Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

Feeling like a moldy lemon?
Maybe youāre just an onion.
If you’ve escaped the horror of a destructive relationship, but you still feel numb, anxious, depressed, and like a steaming hot mess…it’s easy to believe that ābeing jacked upā is the new normal. And your whole identity.
Itās not. In fact, what you’re searching for is closer than you can believe:
You’re still a whole person. Your true self isnāt lost. Your body is actually trying to help you heal. The best of you is still there.
But some of these things are covered by layers. Like an onion.
Coatings of trauma. Blankets of pain. Wrappings of core wounds. Cocooned lies.
Want to know how to find that sweet little onion core again? Sara Richmond and I explore this very question.
Listen as we discuss the following revelations and more:
- How your story (and information about abuse) can be a distraction from real healing
- Why ābrokennessā is a crappy description for survivors (and a better word that she’s claimed)
- Why our bodies often “act” broken (HINT: Whatever you resist, persists)
- What embracing her emotional stress through somatic therapy revealed to Sara (it was sad but extremely powerful)
- Examples of triggers that she and I peeled back and reset
- The word that Natalie couldnāt remember (sadly, it wasnāt āonionā)
Related Resources:
- The book that broke Saraās self-destructive perspective apart
- Waking up/Getting out: The group that Sara joined when she first began her healing journey (and she heartily recommends it to you)
- After Divorce: The group that Sara transitioned to that helped launch her into becoming a badass woman, a single parent, and a business owner, with a new love and the life she always wanted
- The woman who helped Sara when she was a wee little cocoon (itās a huge surprise; youāre gonna love her)
- Another book for survivors that is amazeballs (the author is another huge surprise)
Got questions? I’d love to answer them on the Flying Free podcast!
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Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse [Transcript]
Hi. This is Natalie Hoffman of Flyingfreenow.com, and youāre listening to the Flying Free Podcast, a support resource for women of faith looking for hope and healing from hidden emotional and spiritual abuse.
NATALIE: Welcome to Episode 153 of the Flying Free Podcast! Today, I have my friend Sara Richmond with me. Hello Sara and welcome!
SARA: Hello!
NATALIE: Sara is super excited about this and I am too, because I have no idea what weāre talking about. So Iām kind of excited to listen right along with you. She apparently read this amazing book by Jackson MacKenzie. Tell us about the book and why youāre so excited about it.
SARA: So, not everything in the book was new to me, but the way it was written, it was so gracious and transparent and inviting and honest. But there were some things in it that have been critical to the growth process that Iāve been in over the last year, and they paired really well with things that were already coming up continuously for me and related to some of the stuff that I addressed in therapy. I am just absolutely sure that a lot of survivors deal with the same things, so I really just wanted to shout it from the mountaintops, and youāre letting me do that.
NATALIE: Right, thatās awesome. So whatās the name of the book?
SARA: Itās called āWhole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse.ā
NATALIE: I love it. Oh my word, I love the title.
SARA: Yeah! Itās funny because I actually had no intention of reading this book, no awareness of it, but one of my clients just mentioned it to me. We have a bit of a similar story, and she just said āHey, read this book.ā So I took her advice.
NATALIE: And here we are, talking about it on the Flying Free Podcast.
SARA: Yes, here we are.
NATALIE: Itās like a perfect book for this podcast.
SARA: Yeah.
NATALIE: So we donāt have the author, weāre not interviewing the author, weāre just going to gab about it ourselves.
SARA: Sorry Jackson.
NATALIE: Yeah, sorry Jackson. All right, Sara. Tell us. You told me that it talks about the idea of being broken and the problem with that, so tell us about that.
SARA: Yeah. So I know thatās a really common theme in Christendom or whatever, and I think thereās validity and necessity to realizing that weāre not perfect, but I donāt think thatās basically ever or barely ever a problem for someone whoās been through what weāve been through or who is sincere in their faith, right? It never was for me. I mean, honestly, more than anything I struggled with feeling like I wasnāt enough, and I never really pinned down that phrase in my heart until pretty recently: āI am not enough.ā That was a core belief I had based on a bunch of core wounds. I remember talking recently about it with a friend, and she sees things differently from me, which is absolutely fine, but I think she thought I was basing the whole idea of brokenness off of the idea of being imperfect versus perfect, and thatās not what I mean.
After I got out of my abusive relationship, I felt so broken and busted up. This especially came up not just as a matter in surveying the emotional landscape of my life, but as I tried to deepen relationships around me or start new ones, especially as I started to date (and Iām dating now). I remember at one point saying to the man Iām with, āI just feel so f-ed up.ā And heās like, āBut youāre not.ā And I remember going into therapy several months back and saying something to that effect to the woman who is counseling me, and she said āI donāt ever want you to use that phrase again to describe yourself. Find another word. What are you?ā And I said, āIām discovering. I guess Iām discovering.ā And she said āBroken people donāt try to learn about themselves. They donāt try to heal. Broken people are the ones who never do anything. Broken people are the people still caught up in what you were caught up in.ā She just went on and on. So one of the realizations I had through the book and through the influence of that therapist is that weāre not actually broken people in that thereās nothing that was taken from us that isnāt actually still there. The things inherent to us, the valuable things, the things that we think were busted up, they are still there. Now, itās true that there are layers over them and there are wounds that cover them up, but this idea that weāre broken, I think, will get in the way of us esteeming ourselves and ever feeling like we can heal and engage wholeheartedly with life and other people. Does that make sense?
NATALIE: Oh, it totally makes sense. And this goes along with things that Iāve learned and things that I even teach in the programs as far as how youāre framing your experience. Thatās a way of framing it: āIām broken.ā When you think that, your brain just wants to shut down then, and it basically wipes out all possibility. Because youāre broken, so there is no possibility, you know?
SARA: Yes.
NATALIE: I think when you reframe it in the direction that youāre going to go, it doesnāt deny what happened to you, but you reframe it in a way that actually opens up possibility. I like to think about my past experience as having been a huge, amazing set up, like a springboard into my future. So if it wasnāt there, it wouldnāt have springboarded me in the way that it did to who I am to this day. It took everything, all of the bad things. All it did was shape and strengthen what was already there. Thatās kind of how I like to think of this. Is there anything more to say about the broken idea?
SARA: Well, I think that thereās legitimacy to what you just said. Itās not dismissing what was done to us. Thatās important. I think we need to acknowledge that. But itās also refusing to believe that what was taken from us and was done to us has ruined us.
NATALIE: Right.
SARA: And putting those in their rightful place. So, one of the things she said to me as a follow up is (and itās funny, because she pins me to the wall in the best way), āHe didnāt get the best of you, you know.ā And I was just like, āOkay, but why are you saying that?ā Of course, she knew exactly why. I said, āWhat do you mean?ā And she said, āTime would have passed anyway. So he didnāt take that from you. But in addition to that, he didnāt take the best of you. The best of you is your capacity to love.ā And I think that what trauma does to us is (and it sort of leads into the book) it leads us to create a protective self. And thatās when we sort of separate mind, body, and soul, and we do that in an effort to survive and in an effort to prevent ourselves from having to deal with those core wounds. And thatās why I think a lot of us, after we get out of these traumatic relationships, we feel so numb, and weāre still so anxious, weāre still depressed. Maybe we struggle with addictions. And even though maybe weāre healing in a lot of different ways, if we donāt address core wounds, we sort of walk around and we feel broken because weāre still like this onion with all these layers on the outside, and weāre refusing to go to the deeper parts. And itās funny, because even though we embrace suffering (I know I did, I mean, for how many years? Like in your case, two and a half decades, right?), we still are averse to some of the really deep, uncomfortable sensations that relate to core wounds. And for me, one of mine that has come up again and again that I finally am really dealing with is āI am not enough.ā I donāt know if you can relate.
NATALIE: Yeah. Well, mine is similar to that. I would phrase it as, āThere is something fundamentally wrong with me.ā
SARA: It just hurts to hear that sort of stuff.
NATALIE: Yeah.
SARA: As I was reflecting on what the book talked about as far as what wholeness really is⦠how does he define it? He says, āHuman wholeness is often defined as the unity of mind, body, and spirit, and emotional abuse, rejection, and trauma fracture this union, becoming a false shame message that gets stored in our body that disconnects us from that sense of being unconditionally loved.ā So thatās directly from the book, āWhole Again.ā
NATALIE: Love that.
SARA: Really what it comes down to is there is a disconnection, but there isnāt a destruction. There isnāt some complete obliteration of it. And thatās important to acknowledge because of what you just said earlier: if we believe that weāre broken, that precludes us from ever really truly being whole or esteeming ourselves as valuable people who are worthy of anything good.
NATALIE: Right.
SARA: What was I saying before that? I lost my train of thought.
NATALIE: Well, you were talking about how it fractures but it doesnāt mean that itās irreparable, so I felt like you were going towards, like, how do you get those pieces back together again as far as unifying the body and⦠what were those three pieces again?
SARA: Your body, mind, and spirit. You got it. See, together we make one brain. Iāve said this so many times. Itās so helpful. Thank you.
NATALIE: Yes.
SARA: Iāve realized, especially because I decided to be brave and allow myself to date again, that there are ways in which I created stories in my head that revolved around that core wound but that sort of deflected from it. And there were ways in which I was sort of splitting off from reality when it was painful. And itās easy for us to, because we needed to, gather all this information related to what happened to us but never really get down to brass tacks about healing. We become consumed with information, and then if we have uncomfortable sensations, then we will find a way to numb or to blame, and in my case I could say, for example, āI donāt know if I really trust this guy,ā and itās because I felt afraid. And really, I felt afraid because I was waiting for everything to fall apart again. What I experienced before was someone who acted like he was devastatingly in love with me, and then immediate rejection upon getting married. So I was waiting for that, and that gave me a semblance of control, but it also was me sabotaging the relationship. One of the things the therapist pointed out to me was that when weāre young and we experience horrible things like abuse, we try to make sense of it, so we tell ourselves stories that usually revolve around those core wounds. And mine was just āIām not enough, thatās why my parents mistreat me. Iām not enough.ā The problem was with me. And we have to get to the point where we start making truth, and the truth is that I am enough. It takes some distinct vulnerability to acknowledge that, because if you start acting like youāre enough, if they reject you, you canāt just go back to that pat-answer of, āSee, he rejected me because Iām not enough.ā
NATALIE: Right.
SARA: And Iāll go back to the sort of child-like response to that. I feel like this is a critical part of continuing the healing journey: recognizing that weāre responsible for dealing with those core wounds. If we donāt allow ourselves to sit and experience all the ways in which our body is trying to manifest that trauma, then itās just going to keep coming up again and again. I will say that for me, having this sort of stuff come up again and again, which was my body trying to get my attention, was so frustrating and so disheartening, and it led me back into that cycle of thinking āI am never going to heal.ā Did you ever feel like that in your healing journey, like āIām never going to healā?
NATALIE: Yeah. I feel like thereās sort of a story line that women typically go through and itās like, you keep going down, down, down into the pit and then you think that youāre at the bottom and then it drops out even further and then you think, āThat surely must be the end,ā and then it drops out even further. When you get to that place where you just think, āOkay, I guess itās never going to be better,ā then you get to that hopeless feeling. But it does get better, but I feel like it gets worse and worse and worse before it actually starts to get better.
SARA: Yeah, and Iāve seen time and time again in my journey that the things that served me in one season (and the seasons seem to switch much quicker than they used to. Maybe itās because Iām growing a lot) donāt serve me in the next season. For example, anger helped me for a while.
NATALIE: Yes!
SARA: It esteemed me and my value and legitimized what had actually been done wrong to me. But it didnāt help me after that. And gathering data and information about what I had been through helped, but then after a while, it can become a compulsion to move into the story instead of going into like, āOkay, whatās my responsibility now? How can I help myself to heal?ā And I think that Iāve seen in the past year, especially, how it would be easy (and the impulse is not there as often anymore) for me to just go back and say, āWell, I experienced this, so the way I feel is legitimate and justified.ā Sure it is! But is it moving me anywhere into a good future? No. Is it helping me at all, besides giving me some sort of avenue to make me feel like I have some power over this? So I feel like even though Iām a person who really values vulnerability, going deep into the āI am not enoughā lie in my heart and wound, it took some vulnerability within therapy, but itās taking so much more than I ever expected and really always want to give, honestly. Itās almost as though Iām placing myself back in that relationship, even though Iām not. I didnāt expect that. I didnāt expect that I would have to be so, so brave and so honest, and I think that every time we have something come up, like a trigger, we have a choice to decide, āAm I going to sit with this, or am I going to numb it out?ā
NATALIE: Yeah.
SARA: Am I going to keep this protective self on forever and then I never really get to live, or am I going to move forward?
NATALIE: Yeah. I was just going to ask you, can you think of a specific example, like maybe a recent time where you were triggered where you had to make that decision? I know thatās kind of putting you on the spot.
SARA: I have a lot of those times. Hereās an example. Letās say my boyfriend brings up a memory from the past, and I know maybe he was at this place that heās describing with his ex-wife. He had been married before, too. I could, in that moment, decide that means that heās missing that time and that it was special to him because of that person, and somehow Iām unimportant or thereās some kind of subtle put-down in there. But heās not manipulative or unkind at all, and we all have a history. None of us get to the point where weāre in our thirties, forties, and fifties where we donāt have a past, you know what Iām saying?
NATALIE: Exactly.
SARA: And if you meet someone then, youāre going to have a whole half of a lifetime without them. So when thatās happened recently, instead of going into, like⦠my spirals arenāt as deep as they were anyway, but instead of making that mean something negative, I just assign value to it as like, āYeah, because he was there, and thatās his past, and thatās all that means. Heās just remembering a story just like when I do. It doesnāt mean Iām not enough.ā One of the things I really struggle with is body-image due to a lot of sexual rejection in my marriage, so when Iām walking around and I start just sort of feeling crappy, lately Iāve been able to stop myself and instead of going deep into āYeah, well you donāt look like that, so youāre just gross. Youāre getting older, so youāre just not enough,ā Iām just able to calmly say, āNo, itās okay. Youāre okay. And your body? Thereās no comparison, and you donāt need to be compared to.ā
And as it relates to my boyfriend, heās with me because he wants to be with me. But I will say this: whatās been helpful to me in therapy lately is somatic therapy, you could say. And thatās just allowing myself to just pay attention to the sensations in my body instead of passing them over or refusing to acknowledge them. A lot of times my body feels uncomfortable or hurt because I havenāt let stuff come up. The past time I went to therapy, one of the things she did was just have me sit with the āIām not enough,ā and it was odd and weird but it was also really profound because it was almost as if all the physical action that I would have done if I was sitting in that grief seemed to come up but without all the tears, and I finally listened to my body in those moments. And I think that one of the things we fail to take into account when we donāt address core wounds is that weāre making ourselves the core enemy. We keep rejecting and suppressing all of the things our body is trying to tell us and all the things that our mind wants us to know. Whereas we think, āI canāt heal,ā our body is trying to get us to heal. Thatās one of the reasons weāre having so many issues. Does that make sense?
NATALIE: Oh, it totally makes sense. This is one of the reasons why I think in survivor communities, even, thereās a lot of empathy and just āLetās listen to our stories and letās go there,ā and it feels good in the moment, but it doesnāt actually solve anything long term.
SARA: Yeah.
NATALIE: So when you talk about getting triggered like that example you gave with your boyfriend, you had a knee-jerk programmed response that came right away, and thatās the āIām not worthyā or āThereās a reason why he brought this up and it has something to do with me.ā Thatās your knee-jerk programmed response. And then you were able to notice it and then change it and say āNo. We know now that this is whatās true.ā And then you were able to re-frame it and feel differently about it instead of misinterpreting it or making it mean something terrible about you. It becomes more of a healthy response. āOkay, this guy has this experience, and heās just sharing it with me. This is actually a good thing that he feels comfortable enough to share this with me,ā right?
SARA: Right. Iāve told myself in the past, āIām being careful, Iām just not being stupid,ā even though there are no red flags. There really arenāt. Really, what it comes down to is Iāve latched onto my story and Iām making everything about the story, whereas thatās the past, and I am here now. And I have to decide how I want to live.
NATALIE: Right. Okay, so tell me a little bit more about⦠how do you put the somatic aspect of everything, going into your body and feeling the things, along with the mind-work?
SARA: Yeah, sure. So, I will say, I donāt think he specifically calls out somatic therapy in the book, but itās really sweet, just the vulnerability that he shares in the book, because he talks about all the different sensations he had come up, and just how it was so much of a process for him to work through these things and realize these things. Even before he wrote this book, he had written another book as an expert on the subject of psychological abuse, but he still wasnāt healed, so heās coming as a person in the trenches. But he does talk about how listening to his body on his own made a huge difference in realizing certain things, just about how he needed a reference point of unconditional love, and we have unconditional love for ourselves when weāre willing to embrace these sensations and these thoughts and feelings and all the things that come up instead of hating them and suppressing them.
So in the therapy that I did specifically (and I think that every therapist probably picks something a little bit different based on what youāve been through and what works for you), once we got to the point where she thought I was comfortable enough after several session to just be quiet, we sat together after I brought up what I realized had been coming up again and again, āI am not enough,ā and she said, āHow do you feel? Where do you feel that in your body when you say that?ā I was like, āI donāt freaking know.ā And I mean, really, it was awkward and stilted a little bit, and so we just sat there, and I decided āOkay, Iām going to just say it out loud and then try to see how I feel,ā so I said āI am not enoughā and I sat there. And she started noting observations she made of me, and she made it clear again and again, āDonāt try to think into thisā because again, for me personally, I am an overthinker, and thatās a part of hyper-vigilance because of what Iāve been through since I was a child, and you can not think your way out of these things. I mean, in a lot of ways you canāt. Because I can just argue in a real warped way all day long with myself. So she said āDonāt do that. Donāt even try to think. Just try to pay attention to your body.ā And she realized that I was moving back and forth. Not my heartbeat. And she said āJust move with your body. Where does your body want to move?ā And every time she talked about being still and just being with my body, I kept swallowing. And I didnāt even notice. Sheās like, āDo you notice that?ā and I was like, āYeah, okay.ā She said āTry not to swallow,ā and as I did, as I sat there with my mouth open, it felt like there was something that needed to come out, and I realized that every time that Iāve stifled my emotion, my pain, and my grief in my life, Iāve felt⦠and this is a normal, physical reaction, but I just remembered it, my throat has hurt really, really bad.
NATALIE: Yes.
SARA: I just could see again and again how so many times in my life when Iāve been in the most emotional pain, I, even though I say Iām a crier and I let things out, no. I will not let the full measure of it come out. I think that there is maybe wisdom to that and that I couldnāt handle that right then, but I never really let all that trauma out. I never let that grief have full expression. So I just felt the connection to that. Iāve actually had times where Iāve been triggered and I wasnāt like, about to cry, but I felt a weird sensation in my throat. It was weird. It was like there was a muffin in my throat or something. So she said āJust sit there. Keep your mouth open and let the sensation come up.ā And so I just sat there, and as I did, I felt so much emotion come up. I started weeping, and I didnāt even know why. Iāll be honest, with this, there isnāt going to be a lot of figuring things out or nailing things down or even clear thoughts. Youāre just letting your body talk to you. Thereās more to it but really, going back to something I mentioned earlier, as I sat there, I could just sense myself saying, and it was like my child-self saying āFinally! Finally, youāre listening! Iāve been trying to tell you for so long. Will you listen now?ā And I realized how in saying that Iām not enough and believing Iām not enough over and over again, all I had done is make myself the enemy and how sad that made me, and how the one safe place Iāve had for my entire life Iāve rejected over and over just to make sense of my reality and then to protect myself, and I no longer want to do that. I was pretty exhausted by the end of it. It was like I had run several miles, but it was a really beautiful experience just to let my body speak for once.
NATALIE: That is incredible. I can relate to this. I can relate to that throat thing. I donāt have a therapist right now, but Iāve been trying to listen to my body more and I did just notice that recently, and Iām like, āWhat is that?ā Itās like it hurts in my throat. My throat is hurting. And when you just articulated that, Iām like, now the next time it happens, Iām going to be aware of that. I do stifle my emotions a lot, too.
SARA: Yeah, sure. Itās really hard not to.
NATALIE: Yeah, well, when I was growing up, if you expressed your emotions, you were a really bad person, and that was really bad. To express your emotions was like you were selfish, you were trying to get attention, all of that. Or you were histrionic or dramatic or thereās something wrong with you because you had emotions. I mean, I hate to keep harping on this, but I do think it is kind of a historically Christian sort of⦠whatās the word Iām looking for? Itās a badge of honor or something if you can be stoic and you can be, āWell, Iām just going to trust God no matter what, and thereās no reason for me to make a fuss, and Iām just going to be the strong one, and Iām just going to suck it up.ā And thatās praised. Or you know, the whole idea of dying to yourself or basically killing yourself off. Itās some kind of Christian⦠gah, what is the word Iām looking for?
SARA: Propaganda?
NATALIE: No. Iām going to have to edit this out because I canāt think of the word.
SARA: Sorry I canāt help.
NATALIE: I know, I know. Anyway, Iām going to edit this part out because itās absolutely ridonkulous.
SARA: I mean, I think the problem with that not only is⦠you know, you could go back and say that Stoicism isnāt even Biblical, anyway. It was something from the first few centuries that they just added in. Again, it does what I did, which was make ourselves the enemy. You cannot hate one aspect of yourself, the physical, and have wholeness. You cannot split those things apart and live well.
NATALIE: Right. I thought of the word too.
SARA: What?
NATALIE: Itās āvirtue.ā Itās like a virtue to kill yourself.
SARA: Yeah, definitely. But, I mean, even within the context of what weāre talking about just in general, if we deny and resist these things, that doesnāt help at all. Weāre not just making ourselves the enemy, weāre preventing ourselves from ever healing. Weāre breaking ourselves into pieces on the inside. No wonder we feel like we canāt heal, because weāre preventing it.
NATALIE: Exactly, and hereās the other thing too. If you think about it from the Creatorās perspective⦠God creates us, He makes us exactly the way He wants us to be, and He instills in us the personality that He gives us and the body that He gives us. Weāre hard-wired. Itās in our DNA. Heās created this beautiful creation, and then He wants that creation to go and live to its fullness, the fullness of what we are created to be. And then weāre told, āNo! Youāre not enough! No! Youāre too selfish! No! You need to die, you need to die to yourself. You need to be a living sacrifice.ā And yes, the Bible uses terminology like that, but it doesnāt mean what a lot of Christians think that it means. And itās Satanās way of taking truth and twisting it to mean actually the opposite of what itās supposed to mean. Thatās how he destroys us. I was just telling someone in my program that the Bible says that Satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy. And if he can destroy us and make us think that itās a virtue to actually self-destruct, all the better. We can actually leave an abusive relationship or leave an abusive family or leave an abusive friendship and we can still continue to destroy ourselves by our beliefs.
SARA: Yes. I definitely am a poster child for that. And whatās funny is (itās funny, but itās sad), as Iāve realized these things and come out of them and started to live and think differently, Iāve actually gotten pushback from other people who believe that Iām, I donāt know, becoming a heathen or something. And Iām just thinking, āBut do you understand that all of this has been produced by the acknowledgement, the realization of how much harm those beliefs have done to me, and now Iām deciding to believe something different?ā It wasnāt like, āI want to go out and do bad things.ā Itās me realizing āThese things are doing me actual harm, and hereās the revised version that is not, that is bringing life to me.ā Thatās the only impetus behind all this.
NATALIE: Right. Jesus was called the son of the devil, so that would be like the equivalent of us being called a heathen, right? Throughout history, I think the people who just really, truly desired to be aligned with the heart of God, the love of God through Christ, are often maligned in the same way that Jesus was maligned because they are not stepping in line with the rules and regulations that enable them to be easily manipulated by the powers that be. I think thatās a pattern that you see throughout history. If you know anyone who is calling you a heathen because you believe in being who God created you to be, and healing, and getting in touch with the body that God gave you and the mind that God gave you and the spirit that God gave you, then I think thatās a red flag. I think that says something about them, not that theyāre a heathen, but it just says something about their beliefs. It just tells you, āWell, thatās what they believe. They believe something different than I believe now, and they probably have their own healing to do.ā
SARA: Yeah. Well, the irony is, Iāll sometimes look around and realize that some of the ways people are treating me now, I would have thought the same thing 10+ years ago about me, you know, on the outside. Because if you havenāt lived it, itās hard to understand. I try to be gracious instead of getting angry.
NATALIE: Exactly. Hereās how I look at it, because I have a lot of people who kind of dumped me and they probably think Iām a heathen, too. I just think āWell, you know what, theyāre on their trajectory, and God has them on whatever circles theyāre spinning around in, and God has me on my circle that Iām spinning around in, and I canāt be focused on them, anyway. My focus has to be on Jesus, and my focus has to be on what Heās putting in front of me to do with my life.ā My whole life, all I ever really wanted to do was change the world in some small way. Be some kind of positive influence, help people to experience God in a special way. And thatās what Iām doing, or what I hope that I am doing.
SARA: Yes! You are!
NATALIE: So if I get distracted by people who are⦠well, you know how Brené Brown talks about being on the field, the game field?
SARA: Yeah, in the arena, right?
NATALIE: Yeah, youāre in the arena. And I just feel like, letās stay focused on the game at hand. And of course there are going to be people in the stands who are throwing tomatoes at you. Okay, so they throw a tomato at you. But you know what? We got a game to play. We donāt have time to worry about the silly tomato. We have to play the game. Thatās whatās important. Thatās what we have to stay focused on.
SARA: Yeah. I guess I would probably just end by saying, if anybodyās out there and they can fully say that theyāre out of unhealthy or unsafe situations and they still feel like, āHow am I ever going to heal?ā They still feel really numb and unfilled and thereās this deep, soul loneliness. I donāt think thatās a static state for you for good, and when it comes down to it, if youāre living out of protective self like I have been, like Natalie Iām sure has, like so many of us have, there really is healing. And this book, for me, was helpful in recognizing just a deeper level of that. Somatic therapy helped too, but I just wanted to encourage everybody that our bodies are not just made to heal physically. Theyāre made to heal emotionally, and there is wisdom in them. If, as you said, Natalie, weāre made in the image of God, then there are marvelous, incredible, mind-blowingly great things within us that give us the capacity and the wisdom to lead us into healing. And I would say a big part of that probably is listening to our bodies and really, truly going deep into the acknowledgment of what they need to grieve or release or let go. And once we do that good work, our lives change. I have not found deep healing in striving and in being some kind of perfect person or checking all these boxes. Iāve found it in just allowing it to come as it does and seeking it out in gentle ways and just loving myself and putting myself in situations where people can love me.
NATALIE: Yeah. I love that. I want to piggyback off of that and just say that we tend to think, āOh, thereās this end goal, and we have to reach the end goal.ā But there is no end goal to healing other than that itās just a journey. Itās a process and weāll be doing it for our whole lives. So never think, āOh, I just have so much further to go.ā I kind of use this phrase: āIām healing and Iām also kind of a hot mess.ā In fact, just the other day my daughter told me something that involved my ex-husband and I got triggered. I reacted a little bit and then I said, āOkay, this is my unhealed, wounded child thatās reacting right now. I just want you to know that.ā And Iām just crawling out of my skin because this little girl inside of me is freaking out inside of me. But it helps to be able to recognize that and to feel it and to be able to say, āOkay, my wounded child inside is scratching on my innards, and I want you to know, daughter, thatās whatās happening right now and Iām aware of it.ā And my daughter was able to hold space for that because sheās amazing. And she was able to be okay with that. But if Iām shaming myself for that and going āCome on, Natalie, youāre a coach. You should get your act together. You shouldnāt be falling apart in front of your daughter. This is a stupid, silly little situation. Itās not even that big of a deal.ā If we do that, all that does is stuff it down and make us feel shame. Like you said, that little girl is saying, āWhy canāt you listen to me?ā It makes her just crawl back into her corner and go, āSee? Nobody cares about me. Nobody wants to listen to me.ā So it doesnāt help. So anyway, for what thatās worth.
SARA: Yeah, that was a great example.
NATALIE: Well, Iām really glad that you brought this book to our attention. It sounds like a great book. So for those of you who are listening and want to go get the book, itās called āWhole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuseā by Jackson MacKenzie. Youāre welcome, Jackson, for promoting your book. Itās so funny. He has no idea who we are.
SARA: He has no idea.
NATALIE: Well, of course, we have no idea who he is, actually. So I think thatās a wrap for this session. By the way, I havenāt said this in the last couple of episodes, but I want to just encourage you to go and leave a rating and review on Apple iTunes if you havenāt done that already, because that really helps to get our podcast in front of the eyeballs of more people who are just like you. There are algorithms out there, you guys, so when you listen and you download an episode or you like an episode or you subscribe to the podcast or you leave a rating and review (which is the biggest way of giving it lots of juice), youāre actually helping to promote this podcast. So if you like it, why not promote it? You can be totally anonymous. You donāt have to give your real name or anything. People come up with all kinds of interesting names there in the reviews, so just throw a name in there and give your rating and review.
SARA: Do it, do it, do it.
NATALIE: Give it some juice, you guys, and then more women will be able to find it. I think itās been helping a lot of women and Iād like it to help even more. Thanks for being with us, Sara, and thanks for listening, you guys who are listening, and until next time, fly free!
I just received Whole Again in the mail and started reading it! Glad to hear that it’s helped others so much!
The book, “Whole Again” was a game changer for me! I’m currently reading it my second time. Thank you for sharing, Sara! Thank you, as always, Natalie!