside, it looks that way. But what happens when you actually shine a light on it and invite it to tease, so to speak, metaphorically, sometimes literally, believe me, I've done that with clients before where we've like had conversations.

But when you really are willing to sit there, witness, be with the feelings that that one feels that you are feeling, you're just blocking off, then there's such a release and it's never fun to feel pain and sadness and fear and loss that you've spent your whole life trying not to feel of course but it doesn't take you over it doesn't happen all at once it happens like a little pressure valve on one of those pressure cookers right but you do every time feel lighter and freer and clearer and more integrated you should do that ideally, I think, with support. So you can do that through working with a somatic

experiencing therapist, a person who does somatic experiencing, or even in shamanic therapies, there's something called soul retrieval. Teal Swan has a process that's really beautiful. She wrote a book about it called The Completion Process. Those are three great modalities for exploring and cultivating and nurturing a relationship with those parts of yourselves that you think you've been repressing, but have actually been the most powerful in the love realm, right? Yeah. The only reason is because that's where they have to be loud. All the other stuff doesn't affect them in the same way, right? But this is where it matters. This is where their safety is found. It will likely change your relationship with your mother, but in the same

way it will with your co-parent ex. When you are clear in your healing and clarity, you're not triggered to fear in the same way when you meet resistance to your boundaries. The reason it's so hard to hold those boundaries with your mom is because the one that's holding them is the part of you that feels like she's going to die if she's abandoned. That little part of you, right? But once she feels safer, understood, seen, and cherished and integrated, you're going to be the one holding the boundaries. She can't hold them. She's just a little scared, sweet, helpless feeling little girl. That was like my son. They had a technical error. And unfortunately, it was only like a week or two out from the horrible Ovedale shootings. And they had a code red

lockdown in the school. All of a sudden, an alarm went off. It was a mistake. But when he told me about it afterwards and he was really shaken, he said that he ran into a room, a classroom, and he tried to lock the door, he and a couple of other students. And there's no, you know, why would there be a lock on the doors in the classroom doors? So there was no lock and he panicked. He and his friend each took part of the door and leaned away inwards, holding it in because the door opened outwards from the hall. These two little scrawny teenagers imagined that they were going to hold the door in from some shooter or some danger, right? And he said, yeah, I know that's kind of stupid now. That's kind of what your little girl is trying to do

when she holds a boundary. It's like Jackson trying to hold a door in from a potential mass murderer. The same kind of feeling of fear and helplessness and inability to hold it. He needed a teacher in with him. He needed a lock on the door. He needed to understand that it's not as responsible to keep the whole classroom safe and how to protect himself. He needed to be protected. The school needed to have better technology so that this shit doesn't traumatize the kids again. And when it happens, I mean, there's so many layers to this, but the point is it wasn't his responsibility, right? He's just a boy. And that part of you is just a girl. So it's not about judging yourself that you're not holding those boundaries or that there's something

wrong that you're not holding those boundaries, but really honoring the part of you that does and doing that work to integrate the two. Makes sense? Definitely, yeah. And I think what really stood out to me there when you said is that like, she's already like, in terms of not connecting with her,

it's like, she's already there every day. I'm just pretending she's not. So I may as well just join. I may as well just talk to her and like let some of that pressure off. Oh my God, she'll be in such ecstasy. Yeah. It takes a lot of bravery.

I would say in my case, even connecting with little parts of myself, I was so unwilling to do that, that a girlfriend of mine who is, happens to be a really wonderful coach and teacher, all of a sudden started telling me that my, this part of me was showing up to her. She's like, your little girl showed up and just wanted to sit and play next to me. She didn't want anything for me, almost like I could see her. I just knew there she was. And as she said that, I was like, God, you know, that's a huge part of me that I haven't been willing to sit with that part of me that was

always alone and never really had someone to play with me, much less sit next to me and play with me. It was such a tender, small part of me. So you can do that with a therapist. You can do that with a friend. You can just, you saying it right now, making that proclamation that I want to connect with her is a huge part of it. And really committing to that because yeah, that's absolutely true that she's there, whether you acknowledge it or not. It's like a neglected little sweet child sitting in the room with you all the time. I think definitely now that I'm a mother, it's making me see that more as well, because I'm thinking of my own child and all the things I'm doing for him. And like, well, I need to start doing that for myself too.

Exactly. Having little kids is really helpful to connect with your inner child. That's one of the things we love about being with little kids, but be silly with your son, right? Start jumping on the bed, even if you're not really supposed to be on the bed and really embody those parts of your little girl. Let her have fun. Let her feel safe. Let her be played with and let her play with your son because they probably will have a lot of fun together. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds great. Good. Well, I hope this helps and gives you some guidance to add to what already is a hero's journey, but I think you're doing a great job and I hope that you'll stay in touch with us and let us know how it goes. I will. Thank you so much. And I really,

really get so much from your podcast and your Instagram posts. I just want to say thank you so much. It's definitely been such a support to me. I check it every day just to see what new stuff is up with us. And yeah, very helpful. Thank you. Good. I'm grateful for that because it means the world. It really means a lot to me to be on the journey with you. So thank you for being there and for sharing yours with us. Yes. I went to the doctor Said I'm crazy for your love Wrote me a prescription

But there's no cure for a crush All I wanna do, I wanna do is take you home with me I wanna make a move, I wanna make a move