The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Out of the FOG, into the CLEAR; Journaling to Help You Heal from Toxic Relationships by Shannon Petrovich

Episode Date: November 15, 2022

Out of the FOG, into the CLEAR; Journaling to Help You Heal from Toxic Relationships by Shannon Petrovich In the FOG (Fear, Obligation, and Guilt) of a narcissistic, abusive, or other toxic relationship, feelings of paralysis, anxiety, depression, confusion, disorientation, not knowing who you are anymore, or how you got to this dark place in your life, are as terrifying and mystifying as ocean fog. The FOG crept into your relationship so stealthily that you didn’t notice the dramatic swings from love-bombing to devaluing, the constant pressures, the lies, the gaslighting, the flashes of anger, all of it was just a bit of water vapor that was easily dismissed. But over the months, or years, the FOG set in. Toxic relationships are not an act of nature like ocean fog; they are the result of intentional tactics of manipulation, and control. This FOG is not going to just lift. Nothing will change until you change it. So how do you find your bearings, push past this paralysis, clear away your vision, begin to heal the trauma, and rebuild your life? The insights, strategies, and journal prompts in this book are designed to help you sail through the FOG and into the CLEAR. This book is packed with information including; Changing your negative internal self-talk to transform the cycles of depression, self-blame, despair, and hopelessness, into self-encouragement, hope, progress and self-compassion Understanding trauma-bonding and how to untangle this unhealthy attachment Boundaries; how to create and maintain them with people who don’t respect them Placating, people-pleasing, and peacekeeping, and how to stop undermining yourself Finding clarity, staying focused on reality, and letting go of the gaslighting Leaving emotionally as well as physically Rebuilding your sense of self, and creating healthy self-care strategies And so much more It is possible to deal with and heal from toxic relationships, and this book will help you find your way. Welcome aboard, You can do this!

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hello. Welcome to the education rollercoaster with a brain. This is Chris Voss. I'm your host of the Chris Voss Show. For 13 years, do I still have to say I'm your host? I mean, if you ever show up to the Chris Voss. I'm your host of The Chris Voss Show. For 13 years, do I still have to say I'm your host?

I mean, if you ever show up to The Chris Voss Show and it's not Chris Voss sitting at the desk, that's probably not going to be a good sign. I don't know. But hopefully that day never comes, folks. Welcome to The Chris Voss Show. The Chris Voss Show.com. Hey, coming to you with another great author that we have on the show. You're going to learn so much today.

You're going to come out of the fog and into the clear with this this today's show this i was trying to say this week what the hell uh this today's show the today show not the today show i'm gonna get sued for copyright we had some cheap people from good morning america that's not the today show that's another show isn't it i don't think we have anybody on from the Today Show. We don't like those people. I don't know. No, I'm sure they're fine people. Anyway, guys, well, you know the drill.

Welcome to the show. Go to youtube.com, Fortress Chris Foss. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss. Go to all those crazy places on the interwebs. TikTok and LinkedIn are the primary sources of what we're doing. We're not sure what drunken Elon Musk is doing over on Twitter, but we still have the show over there if you want to check that out as well. For, you know, until Twitter goes bankrupt or whatever the hell is going on, the news on there is spectacular.

It's like watching someone burn down $44 billion at once just to, I don't know, because you can. It must be nice being the richest man in the world. Anyway, guys, on to our amazing author that we have on the show. She's the author of the newest book that came out May 21st, 2022, Out of the Fog and Into the Clear. Ah, see, I teased that at the beginning of the show. You didn't see that coming, did you?

Out of the Fog and Into the Clear Journaling to Help You Heal from Toxic Relationships. Shannon Petrovich is on the show with us today. She's going to be talking about her amazing new book. And she is of brilliant mind, which is the opposite of me. She is a therapist, author, YouTube creator. She has earned her bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College and her master's. Clearly, I didn't go to college, right? What was that correction, Shannon?

Bowdoin. Bowdoin. You got it right. All right. I was trying to be fancy with the Bowdoin. I don't know what I'm trying to do. No one knows. And her master's in social work from the University of Connecticut.

She earned her clinical licenses in social work and substance abuse counseling and is a board-certified diplomate. Diplomat? Diplomat, yeah. Okay. abuse counseling and is a board certified diplomate diplomat diplomat yeah okay diplomat in clinical social work is there supposed to be an e at the end of that yeah oh for some reason there is is that like a is that like a okay well i clearly didn't go to college i went to public school so uh that's that's where my problem was. Her new book, Out of the Fog and in the Clear, Journaling to Help You from Toxic Relationships, has attained Amazon bestseller status

in self-help for abuse, codependency, and personal transformation. On her YouTube channel, Therapist Talks, she shares insights, information, perspectives, and strategies on a wide range of relationship and mental health topics. With a very trauma-informed and strength-based approach, she seeks to help people see the old stories that are in their way and fully become the person they are created to be.

Welcome to the show. How are you, Shannon? Thanks so much, Chris. I'm doing great. How about you? Good, good, good, good. I am doing fine. It's Friday. We're just having a good old time. So give us your dot coms or wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs. Yeah, so my website is nofoggydays.com. You can also get there by therapisttalks.com. And that will show you the link to my book as well as my podcasts and also all of the YouTube channel links and all of my other links. So nofoggydays.com or therapistdocs.com. There you go. And what motivated you to write this book? So about five years, I've been a therapist for 35 years. And about five years ago, I felt like there were so many millions of people in the world that didn't have access to any mental health information or perspectives or strategies. And I gathered a lot of information over the years and I thought, man, everybody's kind of on YouTube. Maybe it's something I can do to share the things that I've learned. So I got on YouTube and started making videos about all kinds of mental health topics from anxiety and depression and suicide to relationship issues. And pretty soon the relationship ones were the ones blowing up.

And especially people were really interested in narcissistic, abusive and other toxic relationships. So that became my focus. And a couple hundred videos later and a lot of live streams, and I realized that in order to really help people get well from these relationships, I needed to pull it all together into a book. And I really wanted to do it as a workbook, a self-help book, something that people could use to actually gain some insights, perspectives and strategies and then walk through some journal prompts so that they could help themselves actually go from really feeling like they're in the fog to really being in the clear and rebuilding their lives. And in the title of your book, The Fog, refers to, what is it, an acronym? Fear, obligation, and guilt. So when people are lost in a relationship, typically they get inundated by the, well, you know, it sneaks up on you.

And that's kind of why the fog analogy kind of works, too, because when you fall into an ocean fog, oftentimes it's kind of sneaky. And then all of a sudden you can't see anything and you're really lost in it. into sort of some patterns that are toxic, but initially they seem pretty benign. But over time, if somebody is sort of love bombing you and making you feel great and then devaluing you and isolating you from your people and gaslighting you and making you feel kind of crazy, and then over time sort of scaring you with little tantrums and little fear enhancing kind of activity and behaviors so that you then start to placate them and people please and be a peacekeeper. And then gradually you start to feel really badly about yourself and really undermined and really lost. And yet they kind of come in just as you're getting sick of that, that they'll come in and love bomb you again. So that cycling gets you really hooked in and your emotions get really lost in that fear, obligation and guilt. Yeah, there's a there's a lot of talk about narcissistic abuse and, and people have been,

uh, do you, have you gotten set up on Tik TOK yet over there yet? You know, I haven't really tackled the Tik TOK thing that much. You should, I'm looking at your YouTube channel. It's awesome. Uh, you should, because there's a lot of discussions over there and Tik TOK has really become, I mean, it's just, I mean, it I mean, I spend too much time on it. Everybody does. I mean, that's why Facebook and Twitter are struggling, because TikTok and Instagram even, and TikTok has really taken over. But there's a lot of discussions over there about toxicity abuse, in fact, and narcissistic abuse.

In fact, there's one channel that I keep tripping across where the gal is a diagnosed narcissistic sociopath. And she literally, I think there's two or three people, and they literally talk about how they manipulate people. And it's the most frightening thing to watch. But you should go over there and check that out because there's a lot of narcissistic abuse going on. How much is there of really diagnosed of narcissist abuse going on. How much is there of really diagnosed narcissist abuse going on? Because, you know, I've met people on first dates that the last 20 boyfriends they've had were all narcissists. So how much of it is really going on in the marketplace with the percentage of people that are truly diagnosed as narcissist abuse?

Well, it's an interesting question, Chris, because I don't think there's any way to know how many narcissists are in the world. So when people say, oh, it's 6% of the population or 20%, nobody knows because by definition, a narcissist doesn't believe that anything is their fault or anything is their problem. And so they're not going to show up for therapy.

The only way narcissists ever show up for therapy is if somebody drags them there and then they bail out as soon as the therapist confronts them. So they're just not going to. Well, you can't count them. I mean, the only way we know how many depressed people there are in the world is because they show up and they bill their insurance and they go to the hospital and things like that. So you can count those people. But narcissists are just out there kind of making havoc in the world and they're not showing up for help. So I don't know how you can count them. So I think all the research is pretty bogus. That being said, I think also it's become a real buzzword and it's become weaponized.

A lot of people will even be narcissistic in their traits and then call the other person narcissistic to try to basically flip the script and make it their fault that everything that toxic that they've been up to. So I think back in the day, there's always been bad behavior in the world. And in my early work, actually, my first job out of college, real job, was working at a domestic violence shelter. And certainly there was bad behavior going on, but we didn't use the word narcissist. So that's kind of been more over the past five or 10 years that people are using that term more. And I usually will try to refer to it

as narcissistic traits because the true personality disorder is a lot more rare than the traits. Oh, okay. That's probably the big difference. Right. And so there are a lot of people with narcissistic traits that don't have the full-blown personality disorder. And I think that's what people are mostly referring to. But also, like I said, people will flip the script and blame the other person so that they can kind of get out from under blaming themselves. Yeah. I mean, we live in this world where we really have a problem of victimization, uh, competition and always wanting to be the victim. I mean, it's, it's, it's kind of crazy how far out there we've gotten is, and, and the self-accountability, you know, we have to put up

on signs on bridges saying, don't jump off the bridge or it'll kill you. And then if they do jump off the bridge, then the, then they sue or something when they're injured. And you're like, but there was a sign that said, but no, I'm a victim, millions of dollars later. It's just insane. I grew up in a world that they were like, no, jump off the bridge. Your parents were like, please, take him.

Pedophiles have fun. He's running around the neighborhood. He's right there parents were like, please take him. Pedophiles have fun. He's running around the neighborhood. He's right there. Just put a sign on him. You know, my mom would go into the store and leave us all in the car where, well, the, well, the, what was it? California was going at the time. I remember there was the hillside strangler, I think it was running around. She'd leave us in the car. We're like, you's a man, man, killing people. Mom. She's like, uh, yeah, she put a sign on the car, take him please. No, she wasn't that bad. I do jokes, but you know, we, I lived in a different time. You know, I lived in a time where mom threw you out of the house and you didn't come

back till, I don't know, the streetlights came on or she yelled at you for dinner. Um, but it seems like, you know, we live in this sort of victimized thing and no, no one takes self accountability for like relationships. Like, like I say, I date a lot and, and I'll sit and look at people. Have you done any work on yourself? Have you, have you, maybe, maybe it was you, you know, you, you mentioned something that was kind of funny that reminded me one of my girlfriends, one time I was trying to save a relationship after a year and a half and i was like look last ditch effort here because

we're going to break up at this point i i'm not dealing with you anymore uh but last ditch effort i'm gonna i'm gonna throw a hell of a merry pass here let's go to counseling i'm willing to go let's go to counseling because you know i'm the horrible person in this relationship let's go to counseling and we'll work it out. And freaking plain as day. A word for her to read him. She goes, no, I'm not going to counseling. And I go, why not?

And she goes, because the counselor will tell me that I'm the problem. And she knew, she knew, you know, and there was lots of gaslighting. I don't know if narcissistic behavior was going on but just gaslighting and trying to trying to cuck me and uh you know whatever sort of submission and and get settled down um so yeah it's interesting to me but uh yeah you should you should definitely go on tiktok seriously you'll make like trillions of dollars over there on tiktok it's crazy i i've gotten so many of my friends of other businesses to go over there and we're trying to make it work and it's crazy. So I think this is good, the fear, obligation and guilt. Do you find that journaling is really an important part of helping people identify those patterns that are being put to them? And, you know, I certainly would have been helped by that. Like,

you know, there's some strange stuff going on today and, oh, it's the same as yesterday and the day before and the day before. Yeah, I think it is really helpful and healthy. And one of the things that's really critical is that we do take a look at victimizer and then tries to act the victim, yes, I agree with you. So it's really critical to recognize too, if there are toxic things that you're saying to yourself, are you your own worst enemy? Are you really hard on yourself? Are you constantly running yourself down inside your head? Because if that's true, then you may be more accepting of that behavior in other people. And you might, and if you want to get free from that other person who's running you down, you also have to look at how you're running yourself down or you will not be able to stand up

to that other person. So the internal work has to start and then extends to the outside and standing up to that other person and starting to set boundaries and starting to look at all the ways that we've fallen into patterns of placating and people-pleasing. Because when you do that, you are not telling the truth and you're not standing your ground or holding boundaries. So when you can figure out what your boundaries are, like I'm not going to let you talk to me that way anymore. When you're being explosive, I'm going to leave are, like I'm not going to let you talk to me that way anymore. When you're being explosive, I'm going to leave the house or I'm going to hang up the phone. And then when you do that, then you give the other person the opportunity to grow.

And if it's in the milder, more moderate range of behaviors, that person might decide, oh, man, I do want to save this relationship. I'm going to stop doing that. And then you've got a potential there. But if that person escalates, and when you ask to be heard and seen and a part of the relationship 100%, and then they escalate into violence or more badgering and more belittling and more manipulative and controlling behaviors, then you know for sure that that's not your circus, not your monkeys, and you got to get done with it. Is there, is there, do you normally find that people that are the biggest problem in the relationship are the ones who are the most reluctant to go to counseling and the people who are most interested in counseling are the people who, you know, they're really trying to find a pathway. They're really trying to fix stuff.

Absolutely. Yeah. The people that show up are usually those empathic, compassionate, caring people. And they're trying to drag their partner in because they want to fix them. But, you know, typically over the course of time, if they can get that partner in at all, they bail out as soon as they get confronted on any of their behaviors or as soon as the boundaries are set and they don't like that. But it's that caring, compassionate, empathic person who shows up and does the work and hopefully gets stronger, sets those boundaries, learns to stop the placating and peacekeeping so that they can get clear and strong and get free of that, emotionally free at least, and sometimes physically free. Sometimes people do choose to stay in a relationship with boundaries and that's fine too, unless there's

violence. And then I absolutely insist that people get out. But yeah, it's a journey. And typically as people get stronger and I really encourage them to learn to emotionally step back and watch instead of getting all involved and engaged in it and sucked into it. So a lot of times when a person can emotionally step back and watch, then they can, I call it watching the circus go by. So you want to be able to watch the games and watch the manipulation and watch the control antics because it's almost like they have a big smorgasbord in front of them. So they'll try the anger and that doesn't work. So then they try it pouting and then they'll switch to sort of threats of this or that. And then they'll switch to just running you down and making you feel crappy. And then they'll switch to guilt and then they'll switch back to anger. So it's like bouncy, bouncy, bouncy. It's like whack-a-mole. and every time, you know, something else pops up. So it's really important to recognize it's not about you. Those are all just the same game. They're just in

different guises. So it's manipulation and control in different guises. And when you can step back from that, then you don't get sucked in anymore. Yeah. It's the emotions of it. I mean, that's why, I mean, a lot of, I think a lot of healthy men like myself, we use a lot of stoicism. We try not to get sucked into emotional responses and emotional abuses. But there's so many men nowadays that have grown up with this whole new age thing that are very emotional. And they're more in their feminine than they are in their masculine. And so they really struggle with responding, at least from what I see, struggling with responding.

And they meet emotion with emotion. And then it's just explosive. One of the things you talk about in the book is understanding trauma bonding and how to untangle the unhealthy attachment. We had someone on just earlier today. We were talking about how people grow up and how their, how their, uh, parenting is the example they see from their parents, uh, is it sets the tone or sets the, okay, this is what a relationship is. And this is what you do. And if that relationship is toxic, either their relationship with their parents or

their parents' relationship with each other, they tend to replicate that in their relationships. Is that true? Do you find that? I do. And it's a little more complicated than that because each kid sort of, it's not exactly what happens to us. It's how we story it inside ourselves. And it's how we act in what role we find in that family. So some kids in that family will find themselves in the role of wanting to be like the abusive, toxic parent. And other kids will find themselves in the role of wanting to be the placate or peacekeeper in the family. And others will be the hero child. Like if I am perfect and everything in my life is perfect, then I can take the heat off of mom and dad and what they're going through and what they're acting out on each other. So it depends a lot on how the kid internalizes it.

Now, some kids will internalize that as, well, there's all this going on, I'm completely uncared about, unworthy, unlovable, not important, a burden even. And so when you carry those stories into adulthood, you set yourself up for being in a relationship where someone treats you that way. any level but it's just that subconsciousness with that subconscious message and story inside your head lets you let people treat you the way you're treating yourself if that makes sense yeah it's it's uh does it does the birth order have any play into that as well as to your interpretation because they there's some theories on that i guess yeah and it's i like the birth order book because it does talk about the different roles and sometimes they play out that way but a lot of times they don't i think it has to do with so many complexities of you know each of us are our nature and nurture so we're we're each wired certain way. And then we have experiences when we come out of the womb. So we've got who we are kind of as people. And I think people are typically wired

either less empathically or more empathically. And I think there is some evidence to that, that there are certain parts of the brain that make us more empathic or less empathic, more self-centered or less self-centered. And so that kind of sets us up for whether we're going to be that less empathic. We're going to model ourselves after that less empathic parent or the more empathic parent. And then we fall into those roles. So I don't think it's as much about the birth order book or the birth order as it can be about how we're basically wired. That's interesting, you know, because you got me thinking about this, you know, the middle child, you know, sometimes goes for a lot of attention and has that attention seeking because they're

stuck in the middle, or at least that's the theory of that, and I could see what you're saying. It's really interesting. I've never heard anybody say what you said, where it's also how you interpret that, and that's really true. Your whole life experience, you know, two people can go to a party. One person can see that it was a great party, and everyone had fun, and he focused on the people that were having fun. Another person go to the same party and be like, that was dark and depressing. That was a whole party. It was not fun because they focus on, you know, what they see. And that interpretation is, is really the key. And that's really amazing to me. I never thought of it from that angle. Yeah, it's fascinating. How you interpret your parents. I've always just kind of gone off the thing.

You know, I was watching something recently where, you know, a lot of studies that go on with single parents, because we have more single parents now than ever before, at least in America. And I've always been able to witness through dating all my life what it's like with daughters who grow up without fathers or grow up with bad fathers. And when I'm dating, that's always one of the things I try and determine right away is if she had a healthy relationship with her father, because that makes all the world in the difference. You know, it's what Chris Rock would say, keeping her off the pole. If you're a bad father or if you're a father who's not there for her, you don't set a good

example as a good male role model in her life, then that's going to affect her through most of her life. The same thing with sons. I was, I was watching, uh, someone had some data on sons. Their sons grow up with a single mother and they see the mother struggling. They try and save the mother. And they end up becoming a male who always wants to bail women out. And that affects their relationships in the future.

So it's interesting to me. And the perspective of it, what you mean. Wow. I mean, I know the birth order is important. The first child, of course, is important the first child of course is always the smartest the brilliant the best looking and uh the greatest you the first child how'd you know see see you knew because i you know there it was and then the rest of the children you know they're just kind of left over i told you mediocre i tell my siblings i took all the good

stuff out of the womb and they just got and they just got the thrift store leftovers. But I'm not sure they agree with me, but that's true. Well, I've got a great example. I might be the narcissist in the family, too. Yeah, we won't go there. They would just diagnose me right there. I can share with you a great example of what you're just talking about, though, too, is that when I worked in the domestic violence shelter, I'll never forget this little boy. He was only three years old and he wanted some candy before supper.

And his mom said no. And he literally balled up his fist and punched her in the thigh because that's how little he was and called her an effing bee. And I was just floored. You know, at three years old, he'd absorbed that that was how you got your way and how you got what you wanted. And then the opposite of that is I've seen, you know, six-year-olds who are constantly worried about their mother and will act out in such over-empathic ways and over-worried about their single mother that they are probably setting themselves up to be that rescuer guy for women for the rest of their lives. Yeah. I've also seen, another thing I've been seeing or understanding is the

husbandry of the son, when when the divorce happens the son becomes gets all this pressure to basically be the man of the house and the pressure is is it's a lot of pressure to do a five-year-old or an eight-year-old or any young man and uh and then they spoil the crap out of the son they treat the son like they would a husband and spoiling them and taking care of them and um and it can either it can either, it can either lead to where they, they, they aren't ambitious, uh, later in life. You know, they just want to, they just want to, uh, just not do anything or they, they end up being that subservient role of, of trying to make everybody happy. Um, let's move to, uh, one of my favorite topics that, you know, I've learned a lot about lately, and I think it's really important boundaries, how to create, maintain them with people that don't respect them. You talk about that in the book section and they'll say, boundaries don't work. I'll say, you know what? Boundaries

always work because either they help you clarify that this relationship isn't going to work, or they help clarify what will help this relationship work and fix it. So when you set a boundary, you have to get clear in your head about what you're willing to put up with. Because a boundary is just how I take care of myself in a relationship. So it isn't, people say, well, that's an ultimatum. That's not right. No, it's not. It's how I take care of myself in the relationship. So if somebody is going off on me, I'm going to hang up the phone. I'm going to leave the house. I'm going to leave that situation. I'm going to walk away. Now, if I really care about that relationship, I'll say, we can talk about this later when you calm down, or we can talk about this later when you can be respectful or when I can feel heard or something

specific and clear like that, and then leaving and then coming back and trying again later. And with somebody, like I said, who's not as in the milder range, I'll put it in those toxic qualities, they will take those grown-up timeouts and they will learn from them and realize, oh, okay, every time I do that, I get my grown-up timeout and I don't like that. And so I'm going to stop behaving that way. And over time, they will stop behaving that way. Whereas somebody who will not let you exist in the relationship, won't let you be a whole person, won't let you have your thoughts, feelings, wants, needs, they're going to make it clear by escalating, being really mad, making their behavior even worse until you stop giving them the grown-up timeouts. So you have to recognize.

So when you present a boundary and you hold to your boundary, then you've got to kind of step back and emotionally watch and notice. My favorite bounty is we're breaking up and you stay on that side of the country and I'm going to stay on this side of the country and don't call me. No, I'm just teasing. Actually, I do these that a lot. But no, boundaries are really important. You know, I've learned more and more about them over the years. I'd always called them rules. I didn't know what I was talking about, but I always knew rules. I don't, there, there's a certain boundary that I have for my peace and respect and, and I'm very well in it. I've never, I've never been married, so I've never been into a situation where I couldn't walk away from. And so I've always been able to have the rule, like, look, either change your stuff or

I'm out the door. Uh, and you know, I don't get talked to a certain way. I don't get treated a certain way. Um, if someone wants to have a logical reasoning conversation with me, I mean, I can talk about your feelings, but they can't be, you know, screaming at me at decibels one 10 or, you know, in an irrational state. Um, but I've always had boundaries. And like you say, I, I give a timeout, I'll block your number. I'll, I'll block a stupid text. Uh, I'll, I'll, I'll cut people off. I'll give them, you know, a week timeout. Um, but you know, it's easier for me to do that because I when people cross that line, you've got to, you've got to be the enforcer of that line. Is that why people that tell you boundaries don't work? As you mentioned before, they up the inside work. Like I said, you can't be running yourself down and take care of yourself at the same time. You have to really become your own best friend. You have to become okay being in your own skin and being separate and single or being separate and going for a walk for a couple of hours so that both people can calm down. And when I work with couples, what I do is I talk about putting your intensity on a zero to 10 scale. People like to talk about anger, so you can talk about intensity because it isn't always anger. It could be, it could be tears and, and like screaming out of angst and, and upset and

anxiety and all of that. So we don't, we talk about intensity on a zero to 10 scale. So you want to stay in the zero to five range. Anything from five to 10 is just craziness. So it's raging or it's tears or it's histrionics or it's threats of suicide, threats of violence. It's all just way off the rails and nothing good is going to happen in that range. So we talk about staying in the zero to five. And if it starts to get to six, then you need to take yourself for a time out, go for a walk, take a deep breath, go get a cup of tea, you know, just calm down and wind down because you're not going to resolve anything if you're in the five to 10 range because you're in the fight, flight and freeze. And you're range because you're in the fight, flight, and freeze.

And you're also triggering the other person into fight, flight, and freeze. Nothing good happens in that place. That's true. Because I'm on the flight mode. I'm out the door. I'm blocking the number. I run all my numbers through Google Voice. So when I want to get to fear, about 30 years, 20 years ago or something,

Google Voice came out. Grand Central was the company. And then Google bought it and called it Google Voice. And it's the most beautiful thing to time out people because you can literally block a number and it gives them a message basically saying you didn't pay your bill. Must know.

I love that. If I have someone who comes to my dating life, that's toxic and I'm, it's time to go. I just blocked the number. And, and you know, if they're a woman, they're just like, I'm not, you know, this guy can't pay his bill. So I'm going to stick around. So screw this guy. And I'm like, cool, problem solved. Um, but, uh, you know, there, there have been times where I have to, I have to go, I'm blocking your number for a couple of days until you calm down. And, uh, yeah, we can talk later. And, uh, and then they, then you just come over and be like a week later and go, Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Um, the, it's, it's, it's challenging with people nowadays,

especially like, like I say, uh, people always ask me, they go, Chris, what would you tell your 16 year old self? And I always reply the same. Everyone's always says something like you invest in Bitcoin or, you know, some stupid. And I'm always like, go to fricking therapy for hell's sakes. Go to therapy. I had a horrible ADHD when I was a kid. Um, I don't know that I still do. I think I grew out of it. Depends how much coffee I drink nowadays. But, you know, being self-aware is really important. You mentioned a good point of being comfortable in your skin and stuff. One of the problems I see with a lot of people is there's a lot of monkey branching going on nowadays, especially with social media, because it makes it real easy to get to the next person because they're in your DMs. And a lot of people, they just don't heal from relationships or they don't really deal with,

they just run around and go, that person's a narcissist and they jump to the next relationship. And they haven't really done the work on themselves to get clear and solid and clean with themselves am i crazy for thinking that or no that's really important and and the last several chapters of my book are really all about rebuilding your sense of self rebuilding your connections and rebuilding your whole life because if you've been in a really toxic relationship,

you have been so focused on that person's every whim, will, mood, emotion, up, down, sideways, their thoughts, their feelings, their wants, their needs, their dreams, their aspirations, that you have ceased to exist for however many months or years you've been with them. So you have to rebuild your sense of self and your connections and your life. And I walk through lots of different strategies

on doing that and make sure that people redo that. And then you have to rebuild a sense of a good solid creep-o-meter so that you don't get sucked into another crappy relationship. Because people do. We tend to go where we are familiar, and I won't say comfortable because it's absolutely not comfortable, and so people make the mistake of calling it comfortable.

It's not comfortable, it's miserable, but it's familiar. And so we have to recognize why we gravitate to that familiar and then determine that we're not going to do that anymore. And the way we can not do that anymore is recognizing there are two parts of our brain that are really important. There's our rational brain where we can be logical and think things through. And then there's our emotional mind, that little monkey mind, that amygdala that just goes fight, flight or freeze. And it goes love, and especially if you're intimate too soon, it goes way into attachment too quickly. And as soon as you get your little amygdala, emotional mind attached to somebody,

your rational mind goes offline and then you don't have the ability to be logical and to look at really what's going on. You don't notice the behaviors that you should notice. You don't notice the toxicity that you should have noticed, the selfishness, the self-obsession, the manipulation, the control and all that stuff and so you've disabled your creep-o-meter by being intimate too soon so i also really talk to people about um recognizing that you shouldn't really be trusting someone with your with your body and your attachment your emotional attachment unless you know them well enough to hand them the keys to your car, the keys to your house, and your PIN number to your bank account.

Everybody goes, oh, wait a minute. I didn't know them that well. I'll loan you my car. But really, you know, to hand over your attachment to someone. Well, it's a good point. Because we get attached so quickly. It's a good point. I can validate this because anytime I've dated someone who is willing to sleep with you on the first date,

there usually is, I don't want to throw everyone in the bus as a narcissist, but there's that attachment they're trying to hook, they're trying to get into you. And I found many times after that, there's the creep factor 10 goes off. There a lot of love bombing and i think that's part of it right the narcissistic love bombing part with it to try and get that attachment hook and then love bomb you and get you get you hooked in and then and then start playing games with the with the fishing rod i always kind of like it kind of like fishing where they'll pull on you and they let you run out and and you know it's it's like a love i usually call it love withdrawal game i don't know if that's a technical term for it but i've seen a lot of that where it's a love withdrawal game where where it's like uh hug you love oh by i don't want anything to do with you it's so it's constantly

back and forth so i'm here go away exactly yeah Yeah. Clearly, I'm not a psychiatrist. But I played one on the relationships. So I think it's real important. And I love the idea of the journaling part. I really should have kept better journals in my relationships. My last big relationship, I recognized there were certain dates that were going on where I would see changes to the sex in the relationship. I would see different patterns to the energy in the relationship. One of my relationships after three months, the sex died and the energy died. And I couldn't figure out what was going on. And didn't realize until a year and a half later that she'd gone off of her meds that she had for, she had cancer.

It was cancer of the pituitary gland. I forget what it's called. Cushing's disease. And I didn't realize that that was the whole factor that crashed the relationship. Neither did she. She just went off her meds because she was tired of taking them. And, yeah, and there was a whole mess of other complications that came from that but um you know journaling and and sitting down

and and recognizing what's going on your relationships i think's real important because this stuff sneaks up on you and you don't see it like i remember discovering the bottles of medication a year and a half later after i'd thrown her out of the house and was moving out her stuff and and I called her up and I go you know what what is this medication that's here it looks like it quit being taken oh that was my cancer meditation yeah I quit taking that about three months into a relationship and suddenly like all the timelines converged and I was like mother of wow this whole thing I should have been asking quite, you know, she told me she had cancer when we got together in the pituitary gland, but it was manageable. And she's pretty vain about getting the nose off.

I'm starting to do a session with you here, aren't I? But no, I'm just trying to paint a picture here of how. I'll get to bill you later. Yeah, you will. I'm just trying to paint a picture for people here how those timelines are really important yeah and what you put in the book about journaling i mean i really love this idea um you know i've always joked about how i should probably film the first few months of my relationship when they're like you're a superman you're the greatest guy ever and then like a year

later they're like you're an asshole you're hey, what happened to that person? Play the film, Bob. That's always been a joke, but I do. But no, I love the idea of journaling. I really like this idea. That's basically what I'm saying. I think it really can be helpful. I think of it as a dialogue with yourself. And you can use it in any which way you want.

Some people aren't going to use the prompts in my book for journaling, but they'll use them to think about or to talk with a good friend or even to use in therapy sessions. I mean, I wish everybody could have a therapist that they really vibed with, that they could really get help from. But we just know that that's not reality for most of the people in the world. So this is a book where you can use it with or without a therapist, and you can use it in the journaling or not.

But I like to journal, and I always have, in terms of like venting, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then I'll yab it. So I'll kind of come back in with my healthier self and go, yeah, but it's really not that bad. And really what you need to do is A, B, and C. And so I'll use it to kind of set goals and set myself back on track. And that's always what I've used it for. But in the book, I really talk about how to recognize the old stories that you've internalized, find out where they came from. Was it from somebody directly saying that to you in childhood?

Or was it your interpretation of what was going on around you? Sometimes people will have an experience and they interpret it so childlike. And then they carry that story with them for the rest of their lives until they take it out and look at it. And then they take it out and look at it in session. They'll go, well, that's silly. And I'll say, well, as for a child, it's not silly, but for a grownup looking at it, yeah, it is. You don't need to live with that anymore. So it's helping people do that kind of work. I totally agree with you on this concept. Yeah. And then the other piece of the journaling that's super critical is journaling out the relationship so that if this person is

running you down and making you feel terrible and they've done this, this and this, and then you blow it, you know, so that, so you're kind of giving yourself an accountability record so that you're recognizing the rational facts of the relationship, just the facts. And then you can make a good decision about getting free from that relationship instead of getting sucked in again and again and again. I like that. You know, it's always seemed to me, and you're the psychologist here, I'm not, but it's always seemed to me that most relationships break up because those instances and those grievances just stack and stack and stack. And when I've done my house cleaning after a relationship, you know, one of the most important things I learned in dating all my life was, you know, after you break up from a relationship of any good length, you need to spend maybe a year or two cleaning up, depend upon the length of the marriage, maybe three years. Um, I won't date anybody who's not been divorced for two or three years.

I just won't. I just, I've learned that there's just, you haven't done the work. You haven't cleaned up your mess. You gotta, um, you gotta go into the wilderness and do your thing. Part of it's an identity thing too right like you're i think that's where people really get lost is because the marriage or the relationship of the two as one people become an identity and so you've got to clear all that baggage out you've got to rediscover who you are and rebuild that and be you know who am i i don't i don't know i got six personalities i ask them and whichever one's up on deck is who we are that day. Um, we've all seen that movie. Um, but, uh,

but, uh, you know, uh, uh, people need to redo that. You know, I, I had a friend recently, he got divorced and, uh, he was married to his childhood sweetheart in an LDS church. So you know what that means. And, you know, first loves on each of them. Married for, he was in his 50s. So that would have been 35 years. And one day his wife says, hey, I'm, you know, going to go get my freak on or something.

I don't know. She pulls a hold of Giselle. And, you know're they're just like they break up you know 35 years done and it's even harder for them because that mormon mindset is is you're do you stay together for eternity yeah i can't me i can't last 20 minutes over coffee with people but uh there goes my first date um but that's a joke um yeah i can i it's 25 i can do uh but but uh you know me my friends are like we've been together for 30 years i've been like i can't make 30 minutes work um but uh uh so anyway he he wanted to jump back right he's like i'm dating and i'm like you're you're crazy

man crazy you're crazy why are you going dating i'm like dude you're, you're crazy, man. You're crazy. Why are you, why are you dating? I'm like, dude, you've got to spend at least three to five years in the wilderness, man, rebuilding who you are and, and stuff. And, but yeah, people just jump right back in these relationships. Um, and you talk about it in the book, rebuilding your sense of self and creating healthy self care strategies and things. Um, but. And leaving emotionally as well as physically, this is one of the other tidbits in the book. Do you mean when you say leaving emotionally as in like when you're in that battle for boundaries

like we talked about earlier? Or leaving emotionally behind a relationship that you left? Both. So sometimes people decide that they have to stay in some sort of relationship or they don't decide, but they do are required to because they're co-parenting kids or what have you. So you have a lot of different situations where you need to emotionally leave and maybe even physically stay present. And then you have people who've been gone from your life, gone from a relationship for many, many years and still emotionally just as hooked in as they were the day they left. So I wanted to share those perspectives and insights and strategies specifically to help people who have to stay in relationship and need to learn to emotionally separate. And also for the

people who haven't healed, even though they've been out of the relationship for many, many years. And that's, you know, such a sad thing for me to see. But a lot of times it's because you still have your own sense of self and self-perception hooked into that. And we have such a wonky sense of self in our world today. People don't understand what self-esteem is. And so I talk about that in the book too, that sense of self is really about your character qualities and your values. And if your sense of self is wrapped up in your job, your bank account, your hair, your nails, your whatever, that's not a healthy sense of self. And it isn't really who you are. And it's also extremely fragile because people have bad hair days.

That's why I wear a hat on the show. Every day is a bad hair day. So you have to regroup in that way and really write down. There's a whole bunch of journal prompts around what are your character qualities? What are your values? How close to your values are you living? What do you need to work on? What do you want to work on?

So that people can rebuild a solid sense of self from which to launch into a new life. Yeah. It's so important to do that cleaning and clearing, you know? I mean, those are the people that you meet on dates where you go on a first date with them and they talk to you endlessly about their emotion. They're still emotionally wrapped up. Yeah. And you're just like, yeah, you're clear yet. You got to go fix that. I don't need to be pulled into any of that. Yeah, if people have bitterness still, you don't want any part of that. If people are still hooked into that and if they're still, yeah,

if they're still all messed up over that person or if they haven't learned anything. You know, one thing that's hard, I don't know if you deal with it a lot in your practice. I imagine you do. One of the hard parts is, is when you come into a relationship with someone who's divorced and, you know, I'm used to ruining my relationships and pissing her off. Like, you know, I live with socks on the floor. I'm one of those horrible people. And, uh, I choose to do my giant crime socks and underwear on the floor of the bathroom. And, uh, uh, I have a funny story about that, but I'm wasting too much time. Um, but it is funny. Um, but, uh, the, the, uh, what am I trying to segue into here?

A lot of times though, I would come home and she would be angry and I'd be like, you know, what have I done? And you know, it's the ex hasn't paid his child support. The ex has pulled some stunt. How important is it for maybe people in relationships that, you know, to recognize that behavior and make sure they're not turning up to, as you said, up to a 10 for something that isn't that partner's fault. Yeah, I think communication is key and having an ability to share with each other and to stay on the same team. And that's really important. And to recognize when each other's intensity is a lot.

And then to reflect that back to each other. You know, when I come home and you're really wound up or upset with him, but I'm kind of taking it in the short for what he did. Yeah. You know, that kind of throws me off and I at least need a minute to like, hey, let's give each other a hug and a kiss first and then I'll let you vent. Yeah.

Or let me know what you need or something like that. Yeah. I saw this TikTok recently, this guy who his gals breaks down on him when he finds out, when she finds out that one of her ex-boyfriends is having a baby with a with his new girlfriend and i was like holy crap that's a whole that's a whole psychological i don't know man you might want to leave her i don't know what's going on

there but uh she was crying because the he's having a baby with the new girlfriend he wouldn't have a baby with her i guess i don't know man it, man. It's, it's a whole lot of, man, this is one of the reasons I'm still single at 54. It's, it's tough out there, man. It's, it's gotten a lot worse. Crazy. Um, one other thing I wanted to touch on, uh, placating people. Oh, um, doing the peacekeeping thing. One of the things we're really guilty of as guys is trying to be the peacekeepers and placating. We just want everybody to be happy. We want our peace. You know, we want to sit down and have a beer. We want to tune out. We want to have our own little space. And that's kind of how we deal with stuff after we went out, you know, slaying demons all day. How important is it to recognize that we're doing that and we need to set some boundaries around that?

You know, I think what's important and people and, you know, men and women will do a lot of the three Ps, peacekeeping, placating and people pleasing. We all think that we're doing people a favor we think that that's wonderful that that makes us saintly and the martyr and blah blah blah blah and that's all bs it's really important to recognize that not being honest is bs it's straight and simple bs so i think when i think that's the first piece is that you have to recognize that you're not doing anybody any favors by doing the three Ps. And you're undermining yourself and your own communication. And you're really undermining the relationship and the ability of the relationship to be genuine and to grow. So it's extremely important that you recognize the times that you're doing that and just recognize what's the truth.

You know, I know a lot of people who just to keep the peace, they won't tell the truth about going to go shopping or going to get something or going to meet a friend or whatever. It's just better to be truthful because we all know when someone's not being straight with us. And so if they don't tell you what's really going on, you're going to make up a story anyway. And how many fights were started because somebody was mad about something that if it was just stated up front, it wouldn't have been an issue. But it's because it went underground and then became like, well, why aren't you telling me this and so then became bigger and bigger and bigger so it's just a bit it's just a better idea if you stop undermining yourself and and the relationship and just be straight you know say what you mean

mean what you say and don't mean me when you say it there you go there you go very simple you know i after my last relationship i joked go, if I ever get in a relationship long-term again, I'm going to have just from the very get-go, like from the first month, just start having psychiatrist visits. Because I could see, you know, I, I, I'm not going to say I'm all my relationships. It's been 50, 50. I've done bad stuff. They'd done bad stuff. The stuff didn't mix like going on water. And, and I, I take full responsibility for it. All my girlfriends were wonderful. They love me. They tried, we tried,

we did our best with whatever kind of crap we had going on with ourselves. And, uh, that's just it. But I take responsibility for what I do, but I did see in looking back at my relationships, there were these, these death of a thousand cuts, you know, there was, okay, this I let slide or they, she let this slide or, you know, we did this and we probably should have talked about that and then resolve that. And I can, I can just see how it just stacked, you know? And, uh, so so I like the idea of the journaling thing because it's much cheaper than going to see a psychiatrist, people. But then I still don't know. I don't know. It might be.

Would it be better to go see a psychiatrist once a month in the first year of a relationship? Oh, yeah. I think it'd be a great idea. And take her with you because she's going to out you to the therapist. Yeah. Because, you know, and I think that we just, we all have blind spots. And I'm super happily married, and yet I have blind spots. And when he points one out to me, as much as I have to kind of take a deep breath not to be upset,

I'm thankful because I think that, you know, ideally we sand the rough edges off our personalities, of each other's personalities. And I think that's a beautiful thing. So I think if you can be in that genuinely open, willing place in the beginning of a relationship, I also think it's extremely important to be straight up and honest in the beginnings about what you're looking for, what you want, what you don't want, because people tend to be very closed book and closed mouth about stuff until it's all built up, like you said. So it's really important just to be open and honest. And yeah, if you can go see a therapist once a month and check in, I think that's a great thing. Yeah, before, it's like have the car,

it's kind of that whole thing of have the car serviced, you know, have the oil changes done before the engine blows up on. Right. Because it's just, it's too hard when you're like trying to resolve the issues and, you know, and she's got 20 issues and you've got 20 issues and you're just you're just trying to it's trying to dig out of all out of a bottomless pit of a hole and and to me like i said i can look back on most relationships and go i wish i would address that then i wish i would address in that but this is so important for like i say i just love the idea of journaling

if i get in a relationship i'm gonna i'm gonna do journals and stuff because there's so many things uh red flags there's so many issues you know if and one other thing is is my girlfriend when i said to her after a year and a half let's go to let's go to therapy and she says no because therapists tell me if i would have done that early on in the first month and and learned that she was not somebody who was going to be self-reflective, then there's your sign, as the famous comedian says. Well, this has been wonderfully insightful. I really want people to check out your book and read more about it and to get to know you better. And I've been looking over as we've been talking, your whole YouTube channel.

You really want to get out. You're going to send me a check for $10,000 after you get on TikTok. I swear to God, you're going to be like, you're going to be a god on TikTok. Will you teach me how to do it? Kind of, yeah. It's, I mean, you're basically what you do on YouTube. Only you have like 10 minutes.

And you know. Oh, I thought all TikToks were like 30 seconds. Are they 10 minutes? They're 10 minutes now. Oh, okay. I can do that. So then they gave you three. And then we were trying to do the show with some sort of 60-second thing.

But the conversations over there about relationships and narcissism are epic. Okay. Epic. And so you will kill it over there and you can probably just re re uh re uh cycle a lot of your content you're using on youtube because you've got a lot of videos how many videos you have on here you got a ton 150 or something yeah you got a lot of them going on and stuff i'm gonna have to watch your video on amber and uh the amber herd somewhere in here oh and jada will smith i'm watching that one too i like watching car crashes that's my thing that's pretty wild one of me and my when it used to keep my girlfriends and i talking after a breakup but we my girlfriends we'd always watch

cheaters back when it was popular during the day oh wow and the beautiful part of cheaters is great because is at the if you know how the show works that sounds painful it no it's really good it's like when i used to get depressed and i would get really depressed and i'd be sitting down with a bottle of vodka and i'd be like my life is horrible i'm going nowhere in life and then i watch cops for two hours the show cop and by the time i was done i'd be be like, shit, my life is great. I'm never getting arrested. I'm never in jail. I don't have the cops knocking on my door.

I'm not the guy in the wife beater in the trailer home who always, you know, he's always going to pick a fight with the cops and go home, go to the jail. And geez, wow, after looking at these people's lives, I'm great. And so Cheaters is great because they find cheaters and this detective firm comes in and they follow the person around they think is cheating and at the end they have a they have a confrontation of like hey you cheated and you know they usually

catch them with the cheater so that just makes it more juicy and uh i don't know maybe the reason me and my girlfriend's just to watch this because you you get done you're like we you know we're not that bad um but relationships pretty like seriously after my girlfriends i break up this sometimes they call me and hey you want to watch cheaters go oh sure no we'd watch over the phone you know old times but uh you know that's that's one of my rule is if you're gonna cheat just break up and leave no kidding yeah you know that or find out why you're wanting to cheat or what your issue is. But, yeah.

So I really love this idea of journaling. And, of course, I'm glad you verified my thing. Go see a therapist early on. Don't let everything stack up. And it's just sometimes it's, you know, the poor therapist is probably sitting there going, Oh, God, 20 years of 50,000 freaking issues and items. And, you know, they're going, you know, you remember when you hit the dog in 2013? And, you know, you're just like, oh, for the love of God, man.

I don't know. I'd be a mean, I should probably go into therapists, but I'd be one of those mean therapists. I'd be like a shock. I'd be like a shock me. Anyway, I'm going to quit doing the comment bits. He'd be like, knock i'd be like a shock me anyway i'm gonna quit doing the following bits he'd be like knock it off i'm gonna save this for the stage um so thank you very much for coming on the show shannon we really appreciate it well thanks so much for having me chris this has been a complete blast and i really appreciate you talking you know deep into the issues and then having some laughs and diving into the issues again it's really been

great yeah we call it info entertainment it's kind of like steven cobert where we educate people we make them laugh and hopefully somewhere between that laughter we sneak some info in their head and they go i'm smarter absolutely because if you weren't on the show people would just be dumber because i'd just be here talking a bunch of BS and telling stupid stories and people would be just like, I've lost five IQ points. Anyway, give us your.com, Shannon, so people can find you on the interwebs. NoFoggyDays.com or TherapistTalks.com will get you to the same spot. That's the landing page for my book and my YouTube channel and blog and all other stuff. There you go.

No more foggy days. i think that's what they used to call it when he used to drink uh out of the fog and into the clear journaling to help you heal from toxic relationships came out may 21st 2022 those who are watching this 10 years from now uh be sure to order the book wherever fine books are sold stay away there's alleyway book stores so i got a tetanus shot uh after stepping on a nail on one go to wherever fine books are sold. Stay away. There's alleyway bookstores. So I got a tetanus shot, uh, after stepping on a nail on one, go to the, or fine books are sore. I think books are sold.

It's Friday, man. We're just, uh, we're just crashing on our way out the door. Uh, anyway, guys,

go to youtube.com, linkedin.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, all the places we are on the interwebs and, uh, watch for, uh,

check out her YouTube channel, which is really informative. And, uh, also, uh, watch for her to be on tiktok soon uh so there you go uh anyway guys uh be good to each other stay safe get some therapy damn it and we'll see you next time that might be my