Breaking Codependency After Abuse: Boundaries & Self-Trust with Barb Nangle I Ep. 133

Reframing Codependency And Abuse

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Hi Warriors, welcome to Beyond the Statistics, formerly one in three. I'm your host, Ingrid. The term codependency is often used when describing victims of domestic violence. Too frequently, it's framed as though the victim is somehow responsible for the abuse. But the reality is abusers exploit vulnerabilities through manipulation and coercive control, creating dependence over time. Today I'm joined by Barb, a boundaries coach, to discuss healthy boundaries, codependency, and types of trauma that can contribute to codependent patterns. Let's begin. Hi,

Meet Barb And His Backstory

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Barb. Thank you so much for joining me on Beyond the Statistics today. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 1:12

I'm great. Thanks again for inviting me. I'm really excited for this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

I think this is a very important conversation for listeners. So thank you so much for joining me. And before we get into that conversation, could you share just a little bit about yourself so we can get to know you some?

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Sure. Um, my name is Bart Nangle. I'm a boundaries coach, speaker, and podcaster. I live in New Haven, Connecticut. And um I grew up being terrified of public speaking. And now not only have I been podcasting for over seven years, but give me a microphone and a stage, and I am on it. And it's so wild to me that I used to be afraid of it. I remember I went to community college and then on to eventually get a master's degree, but I went part-time for a long time. And at that school, you had to take speech. And I waited till the last possible moment to take it because I was so terrified. And I think I was 28 at that point in time. So just know people like things can change. You can change, your fears can change.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

I'm right there with you. I was actually just speaking with a friend the other day about when I was, gosh, I think all the way through high school, I was almost mute. I did not like speaking to people. I was very, very much introverted, very shy. And a lot of people actually thought that I was stuck up or something because I just wasn't talkative, but it's because I was shy. And then I had, I remember my speech actually brought me back to my speech class in college. But same thing. Yeah. And now you can't get me to stop talking. Yeah, same, same. I talk okay. Yeah. So you actually have a story that I think might resonate with some listeners. It's it's not an intimate partner story, but it is in terms of both of you living in the same dominant housing situation. It is a domestic situation. Do you mind sharing some of that with us?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Yeah, yeah. So

Hitting A Codependent Bottom

SPEAKER_00 3:19

um, what Ingrid's referring to is the story I told her um when we chatted before um deciding that I would be a guest on her podcast. So um I am in 12-step recovery. Initially, I got there for codependence, which I will define in a few minutes in case people don't know what that is. But so my story is that in 2015, when I was 52 years old, I hit what I call a codependent bottom. And what happened was I um had invited a homeless friend from church named Dan to stay at my home during a really big snowstorm here in New Haven, Connecticut. And like I now know that it's not normal to invite homeless friends to stay in your home. But I was like, I'm nice, you know, that's why I did it. And so, of course, he said yes. And then he stayed another time and another time, and within a few weeks, he was practically living with me. And I soon felt trapped in my own home. Um, this guy fucked with my head in a way I had never experienced. Um, he made me feel like I was the problem person, that I was crazy, that I wasn't like a giving, caring person, that I was throwing him under like all kinds of things. And so one day I'm in a therapy session and I'm talking about Dan. In the middle of a sentence, I go, Oh my God, do you think I need to go to Al-Anon? And my therapist says yes. And again, we'll we'll talk about what Al-Anon is in a few minutes, in case you don't know. And I so I had heard of Al-Anon because like I knew people who went to 12-step recovery. Dan went to Alcoholics Anonymous, not to get sober. It was to be warm and to drink coffee. And um, so I went home to Google and whatever I was looking for Al-Anon, but the word codependent came up. And I was like, wait, what? How have I never heard of this word? Because at that point in time, I had been in therapy for 37 years, not continuously, but damn close. Because I started when I was 15. I started reading self-help books when I was like 22, 23, and continued to read them voraciously to this day. I had done workshops, workbooks, seminars, spiritual, blah, blah, blah, you name it. And I'm like, how did I never hear of this word before? And it describes me. So I found that there's a 12-step fellowship called Codependence Anonymous. And I started going and I felt a sense of relief almost immediately. I think partly from understanding there's this thing, codependence, that describes me that other people have, that you can change this pattern, that there's a recovery pattern. And then I remember saying to someone who may have been Dan, I was like, I think I need to be reparented, but I don't know where I got that from. I think I thought I made it up. And then six weeks into going to Coda, which is like the nickname for Codependence Anonymous, I went up to Cape Cod, Massachusetts to stay with a couple friends, one of whom had been an AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, for at that point, 10 years. And she, every time she talked about it, she just raved about how just radically her life was transformed as a result of it. And I'm like, you're gonna love this because I'm going to Codependance Anonymous. And she was like, oh, that's great. Let's see if we can find a coda meeting while you're here. And she couldn't, but she found an ACA meeting, which I had heard of at the time as ACOA, adult children of alcoholics. Never occurred to me that I would qualify for that program. Never occurred to me why do adult children of alcoholics need a program. Now I understand alcoholism is a family disease. The drinking behavior of the alcoholic is just the tip of the iceberg of symptoms, but we tend to make it like that's the problem. And so I went to an ACA meeting with her because she is an adult child of an alcoholic. And I walk in, and the opening readings, they said we reparent ourselves. And I was like, wait, what? And then they read the list of the 14 traits of an adult child. And my friend tells me I sobbed the whole meeting. I don't remember that, but I bought the literature, came home to New Haven, started going to that, um, going to ACA in New Haven, um, got into a group to do the 12 steps of the ACA 12-step workbook. Um, continued to go to the CODA meeting, but I just went to the meeting. I didn't do anything outside of the meeting with that fellowship, but I really dug into the program in ACA. And I was just astonished at how much I learned about myself. So the way I think about it in grid is that all of that personal development work I did for 37 years before recovery like scratched the surface of the iceberg of my life, and recovery melted the iceberg of my life. And I think that's because one, the 12 steps of recovery are an amazing technology for human change. Two, I came to understand that I um that intergenerational family dysfunction was the problem, and the result was childhood trauma. And ACA, I now describe it as a trauma recovery program where you reparent yourself and use the 12 steps to recover. But I didn't know any of that stuff at the time. I just knew that they're describing my childhood experiences and my adult experiences and my relationship problems and my behavior patterns that I met many of which I didn't even see after all those decades of personal development work. And I was changing and growing, and the people around me were. So I've been abstinent for over 10 years. And so I've done the 12 steps in both programs and just been, you know, really transformed. And all of this was happening while I worked full-time at Yale University. My career was there. I was a program coordinator for urban education, prevention, and policy research, primarily running college access programs. And about two and a half years into my recovery journey, I got laid off from Yale. And I found my way into the world of startups, innovation, and entrepreneurship in New Haven and at Yale. Started my own business, started my podcast really specifically to be like, there's tons of wisdom in 12-step recovery, none of which I've ever heard of. Never thinking that the podcast would have anything to do with my business. And it's now the number one way that I get clients. And became a coach, didn't know. I mean, I literally stumbled my way here. And here I am eight years later, still going, you know, um, and uh didn't know you need to have a niche and all that. And then when I realized that it just made sense for me to be a boundaries coach because I think of my core wound as being codependence, and boundaries are basically the antidote to that. So learning how to build healthy boundaries came to me almost as a byproduct of doing the 12 steps. And as I got a better handle on them, I did a lot more reading and learning about boundaries. And I I would um make drawings because I'm a visual learner to depict what I was reading about. Like if this was in the physical world, what would it look like when I was reading about boundaries? And it helped me retroactively understand what happened such that I didn't have boundaries, and then what happened such that I did build them. And those drawings turned into handouts, which turned into a workbook, which is now the backbone of my boundaries coaching program. And so, you know, that's that's like the gist of the story, how I got here. I'm sure there were other things that will come out in my story. There's obviously a lot more than that, but I know we want to kind of get into defining some things and get people some like actual, concrete information that will help them actually move forward in their lives, potentially change their behavior, all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Yeah, because I think codependency is often connected, or people will say that you're codependent in these abusive relationships. And I definitely want to get into that because I don't want people to take that as their part of the problem or they're deserving of what's happening to them.

The Moment He Had To Leave

SPEAKER_01 12:51

But just just because we need to quiet my own curiosity, what happened to Dan?

SPEAKER_00 12:56

So it's hard to remember all the details because it was a very volatile time of my life. But um, and I remember specifically saying this to you, and the and I will describe like the moment. So I happen to be, I have a finished basement, I'm in my basement, and my washer and dryer is right there, and that's literally where I fell to my knees, right there. There was an interaction with him. I have no idea what was going on, and I my knees literally buckled, and I fell to my knees, and I said to him, I'm having a flashback. I don't know how I knew to use that language. I meant an emotional flashback. I never even heard of an emotional flashback. I don't know how he knew how to name it. He thought I was having a drug flashback, which I mean, I've done a lot of substance use, but never anything that would give me a flashback. And he like leapt into action. He was like, you know, get in touch with your senses. What do you smell? What do you see? What do you hear? And I remember I like that was helpful, but I also he was the laziest mofo I have ever met in my entire life. So to see him leap into action was so jarring. And I think the way that I would describe that moment of my knees buckling, it was the moment where I need to get rid of him or I'm gonna die. And I can't let go of him because I feel responsible to save him, and I'm gonna die if I don't save him. And those two forces like collided in me and made my knees buckle. And I don't know the timeline, but I remember soon after that giving him $150 and saying, go stay in a hotel. And he left and he came back the next day and gave me back $100 and said, This is way too much money, which says something about his like worthiness, you know. Um, and then I he left and a f a mutual friend contacted me and said he, oh, I drove him. I live on the New Haven Harbor and he was from West Haven, the other side of the harbor, and I drove him over there and left him there. And then a mutual friend let me know that he was coming back, then he was walking to my house. So I literally left my house for the weekend because I knew if I'm here, I'm letting him in. I knew it. So I left for the weekend. And I I don't remember I think he never came back here again, but I will say I so I remember I met I met him from church. Okay. So I remember this one time while this some of I don't know the timeline again. While this is happening, he came to church one day, and I now I can see I had a trauma response. I didn't know that at the time. And I remember texting my therapist, but for HIPAA reasons, she didn't keep my phone number in her phone, so she didn't know who I was. And I'm like, Dan is here in church, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I had some friends with me who kind of knew what was going on, and they sat with me, but I was literally like vibrating in my system. I was scared shitless. And I don't really remember what happened with that. But then I remember a few weeks later, after being in recovery, I was the deacon on the door, which meant I was going to be doing the scriptural reading and I was also a greeter at the door. And when I read the scripture reading that morning, I remember I don't have no idea what it was. I remember thinking Dan's gonna be there today. I just like had this knowledge, he's gonna be there today. And lo and behold, I'm on the front steps and he comes walking up. And he didn't trigger me the way that he had just a few weeks ago. I felt so like solid in myself, and so it was like his, I it was almost like I had developed this force field around me just from the few weeks of work I'd done in recovery that repelled whatever the energy he was that he had that like brought me to my knees. And he looked at me and I knew that he knew I had changed, and I never saw him again after that. I later heard from that same mutual friend that he somehow made his way to Texas, and then I later heard that he died. So I I don't know the details, I can't imagine that it was a good death. I I can't imagine knowing his history. But yeah, and and I when I look at my history of codependence, I can't say what it is about him. Like at first, I thought it was only codependent in my romantic relationships, but then when I got into recovery and I did the steps and I looked at my life, I realized, no, it's every relationship. My friends, my family, the people I volunteer with, the people that I work with, my neighbors, everybody. But it was worse in my romantic relationships. So I can't say what it was about Dan, but the way I look at him, Ingrid, is like he was an angel sent to me to hit my codependent bottom and get into recovery, change my life, and then carry the message of recovery to other people who still suffer. So I have nothing but gratitude for Dan.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Well, and just the fact that you not having a reaction that last time you saw him, and that was the last time you saw him, kind of reinforces that belief. Do you know if there was anything in particular that you worked on those couple of weeks that it's all murky for me?

SPEAKER_00 18:43

And maybe it wasn't a couple weeks. I don't, I timeline, I don't know. I know the weekend that I got him out of my place was Memorial Day weekend. So that would have been 2015.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Okay.

Boundaries Create Internal Safety

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Wow. That is, and I think again, so many people are going to resonate with that story because that that feeling almost like that addictive feeling, if they go, I'm going to die.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Right. And it like I think of it like I'm a food addict and I'm a map. I mean, I drank abusively for decades. I smoked bales of weed. It I think of codependence, it's an addiction to people. And what it's really about is safety. Because what we have done when we grow up codependent is we have learned, especially in our childhood, in order for me to be safe in this world, I need other people to be okay with me. I need their approval. I need them to not, you know, leave me, reject me, et cetera. And we know that that pattern worked because we made it out of childhood. But it doesn't work in adult relationships. It is not prime ground for creating healthy relationships. In fact, it's how we create unhealthy relationships. And so, you know, we develop these patterns to protect ourselves and then they end up sabotaging us. And so, you know, this is, and we'll get into this later, but this is where boundaries come in because, you know, what I've realized, I mean, I knew this for a long time, but I didn't name it. I realized, I think while I was guesting a podcast actually last year, that creating boundaries is about creating a sense of internal safety. So rather than going to the outside world and trying to appease other people and get them to be okay with us and get their approval so we can feel okay and safe, we learn I can actually create the safety internally. And it doesn't mean you're calm all the time, it doesn't mean you never get triggered, it doesn't mean everything is peachy keen all the time. What it means is I know that I'm not going to abandon myself even when someone is upset with me. I know I'm not going to abandon myself just because I feel uncomfortable when you know someone is mad at me or yells at me. I know that I will have my own back. And in the beginning, um it's definitely harder, but as time goes on, like you build self-trust by giving yourself the experience of not abandoning yourself. And so when I say abandon yourself, I mean things like, let's say I set a boundary with you, Ingrid, and you're like, you know, you're yelling at me, and you're like, no, I'm not putting up with this or whatever. If I were to abandon myself when you said that, I'm abandoning the boundary that I set with you, the standard that I have for my life, and I'm letting you and your upsetness dictate how I'm gonna run my life. Or let's say I set a boundary with you and you're totally okay with it. And you're like, oh, okay, Barb, thanks for letting me know. I didn't know. But I still get flooded with guilt. And then I use that guilt almost like as an instruction, like, Barb, you've done something wrong and you have to fix it. And then I backpedal. So that backpedaling and believing that the guilt is true and real is me abandoning myself. So me creating a sense of internal safety is me doing a bunch of things. So some of it is nervous system stuff. What do I need to do to calm, you know, soothe, catch my breath, feel safe in my body? And then also what I tell myself. So I tell myself things like discomfort does not mean danger. Um, her upsetness is not an instruction for me to do anything that I've done anything wrong. Um, this guilt feeling is because I'm breaking a pattern. It's not because I've done something wrong. And it feels so foreign to me. It's like my identity is shifting and I feel guilty. So I had a client a few weeks ago. I I'm not going to go into the details of what she was trying to keep the focus on herself and what she needed. And she was like, but I'm a helper person. My and so she might as well have said, my identity is helper, right? And I said, okay, let's deconstruct your notion of what it means to be helpful. You're telling me if I do this thing, it's not good for me. It's not good for my friend, and it's also not good for my family. So to you, being helpful means I quote, help to my own detriment, the detriment of the people around me, including my family. So I don't get to be included in the people that I'm helping. And I even have said out loud, this isn't really going to help this person. Right. So you have this distorted definition of what it means to be helpful. And, you know, one thing I learned really early in recovery, I remember going to someone in Coda specifically and saying, okay, I'm starting to get this idea that there's this continuum of helpfulness, where on one end of the continuum, we've got kindly, helpful, functioning, healthy, you know, behavior. The other end, we've got dysfunctional, rescuing, fixing, enabling, unhealthy behavior. And I said, I'm starting to get the difference. It's in that middle part of the continuum that I'm confused. How do you go from just being a normal, helpful person to all of a sudden you're rescuing? And they said, well, it really depends on why you're doing it, Barb. Are you helping them because you really want to be helpful? Are you helping them because you want them to like you? And I was like, I'm helping them because I want to be helpful. And I meant it. And then let me tell you something, Ingrid, that question percolated when I started observing my behavior. And it wasn't I want people to like me. It's that I wanted their approval. I wanted them to think that I was helpful, that I was reliable, that I was dependable, that I was a woman of my word. And I cared more that they thought that than I cared about being helpful. So I cared more about being perceived as helpful than I did being helpful. And if you really just want to be a helpful person, you're gonna stop at the point where you are filled with anxiety, you're filled with resentment, you're completely drained. Um, you are asking yourself why you're doing like people that are just regular helpful stop before it gets anywhere near there. So if you're telling yourself, I'm doing this because I'm helpful, yet you're filled with resentment, which is a fantastic indicator, that I call it a diagnostic tool. It's time for a boundary, or it's time to shore up a boundary. Now, resentment can mean other things too, but it's very like if you're a helper and you're resentful about helping, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, time for a boundary. So that understanding that I was being helpful really ultimately because I needed people's approval, and then understanding the reason I need with claws, need their approval, is because that's what makes me feel safe in the world. It's my identity. I am a helper person. And so when I stop being as helpful, like bending over backwards and super accommodating people, I'm disrupting this identity I have as a helper person. And that's where the guilt comes from. So the best way to get rid of the guilt is to stop abandoning yourself. I remember somebody shared a reel with me like a couple years ago from a therapist, and she said the guilt we feel when setting boundaries is proportional to how much we abandon ourselves. In other words, if you want to stop feeling guilty when you set boundaries, stop abandoning yourself. And it is hard. It is really hard, but it's worth it. So it's about building this sense of internal safety and building self-trust. So I know when I got in recovery, I did not trust myself. I didn't realize I didn't love myself. I think I liked myself. I didn't love myself and I didn't have self-worth. I also didn't know I didn't have self-worth. If you had asked me before recovery, do you feel worthy, Barb? I would have been like, absolutely. No, no, no, no, no. Like when I did the 12 steps and I looked at the course of my life and my patterns of behavior, it was like, that is not a woman who feels worthy. And I now have high self-worth. I truly love myself and I truly trust myself. And when I look at what happened, how did I go from not being able to do those things to being like high value, like I, you know, feel worthy, I trust myself, I love myself. Frankly, it was the boundary building process because what you're doing when you're building boundaries is getting to know yourself. Like people are like, how do I know what my boundaries are? Well, let's talk about what's important to you, what matters to you. The way I do it in my coaching is I help people come up with a list of their top five values. And it's not just here's the name of the value, is what does that value mean to you and why is it important to you? And when you start focusing your decision making and your boundaries on your values, that's the opposite of abandoning yourself. That is you focusing on you and letting your internal compass, which is where those values bubble up from, tell you this is who I am. And, you know, we're living in a time right now, Ingrid, where a lot of people are like, what's my purpose? I need to know my purpose. I need to live on purpose. Here's your purpose: live in alignment with what matters to you. It will not steer you wrong because those things matter to you for a reason. So that is how I've been teaching people to stop abandoning themselves for the longest time, but I wasn't calling it that. I wasn't calling it uh creating internal safety. And once I named it, I was like, oh my God, now that I have a name for this, it like retroactively helped me understand everything that I've been teaching and frankly experiencing because I teach what I've experienced. And I don't know why I'm good at teaching it. You know, like especially when I started my podcast, I'm like, I don't know why when I share my experience, it's helpful to people. I'm just talking, right? But there it's clear to me that there's something about me talking that is helpful to people. It's, I guess, the way that I relate my experience, the fact that I'm willing to give details, vulnerable details that a lot of people would never share publicly, never mind recorded for all of history, you know, and then also I have a way of translating my emotional experience. I'm a huge fan of metaphor. I feel like meaning sinks in so much deeper when we can connect to something through a metaphor. Um, and there's just something about the combination of all that that somehow resonates with people. So, you know, my job in my mission in life now is to carry the message of recovery to those who still suffer.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Okay, there's so much information. I love it though. I love

How Abuse Creates Dependence

SPEAKER_01 30:15

it. Okay, so I was actually thinking when you were going through the codependency. Um, in relation to domestic abuse, abusers want their victims to be codependent. So even if going into the relationship, you don't have this strong codependency characteristic, they're going to find out what vulnerabilities you have. They're going to exploit that to then make you dependent on them. And that's what I think the listeners to this podcast are going to be in all the all of these different stages. So there are going to be some, there's there's someone out there that is in an abusive relationship right now, and they have been programmed to become dependent on that person. And when you're there, when you're in the throes of an abusive relationship, that may not be the right time to start setting super strong boundaries because there is a danger factor. Agreed, agreed. But so it if if that's you, get yourself out, that's when you can start healing yourself. And then I think that's part of the recognition because that's so many of us, once you get out, again, before you went into this relationship, you may not have been a very co huge codependent person, but now you are. Yeah. I think I think probably every one of us that has gotten out of an abusive relationship has a degree of codependency that was forced upon us.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

And that's where feeling where the cycle of violence comes in. It's essentially the cycle of turning someone into a codependent person. They slowly but surely erode your self-esteem. They slowly but surely erode your social network, they make you question your reality, and they make you, because they've eroded your self-esteem in your social network, they make you be dependent on them. And because they've made you question your reality, you never know where is the ground. Because when you and like for me, when I think about like I've never been through a domestic violence, but I I grew up in a home that um where I had what's called a relational trauma, which I I would I think like domestic violence, even if it's not physically violent, it is relational trauma because it happens in the context of a relationship over and over and over again. And um for me, the worst effect of growing up with intergenerational family dysfunction is questioning my own perception. And it's bad enough when you're an adult. Can you imagine being a kid? You don't even understand how the world works, and you are like questioning your own perception. And if you can't trust your own judgment, then how on earth can you make decisions about what's actually good for you, what's actually safe for you? And that's what the abusers are relying on. And what what so I'm a sociologist by training, Ingrid. And I remember when I learned about the cycle of violence, and that it's perpetuated, that's what everybody does. There's one particular path, the cycle of violence that is repeated over and over. It's not like people sit around and go, okay, here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna slowly but surely blah, blah, blah. No, it's just it's something like as a social scientist. I'm like, how is that happening? Like, how is that the formula for creating a codependent person, you know, as you're saying? Um, but that's really essentially what it is. And so I 100% agree with you. Get the fuck out first, and then like get physically safe, and then learn how to slowly but surely build your self-trust, build your self-worth, build your self-love, get clear on what matters to you, and then live as if those things matter to you. And you will, when you do that, you will not be anywhere near as susceptible, and perhaps not at all susceptible to that kind of a relationship again.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Yeah.

Signs You Are Self Abandoning

SPEAKER_01 34:27

So are there clues that you're slowly becoming codependent?

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Um, you know, that's a toughie for me to answer because I was brought up codependent from childhood, right? So I think, you know, rather than saying that you're becoming codependent, I can say some signs of codependence. So, like the most important one is you care way more what other people think of you than what you think of yourself, what what someone else, but it's usually it's not just one person, but in in the case of domestic violence, it could very well just be that one person. If you put a lot more credence to what they think of you than to what you think of yourself and what you know of yourself, you're probably codependent. If you are focused way more on what are they doing, what are they thinking, especially what are they thinking about me? And like recall, like I'm normally, these are the same things I say outside of a podcast on domestic violence. This is true, whether there's domestic violence or not. I think it just takes on a different flavor in a domestic violence situation because there's a very clear pattern of someone doing this, maybe not consciously on purpose, but it's on purpose. Right. And so you're focused basically externally. You're not paying attention to yourself. You neglect yourself, you neglect your needs, you justify, they need it more than I do, they know better than I do, their feelings matter more than mine. And so a huge part of learning how to build healthy boundaries is taking that focus from the external world and bringing it internal. So starting to figure out what matters to me. Like I remember like being told you need to ask yourself, Barb, what do you want or need in this situation? And I was like, what? Like I've never asked myself that because I'm a helper. I'm always like, what does he need? What does she need? What do they need? What does the situation need? What does the organization need? What does the cause need? So for me to be like, what do I need? Like, I don't know. Like, why would I ask myself that? And then so I will say, like, I talk about, um, I've been talking about for years, keep the focus on yourself. And I didn't understand that that was the beginning of building internal safety. And so, you know, the first way is to ask, what do I want or need? In the beginning, you will not know. Keep asking. And then even when stuff starts to bubble up and you start to realize what you know, you're probably not gonna give it to yourself. That's okay. Keep asking. And then eventually you will, and then you won't, and you will, and you won't, and you won't, and you will, and you will, and you won't, and you will, and you won't, and you will, and you will, and you will, and you won't, right? That's human behavior change. That is how behavior changes. But if you ask yourself once, what do I want or need, and you don't know, don't give up. Just keep asking. What do I want or need in this situation? And you'll start to realize things. And again, now I'm talking about you're out of the violent, threatening situation. You are out in the world, you are safe, you are starting to build things. You start to realize, you know, this makes me really uncomfortable. And instead of just plowing through, I feel really uncomfortable. You honor that, you know. So, so one thing that I've realized is that I don't like gigantic social gatherings. I would much rather go to a party with like six people than a house party. And I now know that about myself. And so instead of going anyway and feeling like creepy and weird and uncomfortable and can't wait to leave, or like when I was a compulsive overeater standing in front of the food and just eating the whole time, or or serving people, that was the other thing I'd always do, to give me a role because I'm a helper person. Now I'm like, you know, I'm not gonna go. And I that means like when you start honoring that, you have to you get to learn how to withstand when other people like, oh, come on, we really want you there. Like it's just not, you know, it's not my thing. I don't really like a big like when you have a small gathering, I'm happy to be there, right? So you learn something like, I don't like going to really large parties, but you're probably gonna still go for a while. And maybe even from time to time you might, but you might put some boundaries on it for yourself. Like tell yourself, I'm going from 7:30 to 8:30 and I'm leaving. And then you honor it, right? You don't let other people say, oh, come on, stay, stay, stay, even if you're having a good time, because you know I'm gonna be completely drained when I go home. I'm gonna need hours for my nervous system to settle, you know, and all that stuff. So you it's getting to know yourself. Like I was such a chameleon in grid that I don't remember if I told you this in our pre-conversation, but you know, I mentioned like I, former substance user, hair, abusive drinker until I was like in my early 40s. Um, I started drinking beer as a teen. That's what everybody drank. Well, then in my 20s, I dated a guy who was a wine connoisseur. So I learned all about wine. I started drinking wine. Well, then I dated a guy who drank Jack Daniels, so I drank Jack Daniels. And then I dated a guy who was a beer connoisseur, and I learned that I really like Belgian wheat beers. I didn't even have my own damn drink. So the way I think of it, Ingrid, is there was a lot of barb that was up for negotiation. And that's just one thing. And there's so many ways that I compromised myself and just kind of fit in. And I was proud of being a chameleon. And now I'm like, oh, you don't know who you are when you're a chameleon. Like you think you fit in everywhere, but you really don't, you know, and you start paying attention to that, being like, hmm, this really isn't okay with me. I don't like this. And then you honor it.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Yeah, I um I know who I am. I'm the not party at all, big or small. I'm the pajamas on the couch. Okay. What about a one-on-one? Do you like one-on-one? Like, I do. I'll I'll let myself I definitely go into social situations, but I was actually trying to think, would I rather a big party or a small party? I'll go. I'll go to either one.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

And I know that in the back of my mind, I'm so looking forward to just getting back into comfy clothes and just vegging out.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

Yeah, I'm thinking the last party I went to was very good, dear friend of mine, and I knew a bunch of friends were gonna be there. It was on New Year's Eve, and it was a totally sober party, which that that's only I only go to sober parties. And um, and it was too much for me. And but I went because uh at FOMO, didn't want to miss out because a bunch of my this is actually a friend from recovery. So, like there was like 12 of us from our ACA women's meeting that were there, and we did a picture, and then after we did the picture, I was like, I'm out, you know, and I'm like, I don't, this is now when I want to meet new people. I don't, I want to stick with my people that I know. And I went, you know, for all those reasons, but I also didn't stay, like I didn't stay till midnight. No, like I no, you know what I mean? So I went, but if it was somebody else and I knew it was gonna be a big, huge party, no, I'm not doing it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 42:06

Well, and it doesn't necessarily mean that my comfort zone is sitting here on the couch that I should never ever ever do anything else, that I'm ignoring my boundaries if I do. Because I also actually do enjoy pushing myself beyond my comfort zone because that opens up doors to different opportunities. Yeah. So, okay, we've talked about codependency and and healing and setting boundaries. Are

Starting Small With Boundaries

SPEAKER_01 42:33

there other tips on boundaries before we move into different forms of trauma and identifying that?

SPEAKER_00 42:39

Yeah, I mean, I think like people ask me, like, how do I start? And I think the best way to start, like, I wish I knew this. I didn't even know I was setting boundaries or building boundaries when I was doing it. It was after the fact. I was like, oh, these are boundaries. So I would say starting with yourself first, because setting boundaries is behavior change. You're gonna have feelings, so you might as well have these feelings come up when no one else is involved so that you can process them on your own. So I'll give you an example. Uh, one of the first boundaries that I was then aware, this is me setting a boundary, was I was working full-time at Yale. I would go into my personal email for some reason, and there would be an email from my ex-boyfriend, and I would feel compelled to open it immediately, and I'd be pissed off at him because he interrupted my day, and then I would like flare off a response to him, and I'd be like, and I'd be pissed at him for interrupting my day. And then I came to realize, like, uh, he's not interrupting my day. I am, because I didn't have to open that. But I actually, I swear to God, Ingrid, not dumb, but I needed my friends in recovery to say, Barb, you don't need to open that email. And I was like, wait, but he's gonna think I'm a bad person. They were like, he's not gonna know when you open the email. And like, okay, I my pattern was so deep, and my focus on him and what he was doing, even he was my ex boyfriend of almost a year at that point, right? And I'm more concerned with him and what he thinks that I needed to be told, you don't have to open that email. So then I eventually got to the point where I was like, I don't have the psychic space for that. And then eventually I got to the point where Wait, I can block him. It was probably two years before I blocked him. I finally sent him a text and I was like, listen, I wish you all the best. I'm not interested in any kind of a relationship with you. And it was sometime after that that I realized I can block, like, stop fucking emailing me. We're not friends and we're not together. So, what happened when I first like got the idea? I don't have to open that. I have all these feelings. Like he's gonna think I'm a bad person and oh my God, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you get to process those feelings on your own. There's nobody else involved. The repercussions are for you and you alone. So you get better at setting boundaries with yourself. Then you set boundaries with easy-going people. So someone who's gonna be like, oh, thanks for letting me know. I didn't realize that. I'm so glad you told me. You know, and then you get better at it. And then you start setting boundaries with more and more difficult people in situations. So you don't want to start with the boundary that is the hardest one. And then the other thing I would say I think um really important is like once you start setting boundaries with other people, do it as soon as possible. Like as soon as you know that was not okay with me, you say something. Because I used to try to wait for the right time. And like the right time never comes. There's this, I think it's a Chinese proverb, and it says, you know, the best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. The next best time is today. The best time to set a boundary with someone was the day you met them. The next best time is today, right? So don't wait because that builds up stress inside of you. And also it's polite to just tell them as soon as you know, and it lets go of your tension. And another tip I have is be polite. And the reason I say that as a tip, Ingrid, is that I think what happens for a lot of us is we wait until we get pushed way, way, way, way, way beyond our limits and we explode. And it works. So we think, oh, that's what I have to do to set boundaries. I have to explode and be a jerk. And you actually don't. And in fact, if you do it immediately, you're much less likely to explode. So those are some of my tips for like getting started.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

Well, and then just because somebody doesn't match your boundary doesn't necessarily mean they're a bad person either. It just means that's your comfort level. Like, I can't, I can't even think of an example, but that's where you don't have to be a jerk.

SPEAKER_00 46:58

Right. Right. And, you know, like there's a whole host of reasons that people don't honor your boundaries. One could be they're testing you because they don't believe you because you've never been like that. Another could be they forgot because you've never been like that. Another could be they have shitty boundaries. And so it's going to be even more important for you to uphold them. And so when someone pushes back, that's not a bad sign. It's a sign, oh, they heard me. Right. And most of the time with normal people, you just say the same thing over and over again. Like, let's just say I asked you not to put something there. Like, please don't put that there. Please don't put, don't put that there. Please don't put that there. Perhaps you didn't hear me. Please don't put that there. And hear how my voice is on an even keel. Like in the beginning, I was feeling like I was gonna die inside, but I did the best that I could to keep my voice on an even keel. Because when I do that, I come across with a sense of I sound like I'm confident. And people believe people who sound confident over people who don't. You're not asking someone, you're telling them. A boundary is you telling. It's not a it's not, will you do this for me? It's please do this.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

Yeah, like you're talking to a kid because they're gonna push boundaries. Right, of course.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

Yes, absolutely. And you're the adult in charge, so act like it.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

Yeah. Okay, so then you also talked about relational trauma.

Trauma Roots Behind Codependence

SPEAKER_01 48:19

Are there different kinds of trauma?

SPEAKER_00 48:21

Yeah. So when I got in recovery, never even heard of relational trauma. To my understanding, trauma was what I now know they sometimes call big tea trauma. And this is like the blunt trauma. You've been attacked, you've been in a hurricane, you were in a war. Um, so that's a thing. And then relational trauma is sometimes called little tea trauma. So this is what I call it like the emotional, like drip, drip, drip of emotional invalidation. It typically comes from childhood abandonment, and that can mean literal physical abandonment, like your parents left you, they died, one of your parents took off, you never met them, you were put up for adoption, you put in foster care, any of those things. So, not everybody that has childhood, you know, relational trauma has that kind of abandonment, but everybody that has um childhood, you know, trauma, uh the relational trauma has emotional abandonment. So this is um, so the way that I can't that I really it sunk in for me, okay, this is true. Because I was like, you know, when I heard some of the like brutal stuff that was happening to when I first got in recovery, I heard some really heinous stuff that happened to people and was like, none of that happened to me. Then I heard that trauma can result from the absence of good things happening. I was like, oh, okay, that's me. And then I later heard it said trauma can result or does result from unmet needs. So if your emotional needs are not met, if you are being told, do you want me to give you a reason to cry? Or um don't cry, stop being sad, or if it's just really clear, your parents, like if your parents are like really super strict, if they're mean, if they are physically abusive, if they're, you know, addicts, alcoholics, if they have mental illness, sometimes even if they have chronic illness, they don't have the capacity to be there for you and your emotions because they don't have the capacity to even process their own emotions. That's why this is called intergenerational family dysfunction. So one of the one of the huge things that happened for me in my recovery, Ingrid, is I had a gigantic chip on my shoulder uh about my dad when I got in recovery, and I have so much more compassion for him now. Now, I think intellectually I understand my parents did the best that they could. I really truly get now, my parents did the best they could. It wasn't good enough. That's different, right? So they did the best they could and it wasn't good enough. But I have compassion for them in a way that I never did before because this is intergenerational. The reason it wasn't good enough, the reason that they did the best they could and it wasn't good enough was because their parenting wasn't good enough. How far back do we go? You know, like back to Adam and Eve, we don't know. Like I don't even really believe in Adam and Eve, but anyway, you know what I mean, metaphorically, you know, first woman and first man, you know. Um, so there's no blaming. And the thing is, we get to take responsibility for our own healing and growth. If you spend your entire life being pissed off and blaming your parents, you're gonna have zero energy for taking the reins of healing your own self and stopping the intergenerational family dysfunction at this point. Even though, like, I don't have children, I'm never gonna have children, I'm still stopping it. You know, it's maybe not in my family, there's no family legacy after me, but I'm stopping it in the world by helping people understand this is what happened to you. Here's how you heal and change and grow and then help other people.

SPEAKER_01 52:19

So when somebody's not meeting your needs, obviously when you're a child, you you kind of have no choice in the matter, really. And you you're stuck with it until you're old enough to make decisions on your own or live on your own. But as an adult, and not even necessarily a romantic partner, but if there's there are family members or friends who are not meeting your needs emotionally, when like is there a limit where you say, you know what, I just need to exclude them from my life now? There's no more boundary setting. I just need to go.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

Yeah, yeah. So before I say more about that, I want to share uh a phrase that I heard on a podcast early in recovery, and it just completely blew my socks off. And it was this let go of your expectations of others and meet your own needs. And I was like, what? So at that time, I was starting to get a handle on the fact that I have had wildly unrealistic expectations of myself, other people, and the world. Like I wanted, like, I have very high standards for myself. That's okay, but to have impossible standards, not okay. I expected other people to do things my way, to listen to me. I expected like the political system to operate fairly and the educational system to operate fairly. And I expected the fucking cap on my toothpaste cap to snap closed when I snapped it closed. You know, and so like I was starting to understand this idea of letting go of my expectations. And I found that for me, I often didn't know I had an expectation until it was violated. I was like, oh, that was me expecting XYZ. But that second half of that sentence, let go of your expectations of others and meet your own needs, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what does this mean? So, what it often means is you set a boundary because if you aren't telling them this isn't okay with me, how can they know? And when we don't set boundaries with people, we often try to manipulate them to get them to do things because we don't want to come right out and say, that doesn't work for me. That's not okay with me. So we get to stop manipulating, learn how to communicate directly and meet our own needs. So I'm gonna give you a really, this is gonna seem like a dumb example, but life is made up of these mundane examples. So I am now um in the first and only healthy romantic relationship of my life. We've been together for seven and a half years. And I can now see that my boundaries have everything to do with me being able to even be in, because I know who I am and I know what's okay and not okay, and I can articulate that. And I have standards and I uphold them, right? So my sweetheart, all of the blankets at his house are either these scratchy wool blankets or they're down comforters and they make a lot of noise. And I like silent, soft bedding, right? So before recovery, if I had been dating him, then I would have expected that he should not only know that I like soft, quiet bedding, but he should have that. And every time I went to use a blanket, I would never say anything, but I would hold him accountable and I would give him like an emotional toll for doing that. And I would basically build a wall of bricks between him and I. Now multiply that times the 10,000 other things that I'm not telling him, right? But now that I've learned to let go of my expectations of others and meet my own needs, I bought a blanket that I brought over there and it's nice and soft. And I said, This is my blanket. When I'm not here, use it to your heart's content. But when I'm here, this is my blanket. So I let go of my expectations of him and met my own needs. Now I could have met my tried to meet my needs by saying, Can you get a soft blanket? And maybe he would, and maybe he wouldn't. But I decided to really do it on my own. Here's another example. So my sweetheart is a former um commercial photographer. So everything visual is like he's a super, he he notices stuff like earrings, nail polish, eye makeup. It's like, and I've never met a heterosexual man like this ever, right? So this one day I put on this brand new blouse and he was here visiting me, and I go downstairs, and he, I could tell he was kind of in a pissy mood. And I realized that I expected him to say, nice blouse, and he didn't. So I went upstairs and I looked in the mirror and I was like, nice blouse, Barb. So I what I wanted, my need was affirmation or um, you know, basically affirmation, right? So I gave it to myself. Now I could have said to him, What do you think of my blouse? And I know him. He would have said, Oh, it's really nice. So I could have, quote, met my need that way, but I chose to entirely do it on my own. And these may sound like dumb examples, but life is made up of this stuff, of these thousands of moments like this, you know, and so we get to meet our own needs. And so here's another example that I think goes to answering your question of how do you know when to let him go? So now things have changed with my brother in the last year. He's literally upstairs. We were completely disconnected for years, and we have reconciled and reconnected in a way that I never thought was possible. But when I first got in recovery, I thought that I could go visit my brother and say, I don't want to talk about your job and I don't want to talk about politics. Even though he and I agree politically, I don't, he's volatile about it, right? He was like all this stuff. And I thought that I could say that to him, and that was me setting boundaries, and he would go, Oh, okay, nope. Nope. Because I'm the one who doesn't want to talk about his job, and I'm the one who doesn't want to talk about politics. So a couple of times I went and was like, as a reminder, I don't want to talk about these things. And he could go like, I don't know, two minutes without talking about those things, and he couldn't do it. So when I finally was like, oh, these are my boundaries, not his. I can't turn him into someone who doesn't talk politics and doesn't talk about his job. What can I do? Oh, well, I can reduce the amount of time that I'm around him, I can go see him less frequently. And I finally realized I have like a 59-minute window with him. And then eventually it was zero. I just couldn't even be around him and I got disconnected with him for for years. So you try over time because you don't like a lot of times we don't know where our boundary is until we experiment. I know that one of the first times that I was setting a boundary, I went like this, wham! And as soon as I did it, I'm like, oh my God, that was way too harsh. Now, if I had known it was going to be too harsh, that's not the boundary that I would have set. I only knew once I did it. And so I realized, oh, I want to be a little softer next time. Like that, it's an experimental process to do that. So just like your own boundaries are going to be experimental, your boundaries with other people are, you need to experiment with that too. So I realized over time my idea of what setting a boundary was was wrong. That was me trying to control someone. That's not a thing. You can't do that. You can only control yourself. So you're the one with a boundary. What are you going to do? So, since I deal with a lot of people in recovery, and the classic codependent is someone who's in a relationship with an addict or an alcoholic. People think you can't drink is a boundary. No. If you drink, I will not give you money, I will not pick you up, I will not make excuses to your boss, I will not do your laundry, whatever those things are. If you drink, I will, right? So a boundary has a consequence. Saying you can't drink is you trying to control other people, and that isn't a thing that's possible.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:31

Well, and then how they respond to your boundaries is then what ends up leading to dictate whether or not that's somebody that you need to cut out.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:39

Right, exactly. Right. So if you have someone who just constantly pushes, pushes, pushes, pushes, pushes and will not take no for an answer or whatever, then that's feedback to you. Like this is probably not a person I want to continue having in my life. But um what boundaries do is like I've I've think I've hopefully gotten the point across. It's you getting to know yourself and then communicating what you know. So let me tell you something that happened at the very beginning of my relationship, which set the tone. And I will also say, like, I don't know how I knew how to say this stuff. Um, because I just stuff came out of me in the beginning. It's still in my relationship, but I'm like, I've never said anything like that. And I think one, I know myself, and two, I tell the truth now. Whereas I've lied my whole, especially people pleasing lying. So about three weeks into my relationship with my sweetheart, I had invited him to go to something with me. And it was in the evening, and he never responded, and he'd never done that before. And then he responded at 10 o'clock at night after I was home from the event. And I was really upset. And so I wrote, I texted him and I said, I'm feeling unsettled about the fact that you didn't respond to me until tonight. Can you help me tomorrow when I see you talk about this? I've never said anything like that in my entire life. And he was like, Yes. So what I've learned is that at least heterosexual men in relationships with women actually like to be asked, can you help me with something? Right. Okay. So I sit with him and I say, I am expecting for this conversation to increase our intimacy with each other. And I hope you do too. So I frame, I don't know how I knew how to say that. It was just the truth, right? So I frame this as this is an opportunity. Nobody's in trouble. As we processed it, what came out that he didn't even realize is that like I'm a busy person, I do a lot of things, and he has a chronic illness and he has to manage his energy. And like the first time he looked at my calendar, he was like, ah, like he couldn't handle it. And he was basically afraid that I was gonna get try to suck him into my world. But he didn't even realize that was what was going on. And he also said to me, I thought me not responding was a response. And I'm like, nope, that will not do going forward. A non-response is not a response in this relationship.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:08

And you know, that's a common thing that people say is no response is a response.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:13

Right. It is a response, but you are if you're gonna be in a relationship with me, you need to tell me no, not hint at no by not responding, right? That's not we're communicating directly in this relationship. Then I will tell you another thing. We went on a vacation and it was the most difficult week of our entire relationship. And we also had a good time, which that in the past would not have been. But after the vacation was over, I said to him, Can we? We were getting together on this night that we always get together. And I said, Can we spend like 30 minutes just kind of processing what happened this weekend? If we get to the end of 30 minutes and we're not done, we'll put a pin in it so that we can go on and have our regular evening. I don't know how I knew to say that, Ingrid, but what I did was I put a boundary around the conversation. So I let him and me know this is not gonna be a fight. This is not gonna take over our lives, this is not gonna go on forever. And I'm looking forward to us having our wonderful evening together. And I basically was like, I kind of turned you into my dad. And he was like, I kind of turned you into my mom. That's the gist of the conversation, right? And we both owned our shit and apologized and said, okay, in the future, here's what we're gonna do. And we managed to do it in less than 30 minutes. I've never said anything like that in my life, but because I understand boundaries, it's like drawing a line about like my boundaries or me drawing a line around me. Like here is the boundary, here are the boundaries of Barb. You know, this is what's okay and not okay with me. So those are examples of things that you can do in relationships with people. And if you are with someone who's not willing to have those conversations with you, that's probably not your person.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:03

Right. You have to communicate. You have to. Right. You have to. Uh so I wanted to bring up one more thing before I ask you if there's anything that we haven't talked about. But when you were you were talking about the new blouse and you were saying little things, I when I heard that, it was a huge thing because you you wanted some sort of validation and you trusted yourself and had enough respect for yourself to understand that validation from yourself saying in the mirror, nice blouse, that was enough. And I think that that is something that so many people struggle with is you can look in the mirror and say, oh, that looks good, but that's still not enough. You still need somebody else to tell you.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:44

Right. And sometimes that's true. Like I think there are some people who like they've swung the pendulum in all the way the other direction. Like, you don't need validation from others. Bullshit. You're a human being. The worst thing you can do to a human being is ostracize them, push them into the outside of the group or call them other, right? So, in other words, I need some kind of validation, some kind of affirmation. You exist, you matter, right? So to think you don't ever need outside validation from anybody, I think is bullshit. But to think I only need outside validation is the that's wrong. Like you get to To validate yourself, you get to use yourself as the decider of you know what matters and what doesn't. And if you have people around you that will never validate you, you need to start questioning are these the kind of people that I want to have around? Or that I want to like have around a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:49

Yeah, that's a very, very good point. Okay, so if people want to get in touch with you or learn more about you or utilize your services, how do they do that?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:00

So

Resources And Discomfort Vs Danger

SPEAKER_00 1:07:00

since you're already listening to a podcast, hop on over on this same platform, whatever it is, to my podcast. It's called Fragmented to Whole Life Lessons from 12 Step Recovery. I have at this moment in time 360 episodes. They're 10 to 20 minutes. They're not long. They're, I swear, obviously, you know, if you don't like that, don't listen. Um, I have uh I really only am active on LinkedIn at this point in time. It's I'm at Barb Nangle. And I actually just created something called the Internal Safety Resource Pack, specifically for podcast listeners. So they can go to my website, higherpowercc.com slash pack. And it's some of my best resources. It's um a handful of podcast articles, no, podcast episodes, articles, and a couple of other like clickable links to other handouts that will help you. When you do that, you will get on my email list, which you can unsubscribe from if it doesn't help you. And that's you'll hear about, and plus when you're on my website, you can explore it. I have tons of free low cost, mid-cost, and I also have my high-ticket, unshakeable you private boundaries coaching program for people who really want long-lasting deep transformation in their patterns. But you know, that I would say start with higherpowercc.com slash pack for the internal internal safety resource pack is the place to start.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:30

Okay, fantastic. And in closing, do you have any words of wisdom or encouragement that you want to specifically leave with listeners?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:38

Yeah, I want to say that discomfort does not mean danger. So, and I wish I said this earlier because this is going to be more than a minute. Um, there's two different kinds of discomfort. So there's the discomfort of dysfunction from you not knowing how to have healthy relationships where you're constantly upset or catastrophizing or blaming or complaining and in unfulfilling relationships. And that dysfunction, unless you do something drastic to change your ways, is going to last forever. And it's probably just going to get worse over time. And then there is the discomfort of growth and change. So we've got the discomfort of dysfunction. We're all familiar with that. And that's the other thing, is we're familiar with it. It sucks, but we know it, right? Then there's this discomfort of growth and change, like you start setting boundaries, right? Well, the reason it's uncomfortable is because it's novel, it's new, it's foreign, right? We don't know it. But if we keep doing the new pattern, it will become familiar and will no longer be uncomfortable. And on the other side of that discomfort is healthy relationships, peace, serenity, feeling good in your own life, in your own body. So, which discomfort? Do you want the discomfort of dysfunction that's never going to end, or do you want the finite discomfort of growth and change? It will end and there will be healing on the other side. So when you remember that, it's a lot easier to remember does like, is this the discomfort of dysfunction, or is this the dysfunction of growth and change? And if it's the discomfort of growth and change, remember discomfort does not mean danger. It's it's new and it feels like danger, but it's just because it's new, not because it's actually dangerous. I remember feeling in the beginning many, many, many times. I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, asking for help. I'm gonna die, setting a boundary, I'm gonna die. What's she gonna think? I'm gonna die, and I didn't die. And I would actually, me and my step group started saying, I did the thing and I didn't die because we wanted to gather evidence. Oh, look, we didn't die many times, and you've never died from any of the things. So, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:05

Perfect. I love it. Well, thank you so much, Barb, for your time and all of this information. It's incredibly helpful.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:12

Oh good. Thank you so much for inviting me. Loved your questions, love the work that you're doing. Keep it up. And, you know, I think you're never too old to change. Um, it doesn't matter how dark things seem to you, things can always get better. You know, there's a metaphor I learned when I was grieving that it may feel like you're in a cave, but it's not a cave, it's a tunnel. You just haven't gone in far enough to see that there's light coming in from the other side.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:40

I love that. Okay. Well, thank you again. You're welcome. Thank you again, Barb, for joining me today. And thank you, warriors, for listening. I've included the links Barb was referring to, as well as her Beyond the Statistics profile in the show notes. I'll be back next week with another episode for you. Until then, stay strong. And wherever you are in your journey, always remember you are not alone. To learn more, explore episode resources, browse the collections, or register as a guest, visit Beyondthatistics Podcast.com. If today's episode meant something to you, please share it with someone who may need it. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and follow Beyond the Statistics on social media. Beyond the Statistics is a.5 Panoy production. Music written and performed by Tim Crow.