WEBVTT
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It's eleven o'clock at night.
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The kids are in bed, the house is finally quiet, and she's sitting somewhere, maybe her car, maybe the bathroom floor, maybe the corner of a couch that she's learned to make herself small on, and she's on her phone.
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She found me because she's run out of other things to try.
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And the algorithm knows.
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She's already read the books.
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She's already downloaded the worksheets.
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She's already forwarded him the three articles and the two podcast episodes and a YouTube video about attachment theory.
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She's already said the words that she rehearsed.
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She's already gone to couples therapy and sat there trying to explain something she couldn't quite name and watched him perform just enough remorse to keep her from leaving.
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And then drive home in silence, wondering if maybe she was the problem after all.
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She has been her own couples therapist.
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She has been her own support group.
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She has been her own everything.
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By the time she gets to me, she's not a woman who hasn't tried.
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She is a woman who is exhausted from trying alone.
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And today, I want to talk about her and I want to talk about what I actually do because apparently there's some confusion about that.
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Welcome back to Pattern Breakers Collective.
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I'm Lisa.
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And before we start, my usual note.
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When I'm talking about unhealthy or abusive dynamics, I generally use he when referring to the person causing harm.
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That is because it reflects my own experience and the experience of the majority of the women that I work with.
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But I recognize that these patterns exist across all genders and all relationship structures.
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And if your story looks different, this space is still for you.
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I've been particular doing this work publicly for a while now.
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And most of the time, I don't spend a lot of energy on the open criticism.
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Not because I don't hear it, I do, but because I'm usually too busy actually helping women to stop and explain myself.
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But it's kind of been sitting with me lately because the criticism isn't coming from people who know this work.
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It's coming from people online in the comments, the threads, the occasional message from people, mostly men, who have decided without knowing anything about what I actually do, that women like me are the reason that relationships fall apart.
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That what I do is give women excuses to leave.
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That relationships fall apart because it takes two people and I only work with one of them and pressure that person into a decision.
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That communication is a two-way street and I only teach women how to talk, not how to listen.
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That I'm not helping women to heal, I'm helping them to avoid accountability for their role in ruining their own relationships.
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And I want to address that today, not defensively, just clearly, because all of those women deserve someone to speak plainly on their behalf.
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I believe both people in a relationship carry a responsibility for how they show up.
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I believe conflict is normal and that learning to navigate it well is one of the most important skills any adult can develop.
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I believe people can change, I believe relationships can heal, I believe in repair.
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I attended a couples therapy conference last week.
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I was there to learn, to connect with other practitioners, and to be in rooms with people who care about relationships and people as much as I do because I believe in that work.
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Because when both people are genuinely invested, when both people are willing to be honest, to be uncomfortable, to take real accountability and do the actual work of changing, I have seen what becomes possible.
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I've watched couples rebuild things that I didn't think could be rebuilt.
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I've watched people fall back in love with each other after years of distance and hurt.
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That is real.
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That happens, and I want to be very clear that I am not someone who thinks it doesn't.
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I've sat with women who were ready to leave, and I have watched them find their way back to their partners because their partners also did the work, because their partners took accountability, because change actually happened on both sides, and both people decided the relationship was worth fighting for.
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That's not something I hide, that is something I celebrate.
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I am not anti-relationship, I am anti-suffering.
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But here's what I've also learned.
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There's a specific situation where all of these tools, the communication frameworks, the conflict resolution models, the attachment repair techniques, get applied to the wrong problem.
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And in that situation, all of this skill in the world won't fix what's actually broken because you cannot communicate your way out of a relationship where only one person is doing the communicating.
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You cannot repair something with someone who doesn't believe it's broken.
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You cannot build accountability in someone who has decided the problem is always you.
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That's the situation I work in with coaching, and it requires something different.
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I want you to understand something about the women who find me.
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They are not impulsive.
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They are not hasty.
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They are not women who checked out at the first sign of difficulty and decided to just burn it all down.
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By the time she gets to me, she has already spent months, often years, trying to make it work.
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She has already read every book about healthy communication.
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She has already listened to podcasts, possibly this one, for months before reaching out.
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She has already gone to therapy alone because he wouldn't come or because when he did go, he performed just enough to buy himself more time and then stopped going.
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She has already tried the I statements.
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She has already picked the right moment, not when he's tired, not when he's hungry, not when he just got home, not when he's in a mood she doesn't want to ruin.
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She has already softened her voice.
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She has already approached it differently, framed it differently, tried again from every different angle.
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She has already asked instead of demanded.
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She has already explained instead of accused.
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She has already apologized for things that were not her fault just to end the argument, just to get some peace, just to stop feeling like the villain in a story that she doesn't recognize.
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By the time she gets to me, she has been her own couples therapist for years.
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She has held the emotional weight of two people in her hands so long she doesn't know what it would feel like to put it down.
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She has translated her own pain into language he could hear.
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She has repackaged her needs into requests small enough that they wouldn't threaten him.
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She has picked every word carefully, timed every conversation, strategically, managed her tone, her own body language, her own facial expressions, because she learned early that if she looked too upset, the conversation would immediately become about her being too emotional and whatever she actually needed would disappear.
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She has made herself smaller and quieter and more careful and more accommodating.
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And she is still sitting in front of me or in her car at 11 at night because none of it worked.
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She is not someone who hasn't tried communication.
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She is someone who has been communicating into a wall for so long that she started to believe the wall is her fault.
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That is who I work with.
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That is who I'm talking to.
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And if you hear something in that description that sounds familiar, this episode is for you.
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It's not just the relationship she's struggling with, it's what the relationship has cost her.
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Because here's what happens inside these dynamics over time.
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She stopped trusting herself.
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Not because she's weak, because she's been told, directly or indirectly, that her perceptions are wrong often enough that she has started to believe it.
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He didn't have to say, Well, you're crazy out loud.
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He just had to look at her like she was overreacting enough times.
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He just had to say, Well, that never happened, enough times.
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He just had to walk away in the middle of a conversation that she needed to finish often enough that she started to wonder if maybe she was asking for too much.
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And so she stopped trusting what she felt.
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She started running her own feelings through a filter before she allowed herself to have them.
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She started asking herself, am I being reasonable?
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Am I being too sensitive?
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Is this actually a big deal or am I making it one?
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She stopped asking what she wanted, not because she didn't have preferences, but because her preferences kept causing friction.
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It was easier, less exhausting, less conflict-inducing to just want whatever to keep the peace.
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She stopped pursuing the things that mattered to her, the career pivot that she'd been thinking about, the class that she wanted to take, the friendship that she'd been meaning to invest in, the creative project that she used to care about.
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One by one, those things got smaller and quieter and eventually disappeared, not because anyone said you can't have that, but because the emotional cost of having something of her own just became too high.
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She stopped knowing who she was outside of this relationship.
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And that's the part that breaks my heart.
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Because sometimes she'll look at an old photo of herself from before, from when she was younger or before this relationship, and she'll feel something that she can't quite name.
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That special kind of grief of a recognition of a woman who seemed lighter, who laughed more freely, who took up more space in a room.
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And she'll look at that woman and she'll think, what happened to her?
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Where did she go?
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She didn't disappear all at once.
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She hid herself one tiny compromise at a time.
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And when she finally gets to me, she's often not even sure what she's grieving.
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She just knows she's exhausted in a way that sleep doesn't fix.
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She knows she's lonely in a way that doesn't even make any sense because she's technically never alone.
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She knows that something is deeply, fundamentally wrong, and she's not sure anymore whether the problem is the relationship or herself.
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That's who shows up.
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That's who I'm working with.
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And I need the people who criticize this work to understand she is not a woman who needs to be told to be more accountable.
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She is a woman who has spent years holding herself accountable for things that were never hers to own.
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So here's the part where I'm supposed to defend myself against the accusation that I just tell women to leave.
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Except I'm not gonna defend it.
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I'm just gonna tell you what I actually do.
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But first, because this matters and because I want to be completely transparent about it, I need to make a distinction.
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I have been educated and have extensive training as a therapist.
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That work, therapy, operates under a very specific scope.
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It involves clinical assessment, diagnosis, trauma processing, mental health treatment.
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It is regulated, supervised, and it carries a particular kind of responsibility and legal framework.
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And I refer women to therapy constantly.
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What I do inside Pattern Breakers Collective is coaching.
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And I'm very intentional about that distinction.
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Coaching is not therapy.
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It doesn't diagnose, it doesn't treat, it doesn't replace mental health care.
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And I always, always encourage the women I work with to also have a therapist if they can access one.
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What coaching does is help her figure out where she is, where she wants to go, and what's been in the way.
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It is a forward focused process.
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And for the women who come to me, it addresses something specific, the patterns that they've been living inside, the identity that they've lost track of, and the internal work of learning to trust themselves again.
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So, what does all of that actually look like?
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First, we go back for her.
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Because by the time she gets to me, she often doesn't know who she is anymore.
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She's been adapting to someone else's moods for so long that she's lost track of her own.
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She's been managing someone else's reactions for so long that she's stopped having reactions of her own.
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She's been working so hard to be the right version of herself, the version that won't trigger conflict, the version that's easy to love, the version that doesn't ask for too much, that she doesn't remember what the original version felt like.
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Then we rebuild her relationship with her own instincts.
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We work on her learning to trust what her body already knows because her body has been sending her signals for years, signals that she's been overriding, rationalizing, and explaining away.
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Part of the work is helping her to stop dismissing herself.
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She is allowed to notice what she notices.
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She is allowed to feel what she feels, and we work on that.
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Then we practice her having a voice, starting with herself.
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We work on her being able to say, that hurt me.
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Not to him first, but to herself out loud, without immediately following it with, but I'm probably overreacting, or maybe I shouldn't feel this way, or well, maybe he didn't mean it like that.
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The internal dismissal is often the first place that she betrays herself, and we address that before we get anywhere near the external conversation.
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Then we work on the small things because the small things are where self-trust lives.
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Knowing what she wants for dinner, knowing what kind of day she wants to have, knowing what she's in the mood for without first checking the temperature of the room.
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These sound trivial, but they're not.
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For a woman who has spent years calibrating herself entirely to someone else, having a preference of her own is an act of radical self-reclamation.
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Then we work on the difference between accommodation and self-abandonment because she has been confusing those two things for a very long time.
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Accommodation is healthy, partnership requires it.
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But there is a version of accommodation that crosses into a place where you are no longer making space for another person.
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You are erasing yourself to make room for them.
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That line matters, so we find it.
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I did not tell women to leave.
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I helped them remember that they have a self-worth returning to.
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What they do with that is entirely up to them.
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Some women do that work and they leave because once they can see clearly, they can see their relationship for what it actually is.
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And what it is is something that they no longer want to accept.
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Some women do that work and they stay.
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Because once they can see clearly, something in the relationship shifts.
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And that shift turns out to be enough because their partner rises to meet them.
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And some women do that work and they decide to stay just for a little while longer.
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Not because the relationship is healthy, but because they have children or financial entanglements or safety concerns that would make leaving complicated.
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And we work on that too.
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We build a plan, we build her up so when the time comes, she is ready.
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What happens to the relationship is not the point.
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She is the point.
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And just so you know, if any of that resonates with you, if you're somewhere in that 11 o'clock feeling and you're tired of carrying this alone, all of that is what we do inside of the Pattern Breakers Collective programs.
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12 to 16 weeks, real work, the kind of deep structured work where you actually excavate what's been buried and start building something real.
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The link is in the show notes and I'll give it to you again at the end.
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I want to expand on the coaching versus therapy distinction a little more because I think it matters for understanding why I'm able to do what I do the way I do it.
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If someone were to come to me as a therapy client under supervision, the work looks different.
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It is slower, deeper in certain ways, more focused on the underlying clinical picture.
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We're doing trauma processing.
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We're working through the neurological and psychological impact of prolonged stress, fear, or harm.
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We're operating inside of a clinical and ethical framework that dictates what I can and cannot do and what I can and cannot say and what outcomes I'm working toward.
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That work is essential and it's irreplaceable, and there are women who need it and I want them to get it.
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Coaching is different.
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Coaching says, I'm not here to diagnose you or your past.
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I am here to help you build your future.
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I am here to help you get clear on what you want, understand what's been in the way, and develop the skills and the internal foundation to actually move toward it.
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For the women in Pattern Breakers Collective, that means we're not rehearsing every detail of what he did.
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We're not building a case, we're not spending 12 weeks cataloging pain.
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We're spending 12 weeks building her.
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Therapy heals the wound.
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Coaching helps you figure out where you want to go once you can walk again.
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Both matter.
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They're not the same thing, and I'm not pretending that they are.
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What Pattern Breakers Collective does that is specific and intentional is this.
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It gives her a structured container to do the work of reclaiming herself.
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Not just understanding the patterns she's been in, but actively interrupting them.
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Not just recognizing what she lost, but building a plan to get it back.
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That is coaching and it's powerful, and it's exactly what a lot of women need alongside or even sometimes before they're ready for clinical work.
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Now, the two-way street criticism, because I hear this one a lot, and I want to give it a real and complete answer.
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Couples therapy is designed for two people who are both willing to participate, who both acknowledge there is a problem, who both want something different, who both show up and do the uncomfortable work of being seen, challenged, and changed.
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That is a real and valuable and important thing.
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I sat in rooms full of people talking about people doing that work at that conference.
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I have referred women to couples therapists, I trust.
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I have watched couples build something new from what looked like rubble.
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But here's what couples therapy requires: two people who both want to be there.
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And the women who come to me here, they've often tried that.
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They've scheduled the sessions, they did the homework, they showed up open and vulnerable and hopeful.
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And he came for a few weeks or a few months and said the right things in the room, made the therapist think that things were improving, and then went right back to the same patterns the moment that they were home.
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Or he refused to go at all.
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Or he went once and decided the therapist was biased and against him.
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Or he went and spent the session centering his own grievances while she sat there next to him, wondering why she felt more alone in couples therapy than she did at home.
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She can't want his healing more than he does.
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And she's been doing exactly that for years.
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What I do here is different and it's on purpose.
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I work with one person in coaching.
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I work with her.
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Not because I think he's irrelevant, not because I won't work with couples because I will, but because she is the one who came to me.
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She is the one who found me.
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She is the one sitting here.
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She is the one who decided something needed to change, even if she isn't sure what that change looks like.
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And I'm not gonna tell her that she isn't allowed to grow until he decides to show up.
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Anyone who has ever changed knows it starts with one person deciding that they are done accepting something.
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She cannot make him do that work.
00:21:42.079 --> 00:21:47.440
She cannot schedule his healing or download his growth or perform his accountability for him.
00:21:47.759 --> 00:21:50.480
She has been trying to do that for years.
00:21:50.720 --> 00:21:53.839
That's actually part of how she got here.
00:21:54.319 --> 00:21:57.440
What she can do is her own work.
00:21:57.519 --> 00:21:59.759
And her own work, the work of knowing herself again.
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:07.759
Trusting herself again, understanding what she's been living in and what she actually wants, that work changes everything.
00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:10.960
Sometimes it changes the relationship too.
00:22:11.119 --> 00:22:18.400
Sometimes it doesn't, but it always changes her, and she is worth changing for.
00:22:54.480 --> 00:23:02.559
I help them reconnect with a version of themselves that knew what she wanted before she spent years overriding it.
00:23:02.799 --> 00:23:07.599
If a woman takes that clarity and decides to leave, that's her decision.
00:23:07.839 --> 00:23:10.480
Made with more information than she had before.
00:23:10.720 --> 00:23:14.160
The decision was always hers.
00:23:14.319 --> 00:23:15.839
I didn't make it for her.
00:23:16.160 --> 00:23:18.720
But I also want to push back on the premise here.
00:23:18.960 --> 00:23:22.960
Why is giving women excuses to leave an insult?
00:23:23.200 --> 00:23:29.920
What if what we're actually giving her is permission to take her own pain seriously?
00:23:30.160 --> 00:23:44.240
What if the excuse she needed was simply someone reflecting back to her that what she was experiencing was real, that she wasn't crazy, that she wasn't too sensitive, that her needs weren't unreasonable.
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If that's what I'm doing, I'll take it.
00:23:48.480 --> 00:23:51.440
The next one I hear, it takes two.
00:23:51.599 --> 00:23:53.680
You only work with one side.
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Yes.
00:23:55.119 --> 00:23:57.279
I work with one side.
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The side that showed up.
00:24:00.079 --> 00:24:00.960
She is here.
00:24:01.119 --> 00:24:02.319
She is doing the work.
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And she has been doing the work for both of them for a very long time.
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I'm not gonna tell her that she isn't allowed to grow, to understand herself more clearly, or to build a healthier relationship with herself just because he hasn't decided to do the same.
00:24:16.799 --> 00:24:22.799
If he wants to come to the table, there are plenty of people out there who can help with that.
00:24:22.960 --> 00:24:28.079
But that doesn't take away what she decided to do while waiting for him to make that decision.
00:24:28.400 --> 00:24:32.000
I genuinely hope he does decide to make changes.
00:24:32.319 --> 00:24:38.880
I genuinely hope that the men in the lives of the women that I work with decide to do their own work.
00:24:39.119 --> 00:24:40.720
And some of them do.
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But that is not something that I can control, and it's not something she can control either.
00:24:46.640 --> 00:24:50.000
What we can work with is what's here.
00:24:50.319 --> 00:24:51.920
Oh, here's my favorite.
00:24:52.240 --> 00:24:54.559
Communication is a two-way street.
00:24:54.799 --> 00:24:56.000
Yeah, it is.
00:24:56.160 --> 00:24:58.720
And she probably knows that better than anyone.
00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:02.640
She's probably been paving that street by herself for years.
00:25:02.799 --> 00:25:07.680
She's filled the potholes and repainted the lines and put up the signs and waved her arms.
00:25:07.839 --> 00:25:10.720
She has done everything the book's said to do.
00:25:10.880 --> 00:25:15.519
But a two-way street requires two people actually willing to drive on it.
00:25:15.759 --> 00:25:20.559
When only one person is doing the communicating, that is not a communication problem.
00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:22.480
That is a participation problem.
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And no amount of communication coaching is going to fix a participation problem.
00:25:27.279 --> 00:25:29.039
That is a willingness problem.
00:25:29.200 --> 00:25:30.559
That is a values problem.
00:25:30.720 --> 00:25:34.880
That is a problem that belongs to the person who is not participating.
00:25:35.119 --> 00:25:37.839
Oh, and here's the all-accusatory blame shifting.
00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:40.160
Well, you just tell women to leave.
00:25:40.480 --> 00:25:45.519
If that's all I did, I wouldn't need a 12-week program.
00:25:46.000 --> 00:25:47.599
Leave is one word.
00:25:47.920 --> 00:26:00.160
What I actually help women do is understand what they've been living in, reclaim the identity they lost inside it, develop the internal resources to trust themselves again and make decisions from a grounded place instead of a desperate one.
00:26:00.480 --> 00:26:10.319
Decisions that aren't driven by fear of being alone or guilt about breaking up the family or hope that if she just tries one more thing, he'll finally change.
00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:14.240
Decisions that she can actually live with.
00:26:14.480 --> 00:26:16.720
That is not just leave.
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That is everything.
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I want to say something that I mean truly and genuinely.
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I would love to work myself out of a job.
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I mean that completely.
00:26:31.519 --> 00:26:46.319
If men participated in therapy and personal growth work at the same rates that women do, if they sought out the work before crisis hits instead of after she's already leading, I would have a smaller audience.
00:26:46.559 --> 00:26:49.920
And I would actually be glad for that.
00:26:50.160 --> 00:26:56.480
I would spend a lot more time outdoors on adventures chasing my big dream of being an underwater photographer.
00:26:56.720 --> 00:27:11.759
If boys were raised to understand their own emotional worlds, to know what they feel, to have language for it, to ask for what they need without making it someone else's job to guess or to repair the harm that they've caused without losing themselves in shame or defensiveness.
00:27:11.920 --> 00:27:14.400
Fewer women would be arriving at 2 a.m.
00:27:14.640 --> 00:27:17.200
in my DMs wondering where they went.
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If we lived in a culture that didn't teach women from childhood that their value lies in how well they take care of everyone else around them, that being a good partner means being selfless, that being a good mother means being endless, that being loved means being easy.
00:27:35.359 --> 00:27:42.559
Fewer women would be in my Zoom trying to excavate a self they'd buried somewhere around the age of 22.
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I am not interested in protecting women from relationships.
00:27:46.880 --> 00:27:52.319
I am interested in protecting women from losing themselves inside of relationships.
00:27:52.559 --> 00:27:57.119
If more men did their work, fewer women would need mine.
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That would be wonderful.
00:27:59.920 --> 00:28:04.079
I am not holding my breath, but I also don't pretend that it isn't true.
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Until then, she came to me, and I'm going to help her.
00:28:27.759 --> 00:28:29.519
It's not even really about him.
00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:31.599
It is about her.
00:28:31.920 --> 00:28:38.480
The woman who forgot her own name somewhere in the middle of trying to be everything everyone else needed.
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The woman who is lying awake at night not because she doesn't know what to do, but because she does know somewhere deep within herself and it scares her.
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The woman who has been managing everyone else's emotions for so long that she's genuinely not sure she has any left of her own.
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The woman who cries in the car on the way home because it is the only place that she's allowed to.
00:29:02.240 --> 00:29:12.160
The woman who rehearses conversations in her head for hours before she has them and then has them anyway and still somehow ends up apologizing.
00:29:12.400 --> 00:29:19.200
The woman who needed someone to look at her and say, I see what you've been carrying.
00:29:19.440 --> 00:29:25.519
I see how hard you've been trying, and I want you to know that was not okay.
00:29:25.759 --> 00:29:30.720
And you deserve better than this, not just from him, but from herself.
00:29:31.039 --> 00:29:34.319
That's what shifts when women do this work.
00:29:34.480 --> 00:29:37.279
Not just the relationships themselves.
00:29:37.680 --> 00:29:40.880
They stop apologizing for existing.
00:29:41.039 --> 00:29:43.920
They stop asking permission to have needs.
00:29:44.079 --> 00:29:48.480
They stop making themselves smaller to keep someone else comfortable.
00:29:48.720 --> 00:29:58.400
They stop spending their energy managing someone else's fragility and start spending it maybe for the first time in years building their own foundation.
00:29:58.720 --> 00:30:01.759
They start saying no to things that cost them too much.
00:30:01.920 --> 00:30:05.680
They start saying yes to things that they stopped letting themselves want.
00:30:06.160 --> 00:30:12.720
They start moving through the world with a kind of quiet steadiness that isn't about confidence in the performed Instagram sense.
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It's about knowing themselves well enough to trust themselves.
00:30:17.039 --> 00:30:19.759
That's different and it's real.
00:30:20.240 --> 00:30:25.359
And some of them, some of them find that their partners rise to meet them.
00:30:25.599 --> 00:30:31.920
Some of them find that when they stopped carrying everything, their partners had to pick some of it up.
00:30:32.079 --> 00:30:38.160
And some of those partners did, and those relationships changed because she changed first.
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Not because she fixed him, but because she stopped participating in the same dance.
00:30:44.960 --> 00:30:46.640
I've watched that happen.
00:30:46.799 --> 00:30:52.559
It is genuinely one of the most beautiful things that I have ever had the privilege of witnessing.
00:30:52.799 --> 00:30:57.759
But whether that happens or not, she deserves to know herself again.
00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:01.599
She deserved that from the very beginning.
00:31:16.960 --> 00:31:19.279
You are not too much.
00:31:19.519 --> 00:31:25.119
You did not cause this by wanting too much, needing too much, or asking for too much.
00:31:25.440 --> 00:31:34.799
You are a woman who has been trying to hold an entire relationship together with her bare hands for a very long time and you are tired.
00:31:35.440 --> 00:31:38.240
And that exhaustion is not a character flaw.
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That is not evidence that you failed.
00:31:40.960 --> 00:31:52.559
I say that on basically every episode because that is what happens when one person carries more than one person's share for longer than any one person should ever have to.
00:31:53.119 --> 00:31:56.240
You don't have to figure out everything right now.
00:31:56.480 --> 00:31:59.680
You don't have to know whether you're staying or leaving.
00:31:59.920 --> 00:32:05.279
You don't have to have a five-year plan or a lawyer or a perfect exit strategy.
00:32:05.680 --> 00:32:15.359
What you do have to do, the only thing that is actually your job in this moment is come back to yourself.
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Start small.
00:32:17.599 --> 00:32:18.960
Notice what you feel.
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Notice what you want.
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Notice when you're overriding yourself and ask why.
00:32:25.039 --> 00:32:28.079
Those moments of noticing are not small things.
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They are the beginning of everything.
00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:40.079
If you want support doing that work, if you want a structured, intentional container where you're not doing it alone, the Pattern Breakers Collective programs are where that happens.
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Real work, not passive listening, active excavation.
00:32:44.400 --> 00:32:54.400
The kind of process where you come out the other side actually knowing yourself again, actually trusting yourself again, actually able to make decisions from a grounded place instead of a terrified one.
00:32:54.559 --> 00:32:57.599
The link is in the show notes or at patternbreakerscollective.com.
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I would genuinely love to see you in there.
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If this episode resonated with you, share it.
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Share it with a woman in your life who's been trying to figure all this out alone.
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Share it with someone who needs to hear that exhaustion is not weakness, that needing help is not failure, and that wanting more for yourself is not a betrayal of the people that you love.
00:33:18.079 --> 00:33:22.880
And if you haven't already, leaving a review helps more women find this space.
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Every review means one more woman who realizes she's not alone.
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It matters more than you know.
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Until next time, keep breaking.
00:33:32.079 --> 00:33:37.440
Every pattern that taught you that being easy to love meant making yourself easy to erase.
00:00:18.960 --> 00:00:20.879
It's eleven o'clock at night.
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The kids are in bed, the house is finally quiet, and she's sitting somewhere, maybe her car, maybe the bathroom floor, maybe the corner of a couch that she's learned to make herself small on, and she's on her phone.
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She found me because she's run out of other things to try.
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And the algorithm knows.
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She's already read the books.
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She's already downloaded the worksheets.
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She's already forwarded him the three articles and the two podcast episodes and a YouTube video about attachment theory.
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She's already said the words that she rehearsed.
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She's already gone to couples therapy and sat there trying to explain something she couldn't quite name and watched him perform just enough remorse to keep her from leaving.
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And then drive home in silence, wondering if maybe she was the problem after all.
00:01:07.439 --> 00:01:10.560
She has been her own couples therapist.
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She has been her own support group.
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She has been her own everything.
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By the time she gets to me, she's not a woman who hasn't tried.
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She is a woman who is exhausted from trying alone.
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And today, I want to talk about her and I want to talk about what I actually do because apparently there's some confusion about that.
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Welcome back to Pattern Breakers Collective.
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I'm Lisa.
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And before we start, my usual note.
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When I'm talking about unhealthy or abusive dynamics, I generally use he when referring to the person causing harm.
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That is because it reflects my own experience and the experience of the majority of the women that I work with.
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But I recognize that these patterns exist across all genders and all relationship structures.
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And if your story looks different, this space is still for you.
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I've been particular doing this work publicly for a while now.
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And most of the time, I don't spend a lot of energy on the open criticism.
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Not because I don't hear it, I do, but because I'm usually too busy actually helping women to stop and explain myself.
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But it's kind of been sitting with me lately because the criticism isn't coming from people who know this work.
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It's coming from people online in the comments, the threads, the occasional message from people, mostly men, who have decided without knowing anything about what I actually do, that women like me are the reason that relationships fall apart.
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That what I do is give women excuses to leave.
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That relationships fall apart because it takes two people and I only work with one of them and pressure that person into a decision.
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That communication is a two-way street and I only teach women how to talk, not how to listen.
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That I'm not helping women to heal, I'm helping them to avoid accountability for their role in ruining their own relationships.
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And I want to address that today, not defensively, just clearly, because all of those women deserve someone to speak plainly on their behalf.
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I believe both people in a relationship carry a responsibility for how they show up.
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I believe conflict is normal and that learning to navigate it well is one of the most important skills any adult can develop.
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I believe people can change, I believe relationships can heal, I believe in repair.
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I attended a couples therapy conference last week.
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I was there to learn, to connect with other practitioners, and to be in rooms with people who care about relationships and people as much as I do because I believe in that work.
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Because when both people are genuinely invested, when both people are willing to be honest, to be uncomfortable, to take real accountability and do the actual work of changing, I have seen what becomes possible.
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I've watched couples rebuild things that I didn't think could be rebuilt.
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I've watched people fall back in love with each other after years of distance and hurt.
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That is real.
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That happens, and I want to be very clear that I am not someone who thinks it doesn't.
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I've sat with women who were ready to leave, and I have watched them find their way back to their partners because their partners also did the work, because their partners took accountability, because change actually happened on both sides, and both people decided the relationship was worth fighting for.
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That's not something I hide, that is something I celebrate.
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I am not anti-relationship, I am anti-suffering.
00:04:57.920 --> 00:05:00.079
But here's what I've also learned.
00:05:00.319 --> 00:05:11.279
There's a specific situation where all of these tools, the communication frameworks, the conflict resolution models, the attachment repair techniques, get applied to the wrong problem.
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And in that situation, all of this skill in the world won't fix what's actually broken because you cannot communicate your way out of a relationship where only one person is doing the communicating.
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You cannot repair something with someone who doesn't believe it's broken.
00:05:27.839 --> 00:05:33.120
You cannot build accountability in someone who has decided the problem is always you.
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That's the situation I work in with coaching, and it requires something different.
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I want you to understand something about the women who find me.
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They are not impulsive.
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They are not hasty.
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They are not women who checked out at the first sign of difficulty and decided to just burn it all down.
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By the time she gets to me, she has already spent months, often years, trying to make it work.
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She has already read every book about healthy communication.
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She has already listened to podcasts, possibly this one, for months before reaching out.
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She has already gone to therapy alone because he wouldn't come or because when he did go, he performed just enough to buy himself more time and then stopped going.
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She has already tried the I statements.
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She has already picked the right moment, not when he's tired, not when he's hungry, not when he just got home, not when he's in a mood she doesn't want to ruin.
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She has already softened her voice.
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She has already approached it differently, framed it differently, tried again from every different angle.
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She has already asked instead of demanded.
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She has already explained instead of accused.
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She has already apologized for things that were not her fault just to end the argument, just to get some peace, just to stop feeling like the villain in a story that she doesn't recognize.
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By the time she gets to me, she has been her own couples therapist for years.
00:07:03.199 --> 00:07:10.639
She has held the emotional weight of two people in her hands so long she doesn't know what it would feel like to put it down.
00:07:10.879 --> 00:07:14.720
She has translated her own pain into language he could hear.
00:07:14.959 --> 00:07:20.480
She has repackaged her needs into requests small enough that they wouldn't threaten him.
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She has picked every word carefully, timed every conversation, strategically, managed her tone, her own body language, her own facial expressions, because she learned early that if she looked too upset, the conversation would immediately become about her being too emotional and whatever she actually needed would disappear.
00:07:41.759 --> 00:07:48.399
She has made herself smaller and quieter and more careful and more accommodating.
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And she is still sitting in front of me or in her car at 11 at night because none of it worked.
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She is not someone who hasn't tried communication.
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She is someone who has been communicating into a wall for so long that she started to believe the wall is her fault.
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That is who I work with.
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That is who I'm talking to.
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And if you hear something in that description that sounds familiar, this episode is for you.
00:08:33.679 --> 00:08:39.840
It's not just the relationship she's struggling with, it's what the relationship has cost her.
00:08:40.159 --> 00:08:43.360
Because here's what happens inside these dynamics over time.
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She stopped trusting herself.
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Not because she's weak, because she's been told, directly or indirectly, that her perceptions are wrong often enough that she has started to believe it.
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He didn't have to say, Well, you're crazy out loud.
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He just had to look at her like she was overreacting enough times.
00:09:02.240 --> 00:09:05.679
He just had to say, Well, that never happened, enough times.
00:09:05.840 --> 00:09:14.080
He just had to walk away in the middle of a conversation that she needed to finish often enough that she started to wonder if maybe she was asking for too much.
00:09:14.320 --> 00:09:17.120
And so she stopped trusting what she felt.
00:09:17.279 --> 00:09:22.080
She started running her own feelings through a filter before she allowed herself to have them.
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She started asking herself, am I being reasonable?
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Am I being too sensitive?
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Is this actually a big deal or am I making it one?
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She stopped asking what she wanted, not because she didn't have preferences, but because her preferences kept causing friction.
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It was easier, less exhausting, less conflict-inducing to just want whatever to keep the peace.
00:09:46.159 --> 00:10:00.000
She stopped pursuing the things that mattered to her, the career pivot that she'd been thinking about, the class that she wanted to take, the friendship that she'd been meaning to invest in, the creative project that she used to care about.
00:10:00.320 --> 00:10:13.919
One by one, those things got smaller and quieter and eventually disappeared, not because anyone said you can't have that, but because the emotional cost of having something of her own just became too high.
00:10:14.240 --> 00:10:19.519
She stopped knowing who she was outside of this relationship.
00:10:19.840 --> 00:10:22.639
And that's the part that breaks my heart.
00:10:22.879 --> 00:10:32.080
Because sometimes she'll look at an old photo of herself from before, from when she was younger or before this relationship, and she'll feel something that she can't quite name.
00:10:32.320 --> 00:10:41.200
That special kind of grief of a recognition of a woman who seemed lighter, who laughed more freely, who took up more space in a room.
00:10:41.440 --> 00:10:45.440
And she'll look at that woman and she'll think, what happened to her?
00:10:45.600 --> 00:10:46.960
Where did she go?
00:10:47.679 --> 00:10:50.320
She didn't disappear all at once.
00:10:50.559 --> 00:10:54.879
She hid herself one tiny compromise at a time.
00:10:55.120 --> 00:11:00.559
And when she finally gets to me, she's often not even sure what she's grieving.
00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:04.240
She just knows she's exhausted in a way that sleep doesn't fix.
00:11:04.399 --> 00:11:09.840
She knows she's lonely in a way that doesn't even make any sense because she's technically never alone.
00:11:10.159 --> 00:11:19.440
She knows that something is deeply, fundamentally wrong, and she's not sure anymore whether the problem is the relationship or herself.
00:11:19.679 --> 00:11:21.120
That's who shows up.
00:11:21.279 --> 00:11:22.799
That's who I'm working with.
00:11:22.960 --> 00:11:30.799
And I need the people who criticize this work to understand she is not a woman who needs to be told to be more accountable.
00:11:31.039 --> 00:11:37.279
She is a woman who has spent years holding herself accountable for things that were never hers to own.
00:11:37.519 --> 00:11:43.279
So here's the part where I'm supposed to defend myself against the accusation that I just tell women to leave.
00:11:43.519 --> 00:11:46.000
Except I'm not gonna defend it.
00:11:46.159 --> 00:11:48.720
I'm just gonna tell you what I actually do.
00:11:48.960 --> 00:11:54.720
But first, because this matters and because I want to be completely transparent about it, I need to make a distinction.
00:11:54.960 --> 00:11:58.879
I have been educated and have extensive training as a therapist.
00:11:59.120 --> 00:12:02.559
That work, therapy, operates under a very specific scope.
00:12:02.720 --> 00:12:07.440
It involves clinical assessment, diagnosis, trauma processing, mental health treatment.
00:12:07.679 --> 00:12:13.279
It is regulated, supervised, and it carries a particular kind of responsibility and legal framework.
00:12:13.440 --> 00:12:17.519
And I refer women to therapy constantly.
00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:22.159
What I do inside Pattern Breakers Collective is coaching.
00:12:22.240 --> 00:12:25.440
And I'm very intentional about that distinction.
00:12:25.759 --> 00:12:27.840
Coaching is not therapy.
00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:33.039
It doesn't diagnose, it doesn't treat, it doesn't replace mental health care.
00:12:33.120 --> 00:12:40.559
And I always, always encourage the women I work with to also have a therapist if they can access one.
00:12:40.799 --> 00:12:48.000
What coaching does is help her figure out where she is, where she wants to go, and what's been in the way.
00:12:48.240 --> 00:12:51.440
It is a forward focused process.
00:12:51.679 --> 00:13:02.240
And for the women who come to me, it addresses something specific, the patterns that they've been living inside, the identity that they've lost track of, and the internal work of learning to trust themselves again.
00:13:02.799 --> 00:13:06.159
So, what does all of that actually look like?
00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:08.960
First, we go back for her.
00:13:09.200 --> 00:13:14.159
Because by the time she gets to me, she often doesn't know who she is anymore.
00:13:14.320 --> 00:13:19.679
She's been adapting to someone else's moods for so long that she's lost track of her own.
00:13:19.919 --> 00:13:26.720
She's been managing someone else's reactions for so long that she's stopped having reactions of her own.
00:13:26.960 --> 00:13:43.120
She's been working so hard to be the right version of herself, the version that won't trigger conflict, the version that's easy to love, the version that doesn't ask for too much, that she doesn't remember what the original version felt like.
00:13:43.519 --> 00:13:47.440
Then we rebuild her relationship with her own instincts.
00:13:47.600 --> 00:13:59.759
We work on her learning to trust what her body already knows because her body has been sending her signals for years, signals that she's been overriding, rationalizing, and explaining away.
00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:03.759
Part of the work is helping her to stop dismissing herself.
00:14:04.000 --> 00:14:06.559
She is allowed to notice what she notices.
00:14:06.720 --> 00:14:11.039
She is allowed to feel what she feels, and we work on that.
00:14:11.679 --> 00:14:16.080
Then we practice her having a voice, starting with herself.
00:14:16.240 --> 00:14:19.679
We work on her being able to say, that hurt me.
00:14:19.840 --> 00:14:32.559
Not to him first, but to herself out loud, without immediately following it with, but I'm probably overreacting, or maybe I shouldn't feel this way, or well, maybe he didn't mean it like that.
00:14:32.879 --> 00:14:41.679
The internal dismissal is often the first place that she betrays herself, and we address that before we get anywhere near the external conversation.
00:14:42.159 --> 00:14:47.360
Then we work on the small things because the small things are where self-trust lives.
00:14:47.600 --> 00:14:56.799
Knowing what she wants for dinner, knowing what kind of day she wants to have, knowing what she's in the mood for without first checking the temperature of the room.
00:14:57.120 --> 00:14:59.759
These sound trivial, but they're not.
00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:08.720
For a woman who has spent years calibrating herself entirely to someone else, having a preference of her own is an act of radical self-reclamation.
00:15:09.039 --> 00:15:18.000
Then we work on the difference between accommodation and self-abandonment because she has been confusing those two things for a very long time.
00:15:18.399 --> 00:15:22.399
Accommodation is healthy, partnership requires it.
00:15:22.639 --> 00:15:28.240
But there is a version of accommodation that crosses into a place where you are no longer making space for another person.
00:15:28.320 --> 00:15:31.279
You are erasing yourself to make room for them.
00:15:31.600 --> 00:15:35.440
That line matters, so we find it.
00:15:35.919 --> 00:15:38.720
I did not tell women to leave.
00:15:38.879 --> 00:15:42.639
I helped them remember that they have a self-worth returning to.
00:15:42.879 --> 00:15:46.639
What they do with that is entirely up to them.
00:15:47.039 --> 00:15:54.639
Some women do that work and they leave because once they can see clearly, they can see their relationship for what it actually is.
00:15:54.799 --> 00:15:58.399
And what it is is something that they no longer want to accept.
00:15:58.639 --> 00:16:01.440
Some women do that work and they stay.
00:16:01.679 --> 00:16:05.759
Because once they can see clearly, something in the relationship shifts.
00:16:05.840 --> 00:16:11.279
And that shift turns out to be enough because their partner rises to meet them.
00:16:11.519 --> 00:16:16.480
And some women do that work and they decide to stay just for a little while longer.
00:16:16.639 --> 00:16:24.799
Not because the relationship is healthy, but because they have children or financial entanglements or safety concerns that would make leaving complicated.
00:16:24.960 --> 00:16:26.720
And we work on that too.
00:16:26.960 --> 00:16:32.240
We build a plan, we build her up so when the time comes, she is ready.
00:16:32.559 --> 00:16:36.799
What happens to the relationship is not the point.
00:16:37.120 --> 00:16:38.559
She is the point.
00:16:38.879 --> 00:16:50.799
And just so you know, if any of that resonates with you, if you're somewhere in that 11 o'clock feeling and you're tired of carrying this alone, all of that is what we do inside of the Pattern Breakers Collective programs.
00:16:50.960 --> 00:17:00.639
12 to 16 weeks, real work, the kind of deep structured work where you actually excavate what's been buried and start building something real.
00:17:00.799 --> 00:17:03.679
The link is in the show notes and I'll give it to you again at the end.
00:17:03.919 --> 00:17:14.720
I want to expand on the coaching versus therapy distinction a little more because I think it matters for understanding why I'm able to do what I do the way I do it.
00:17:14.880 --> 00:17:19.839
If someone were to come to me as a therapy client under supervision, the work looks different.
00:17:20.079 --> 00:17:25.200
It is slower, deeper in certain ways, more focused on the underlying clinical picture.
00:17:25.359 --> 00:17:27.039
We're doing trauma processing.
00:17:27.200 --> 00:17:33.279
We're working through the neurological and psychological impact of prolonged stress, fear, or harm.
00:17:33.519 --> 00:17:44.960
We're operating inside of a clinical and ethical framework that dictates what I can and cannot do and what I can and cannot say and what outcomes I'm working toward.
00:17:45.279 --> 00:17:51.200
That work is essential and it's irreplaceable, and there are women who need it and I want them to get it.
00:17:51.519 --> 00:17:53.119
Coaching is different.
00:17:53.279 --> 00:17:57.839
Coaching says, I'm not here to diagnose you or your past.
00:17:58.079 --> 00:18:00.559
I am here to help you build your future.
00:18:00.720 --> 00:18:10.960
I am here to help you get clear on what you want, understand what's been in the way, and develop the skills and the internal foundation to actually move toward it.
00:18:11.200 --> 00:18:16.799
For the women in Pattern Breakers Collective, that means we're not rehearsing every detail of what he did.
00:18:16.960 --> 00:18:21.519
We're not building a case, we're not spending 12 weeks cataloging pain.
00:18:21.680 --> 00:18:24.640
We're spending 12 weeks building her.
00:18:25.119 --> 00:18:27.599
Therapy heals the wound.
00:18:27.839 --> 00:18:32.720
Coaching helps you figure out where you want to go once you can walk again.
00:18:32.960 --> 00:18:33.680
Both matter.
00:18:33.839 --> 00:18:36.960
They're not the same thing, and I'm not pretending that they are.
00:18:37.200 --> 00:18:42.480
What Pattern Breakers Collective does that is specific and intentional is this.
00:18:42.799 --> 00:18:47.920
It gives her a structured container to do the work of reclaiming herself.
00:18:48.160 --> 00:18:53.599
Not just understanding the patterns she's been in, but actively interrupting them.
00:18:53.839 --> 00:18:58.319
Not just recognizing what she lost, but building a plan to get it back.
00:18:58.720 --> 00:19:08.559
That is coaching and it's powerful, and it's exactly what a lot of women need alongside or even sometimes before they're ready for clinical work.
00:19:18.480 --> 00:19:27.359
Now, the two-way street criticism, because I hear this one a lot, and I want to give it a real and complete answer.
00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:47.599
Couples therapy is designed for two people who are both willing to participate, who both acknowledge there is a problem, who both want something different, who both show up and do the uncomfortable work of being seen, challenged, and changed.
00:19:47.920 --> 00:19:51.839
That is a real and valuable and important thing.
00:19:52.079 --> 00:19:56.400
I sat in rooms full of people talking about people doing that work at that conference.
00:19:56.559 --> 00:19:59.519
I have referred women to couples therapists, I trust.
00:19:59.680 --> 00:20:03.839
I have watched couples build something new from what looked like rubble.
00:20:04.079 --> 00:20:11.200
But here's what couples therapy requires: two people who both want to be there.
00:20:11.440 --> 00:20:15.200
And the women who come to me here, they've often tried that.
00:20:15.359 --> 00:20:20.880
They've scheduled the sessions, they did the homework, they showed up open and vulnerable and hopeful.
00:20:21.039 --> 00:20:32.160
And he came for a few weeks or a few months and said the right things in the room, made the therapist think that things were improving, and then went right back to the same patterns the moment that they were home.
00:20:32.480 --> 00:20:34.480
Or he refused to go at all.
00:20:34.640 --> 00:20:38.319
Or he went once and decided the therapist was biased and against him.
00:20:38.480 --> 00:20:48.480
Or he went and spent the session centering his own grievances while she sat there next to him, wondering why she felt more alone in couples therapy than she did at home.
00:20:48.799 --> 00:20:52.720
She can't want his healing more than he does.
00:20:52.880 --> 00:20:56.799
And she's been doing exactly that for years.
00:20:57.200 --> 00:21:02.000
What I do here is different and it's on purpose.
00:21:02.319 --> 00:21:05.359
I work with one person in coaching.
00:21:05.519 --> 00:21:06.640
I work with her.
00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:15.839
Not because I think he's irrelevant, not because I won't work with couples because I will, but because she is the one who came to me.
00:21:16.160 --> 00:21:18.160
She is the one who found me.
00:21:18.319 --> 00:21:20.240
She is the one sitting here.
00:21:20.480 --> 00:21:26.880
She is the one who decided something needed to change, even if she isn't sure what that change looks like.
00:21:27.119 --> 00:21:32.480
And I'm not gonna tell her that she isn't allowed to grow until he decides to show up.
00:21:32.720 --> 00:21:39.920
Anyone who has ever changed knows it starts with one person deciding that they are done accepting something.
00:21:40.160 --> 00:21:41.920
She cannot make him do that work.
00:21:42.079 --> 00:21:47.440
She cannot schedule his healing or download his growth or perform his accountability for him.
00:21:47.759 --> 00:21:50.480
She has been trying to do that for years.
00:21:50.720 --> 00:21:53.839
That's actually part of how she got here.
00:21:54.319 --> 00:21:57.440
What she can do is her own work.
00:21:57.519 --> 00:21:59.759
And her own work, the work of knowing herself again.
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:07.759
Trusting herself again, understanding what she's been living in and what she actually wants, that work changes everything.
00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:10.960
Sometimes it changes the relationship too.
00:22:11.119 --> 00:22:18.400
Sometimes it doesn't, but it always changes her, and she is worth changing for.
00:22:54.480 --> 00:23:02.559
I help them reconnect with a version of themselves that knew what she wanted before she spent years overriding it.
00:23:02.799 --> 00:23:07.599
If a woman takes that clarity and decides to leave, that's her decision.
00:23:07.839 --> 00:23:10.480
Made with more information than she had before.
00:23:10.720 --> 00:23:14.160
The decision was always hers.
00:23:14.319 --> 00:23:15.839
I didn't make it for her.
00:23:16.160 --> 00:23:18.720
But I also want to push back on the premise here.
00:23:18.960 --> 00:23:22.960
Why is giving women excuses to leave an insult?
00:23:23.200 --> 00:23:29.920
What if what we're actually giving her is permission to take her own pain seriously?
00:23:30.160 --> 00:23:44.240
What if the excuse she needed was simply someone reflecting back to her that what she was experiencing was real, that she wasn't crazy, that she wasn't too sensitive, that her needs weren't unreasonable.
00:23:44.640 --> 00:23:48.160
If that's what I'm doing, I'll take it.
00:23:48.480 --> 00:23:51.440
The next one I hear, it takes two.
00:23:51.599 --> 00:23:53.680
You only work with one side.
00:23:54.000 --> 00:23:54.640
Yes.
00:23:55.119 --> 00:23:57.279
I work with one side.
00:23:57.599 --> 00:23:59.839
The side that showed up.
00:24:00.079 --> 00:24:00.960
She is here.
00:24:01.119 --> 00:24:02.319
She is doing the work.
00:24:02.400 --> 00:24:06.319
And she has been doing the work for both of them for a very long time.
00:24:06.559 --> 00:24:16.559
I'm not gonna tell her that she isn't allowed to grow, to understand herself more clearly, or to build a healthier relationship with herself just because he hasn't decided to do the same.
00:24:16.799 --> 00:24:22.799
If he wants to come to the table, there are plenty of people out there who can help with that.
00:24:22.960 --> 00:24:28.079
But that doesn't take away what she decided to do while waiting for him to make that decision.
00:24:28.400 --> 00:24:32.000
I genuinely hope he does decide to make changes.
00:24:32.319 --> 00:24:38.880
I genuinely hope that the men in the lives of the women that I work with decide to do their own work.
00:24:39.119 --> 00:24:40.720
And some of them do.
00:24:41.200 --> 00:24:46.319
But that is not something that I can control, and it's not something she can control either.
00:24:46.640 --> 00:24:50.000
What we can work with is what's here.
00:24:50.319 --> 00:24:51.920
Oh, here's my favorite.
00:24:52.240 --> 00:24:54.559
Communication is a two-way street.
00:24:54.799 --> 00:24:56.000
Yeah, it is.
00:24:56.160 --> 00:24:58.720
And she probably knows that better than anyone.
00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:02.640
She's probably been paving that street by herself for years.
00:25:02.799 --> 00:25:07.680
She's filled the potholes and repainted the lines and put up the signs and waved her arms.
00:25:07.839 --> 00:25:10.720
She has done everything the book's said to do.
00:25:10.880 --> 00:25:15.519
But a two-way street requires two people actually willing to drive on it.
00:25:15.759 --> 00:25:20.559
When only one person is doing the communicating, that is not a communication problem.
00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:22.480
That is a participation problem.
00:25:22.559 --> 00:25:27.039
And no amount of communication coaching is going to fix a participation problem.
00:25:27.279 --> 00:25:29.039
That is a willingness problem.
00:25:29.200 --> 00:25:30.559
That is a values problem.
00:25:30.720 --> 00:25:34.880
That is a problem that belongs to the person who is not participating.
00:25:35.119 --> 00:25:37.839
Oh, and here's the all-accusatory blame shifting.
00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:40.160
Well, you just tell women to leave.
00:25:40.480 --> 00:25:45.519
If that's all I did, I wouldn't need a 12-week program.
00:25:46.000 --> 00:25:47.599
Leave is one word.
00:25:47.920 --> 00:26:00.160
What I actually help women do is understand what they've been living in, reclaim the identity they lost inside it, develop the internal resources to trust themselves again and make decisions from a grounded place instead of a desperate one.
00:26:00.480 --> 00:26:10.319
Decisions that aren't driven by fear of being alone or guilt about breaking up the family or hope that if she just tries one more thing, he'll finally change.
00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:14.240
Decisions that she can actually live with.
00:26:14.480 --> 00:26:16.720
That is not just leave.
00:26:17.039 --> 00:26:18.960
That is everything.
00:26:19.200 --> 00:26:24.240
I want to say something that I mean truly and genuinely.
00:26:24.559 --> 00:26:29.359
I would love to work myself out of a job.
00:26:29.519 --> 00:26:31.279
I mean that completely.
00:26:31.519 --> 00:26:46.319
If men participated in therapy and personal growth work at the same rates that women do, if they sought out the work before crisis hits instead of after she's already leading, I would have a smaller audience.
00:26:46.559 --> 00:26:49.920
And I would actually be glad for that.
00:26:50.160 --> 00:26:56.480
I would spend a lot more time outdoors on adventures chasing my big dream of being an underwater photographer.
00:26:56.720 --> 00:27:11.759
If boys were raised to understand their own emotional worlds, to know what they feel, to have language for it, to ask for what they need without making it someone else's job to guess or to repair the harm that they've caused without losing themselves in shame or defensiveness.
00:27:11.920 --> 00:27:14.400
Fewer women would be arriving at 2 a.m.
00:27:14.640 --> 00:27:17.200
in my DMs wondering where they went.
00:27:17.519 --> 00:27:35.119
If we lived in a culture that didn't teach women from childhood that their value lies in how well they take care of everyone else around them, that being a good partner means being selfless, that being a good mother means being endless, that being loved means being easy.
00:27:35.359 --> 00:27:42.559
Fewer women would be in my Zoom trying to excavate a self they'd buried somewhere around the age of 22.
00:27:42.799 --> 00:27:46.720
I am not interested in protecting women from relationships.
00:27:46.880 --> 00:27:52.319
I am interested in protecting women from losing themselves inside of relationships.
00:27:52.559 --> 00:27:57.119
If more men did their work, fewer women would need mine.
00:27:57.759 --> 00:27:59.680
That would be wonderful.
00:27:59.920 --> 00:28:04.079
I am not holding my breath, but I also don't pretend that it isn't true.
00:28:04.319 --> 00:28:09.359
Until then, she came to me, and I'm going to help her.
00:28:27.759 --> 00:28:29.519
It's not even really about him.
00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:31.599
It is about her.
00:28:31.920 --> 00:28:38.480
The woman who forgot her own name somewhere in the middle of trying to be everything everyone else needed.
00:28:38.640 --> 00:28:47.839
The woman who is lying awake at night not because she doesn't know what to do, but because she does know somewhere deep within herself and it scares her.
00:28:48.079 --> 00:28:56.000
The woman who has been managing everyone else's emotions for so long that she's genuinely not sure she has any left of her own.
00:28:56.160 --> 00:29:01.920
The woman who cries in the car on the way home because it is the only place that she's allowed to.
00:29:02.240 --> 00:29:12.160
The woman who rehearses conversations in her head for hours before she has them and then has them anyway and still somehow ends up apologizing.
00:29:12.400 --> 00:29:19.200
The woman who needed someone to look at her and say, I see what you've been carrying.
00:29:19.440 --> 00:29:25.519
I see how hard you've been trying, and I want you to know that was not okay.
00:29:25.759 --> 00:29:30.720
And you deserve better than this, not just from him, but from herself.
00:29:31.039 --> 00:29:34.319
That's what shifts when women do this work.
00:29:34.480 --> 00:29:37.279
Not just the relationships themselves.
00:29:37.680 --> 00:29:40.880
They stop apologizing for existing.
00:29:41.039 --> 00:29:43.920
They stop asking permission to have needs.
00:29:44.079 --> 00:29:48.480
They stop making themselves smaller to keep someone else comfortable.
00:29:48.720 --> 00:29:58.400
They stop spending their energy managing someone else's fragility and start spending it maybe for the first time in years building their own foundation.
00:29:58.720 --> 00:30:01.759
They start saying no to things that cost them too much.
00:30:01.920 --> 00:30:05.680
They start saying yes to things that they stopped letting themselves want.
00:30:06.160 --> 00:30:12.720
They start moving through the world with a kind of quiet steadiness that isn't about confidence in the performed Instagram sense.
00:30:12.799 --> 00:30:16.720
It's about knowing themselves well enough to trust themselves.
00:30:17.039 --> 00:30:19.759
That's different and it's real.
00:30:20.240 --> 00:30:25.359
And some of them, some of them find that their partners rise to meet them.
00:30:25.599 --> 00:30:31.920
Some of them find that when they stopped carrying everything, their partners had to pick some of it up.
00:30:32.079 --> 00:30:38.160
And some of those partners did, and those relationships changed because she changed first.
00:30:38.640 --> 00:30:44.720
Not because she fixed him, but because she stopped participating in the same dance.
00:30:44.960 --> 00:30:46.640
I've watched that happen.
00:30:46.799 --> 00:30:52.559
It is genuinely one of the most beautiful things that I have ever had the privilege of witnessing.
00:30:52.799 --> 00:30:57.759
But whether that happens or not, she deserves to know herself again.
00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:01.599
She deserved that from the very beginning.
00:31:16.960 --> 00:31:19.279
You are not too much.
00:31:19.519 --> 00:31:25.119
You did not cause this by wanting too much, needing too much, or asking for too much.
00:31:25.440 --> 00:31:34.799
You are a woman who has been trying to hold an entire relationship together with her bare hands for a very long time and you are tired.
00:31:35.440 --> 00:31:38.240
And that exhaustion is not a character flaw.
00:31:38.319 --> 00:31:40.799
That is not evidence that you failed.
00:31:40.960 --> 00:31:52.559
I say that on basically every episode because that is what happens when one person carries more than one person's share for longer than any one person should ever have to.
00:31:53.119 --> 00:31:56.240
You don't have to figure out everything right now.
00:31:56.480 --> 00:31:59.680
You don't have to know whether you're staying or leaving.
00:31:59.920 --> 00:32:05.279
You don't have to have a five-year plan or a lawyer or a perfect exit strategy.
00:32:05.680 --> 00:32:15.359
What you do have to do, the only thing that is actually your job in this moment is come back to yourself.
00:32:15.759 --> 00:32:17.039
Start small.
00:32:17.599 --> 00:32:18.960
Notice what you feel.
00:32:19.200 --> 00:32:20.480
Notice what you want.
00:32:20.720 --> 00:32:24.640
Notice when you're overriding yourself and ask why.
00:32:25.039 --> 00:32:28.079
Those moments of noticing are not small things.
00:32:28.240 --> 00:32:30.480
They are the beginning of everything.
00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:40.079
If you want support doing that work, if you want a structured, intentional container where you're not doing it alone, the Pattern Breakers Collective programs are where that happens.
00:32:40.400 --> 00:32:44.319
Real work, not passive listening, active excavation.
00:32:44.400 --> 00:32:54.400
The kind of process where you come out the other side actually knowing yourself again, actually trusting yourself again, actually able to make decisions from a grounded place instead of a terrified one.
00:32:54.559 --> 00:32:57.599
The link is in the show notes or at patternbreakerscollective.com.
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I would genuinely love to see you in there.
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If this episode resonated with you, share it.
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Share it with a woman in your life who's been trying to figure all this out alone.
00:33:08.000 --> 00:33:17.759
Share it with someone who needs to hear that exhaustion is not weakness, that needing help is not failure, and that wanting more for yourself is not a betrayal of the people that you love.
00:33:18.079 --> 00:33:22.880
And if you haven't already, leaving a review helps more women find this space.
00:33:23.119 --> 00:33:27.039
Every review means one more woman who realizes she's not alone.
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It matters more than you know.
00:33:29.599 --> 00:33:31.920
Until next time, keep breaking.
00:33:32.079 --> 00:33:37.440
Every pattern that taught you that being easy to love meant making yourself easy to erase.
