Breaking Traumatic Cycles with Cheryl Burke

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know Cheryl Burke from her twenty six seasons on
Dancing with the Stars. But behind the rhinestones and glam,
Cheryl's life was filled with trauma, addiction, and abandonment. All
of this has profoundly affected her life. Cheryl says she's
never had a healthy romantic relationship. On this powerful episode

(00:22):
of Navigating Narcissism, Cheryl and I explore the roots of
the painful, traumatic, and difficult life she's endured, what she's
learned about herself, and how a conversation with me years
ago led to a significant revelation about her own father.
From Red Table Talk Podcasts and iHeartMedia, I'm Doctor Romney

(00:46):
and this is Navigating Narcissism. This podcast should not be
used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice.
Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and
or therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any
medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters

(01:11):
discussed on this podcast. This episode discusses abuse, which may
be triggering to some people. The views and opinions expressed
are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating
in the podcast, and do not represent the opinions of
Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia or their employees.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Share.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Oh yes, you and I actually met a few years
ago when I was on your podcast and you talk
to me about narcissism right and been a foreshadow. You said, oh,
you should have your podcast. Yeah I didn't, and here
we are an even better. You're a guest who knew
I was psychic, So thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Of course I want you to know how much you
have affected my life in a way that you probably
don't know. But when you we were on the podcast,
we did talk about my real father who has passed,
and you mentioned how the qualities of a narcissist, right,
and it really put everything into perspective for me, and
in a weird way, I was able to not necessarily

(02:16):
validate his actions or anything, but to at least be
able to label it in a way and have some
sort of piece as to Okay, so my father was
a narcissist and that was a huge revelation. So thank you. Well.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
I appreciate that so much. I think having a frame
for something sometimes it's even just about lifting some of
that self blame and recognizing that it's a structural thing
that was simply going to happen to anyone who happens
to be in the position you were in as his daughter,
and it lifts us out of the story. You were
still hurt by it, you were still affected by it.

(02:51):
None of that is taken away, but it's a whole
other level when you feel at all that you're partly
responsible for it, right, And that's the piece that the
framework helps with. What amazing about you is how much
candor you bring when you share your stories and your experiences,
And it is so important because people do see you
as a performer. People almost project a lot of stuff

(03:12):
onto you. And when you stop being the person on
the screen, the dancer, and you show your humanity but
also what you've been through with such vulnerability, you give
permission to millions of other people to lift some of
the shame off of themselves. So I always think it's
powerful when somebody who has a public platform does that

(03:33):
kind of open sharing. I don't think people quite understand
what an impact that has, So I would say that
on behalf of many survivors, thank you so much, and
you've shared some really profound and painful experiences from experiencing
sexual abuse, as a child, to even a journey of sobriety.
So all of this is the kinds of things people
grapple with but don't talk about.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Thanks for creating an amazing outlet and resource for people,
because this is very important. I heard you say recently
that though it may seem like we're going through this
as a collective of being able to talk about our traumas,
at the same time, we're not, you know, and on
top of it all because of you know, social media.
There's amazing things about it, but there's also the negative
things about it, which is people feeling like they have

(04:17):
the right to judge you for being vulnerable, and to
say that I don't get affected by it to this
day would be a lie. I'm already being vulnerable, and
then on top of it, I'm being question as to
why I'm being vulnerable or I'm over sharing. So thank
you for educating and continuing to have these uncomfortable conversations.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
Well, yeah, I do appreciate that, and I agree with you.
I think that we often are We're open to these
stories almost only to the point where sort of we
learn the information, but we don't want to hear the
emotion and what it does to the person. You know,
it's always like what I call sort of trauma storytelling
that we're just we want to hear the terrible thing
that happened. But that's a tiny top of an iceberg.

(04:56):
The rest of it is how it's shaped a person
and how it affects how they go through the world
and how they've had to carry that burden and how
they ultimately put some of that down and grow and
heal and sometimes have setbacks. That really is where the
focus needs to be. But I think we get so
caught up in the tell me what happened, Okay, now
I'm done, Yeah, and that actually yeah, not believe in

(05:18):
or when you bring the emotion in people, I go,
that's enough, we've heard. We don't want to hear your
raw emotion. And so that's definitely what this is really
a space about survivors, and I think all of these
stories that come up, they're much more perpetrator focus. We're
so curious about people who do bad things, right, But
what we don't really ever unpack is what happens to
the person who experience to the bad things. And it

(05:41):
is remarkable to me how uninterested we've historically been or.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Who gets then almost made out to be the perpetrator.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
That's actually something, interestingly Churel we talked about with an
expert of ours, doctor Fried, who developed a model of
that called DARVO. DARVO is an acronym developed by doctor
Jen for Fried and stands for deny, attack and reverse
victim and offender. It is the way manipulative and abusive

(06:10):
people respond to accusations. I like to think of it
as supercharged gaslighting. When you face up to an abuser
about their behavior, they will deny it, attack you for
calling them out, and then flip to behaving like the
victim and shaping the narrative as though you are harming them.
It can leave many people in abusive relationships feeling as

(06:34):
though they are the ones who have done something wrong.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
I'll never forget I got sexually molested when I was
a little girl, and I testified against him in court
when I was like nine years old. And I remember
even that time as if it was yesterday. I just
felt I was here sitting in front of the perpetrator
right and it wasn't just me, it was quite a
few people. They wouldn't let my mom with me inside

(07:00):
the court, and I will never forget feeling like I
was doing something wrong, like I was lying. That's I
would say, the start of not necessarily trusting myself, because
in a way it was a way of grooming. This
man did a great job of doing that, Like it
wasn't physical pain. And it was to the point where
I started questioning myself, likes to did he do anything
bad because he never hurt me. And then it didn't

(07:21):
help being like testifying against this man and not necessarily
I didn't feel like I was being believed at all,
and it was just a horrible feeling. I'll never forget it.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
It's a horrible feeling when you also stacked it up
nine years old. If any of us close our eyes
and think back to how young.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, nine is, Yeah, that's young, right.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Adult survivors of any form of sexual assault or trauma
rarely testify in their cases, So what you did would
have been beyond the pale for even an adult, and
it's understandable why nobody wants to testify in these cases.
These systems are all designed to give perpetrators their that's
how our justice system is set up, and to be

(08:03):
doubting of the accuser. That is the foundation of how
this justice system is set up. It's innocent until proven guilty. Well,
if that's the case, that means an accuser is then
being viewed through a suspicious lens, right, And that's particularly
pronounced and profound when a person is bringing sexual trauma,
especially a child as a miner whose brain hasn't really

(08:25):
developed in a way to fully integrate what this is.
Children look to adult for safety. That's what they do.
So when an adult violates a child's safety, the child
doesn't actually have a good template to turn to for that,
and so the child's go to is to figure out
how they're complicit in this because that story allows them

(08:49):
to be safer in the world at large. Otherwise the
world becomes real dangerous, real fast. All adults become potentially risky.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
We talk about people being invalidating and traumatizing, and frankly,
narcissistic systems are too. I think the judicial system is
a great example of a system that is invalidating and traumatizing,
especially for survivors of any form of sexual violence.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, thanks for saying all of that. It just reminds
me of people in general who suffer in silence because
of the fact of either feeling like they weren't believed
when telling their story or there's so much shame because
of not being able to or feeling like they can't
communicate it. You know, I was blessed, I guess enough
for my mom to put me into therapy since I

(09:34):
was a little girl, and I haven't stopped, and it's
something that it's not negotiable in my life. But it
has been really hard to put everything into words my
body because I'm a dancer. I have a sematic therapist.
I haven't talk therapists, but the sematic is a lot easier,
but I'm still learning how to be able to communicate
this through talking.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
It's so interesting you say that, Cheryl, because trauma is
very much encoded in stored somatically. That's where we keep it.
And what we've learned in the last thirty years of
trauma treatment is that that sematic focus is a game change,
right and reorienting to our bodies. What's remarkable to me
is you a trauma survivor, your body became your form
of art, So what an ultimate way to heal. But

(10:18):
also it's really weird too.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
You're like, yeah, but you're going to stuff yourself in
a dance costume when you've been violated, right, and comfortable
dancing in front of millions of people.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah, for people who are listening. You know, when we're
talking about how we hold things sematically, we hold them
in our body. So trauma gets held in the body.
And I've been working for years, I mean, if not lifetimes,
and I have to say, over the years, it would
be many times people wouldn't connect. It would be even
things like when people felt they couldn't speak, the strangulation

(10:48):
in the throats, anxiety, it's felt in the gut, it's
felt in the head, it's felt in the shoulders. It's
and that's often where people would process it first, right,
And it's then teaching people you understand. I always say
that the brain, the mind often gaslights the body. The
body's holding all the truth and the brain's like, come on,

(11:09):
like drama, body, right, and so, but I think that
it's because the brain and the body are serving different functions.
The brain is trying to keep you safe, right, So
it's like, body, don't tell me this, like everything's dangerous.
No no, no, no no no, we can't work with that, right,
And so the brain's like just chill body, because I
can't manage this much threat and the body feels the threat.

(11:31):
One of the things we often see with trauma survivors
is you can teach them to trust their bodies, sometimes
a little quicker than we can teach them to trust
their minds, right, because this is where it's all held.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Because you can't hide the feeling.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
You can't hide the feeling, you can't hide your sensation.
But a lot of people don't connect the dots interesting.
They have the sensation, they've had this experience, but what
they don't realize is that this stuff that's held in
their body the Semitic stuff, and that their body is
signaling something to them. And so that's why, in some ways,
your body is an interesting early detection device because I
will tell particularly people have survived any kind of trauma,

(12:03):
whether it be physical, sexual, or even emotional. Listen to
your body, because your poor brain has been trying to
run circles and makes sense to go it does and listen,
and when you're feeling that that might be a sign
to say, you know what, I think I'm going to
step out of this situation because there's a lot of
data there.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
But with that feeling when you're like, do I walk
through this alleyway or not? Like you just know you
just need to give it a second and trust it.
It's body awareness, just knowing when your stomach hurts or
whatever it is. Oucha, you ran to the door, done
that a few times, you know it hurts, like and
just acknowledging it. But yes, I'm blessed that dance was

(12:40):
my form of I'm blessed first of all that my
mom was able to afford my dancing career, but also
my mom thought I was deaf growing up because I
didn't talk at all. She took me to a hearing
specialist who said, no, miss, but your daughter's going through PTSD,
which is why she's not talking. Like how this was
even for the sexual abuse and I just my mom

(13:02):
and dad divorced when I was two, so that was
very traumatic and though it was like yesterday, another traumatic
event happened was witnessing my father being intimate with another
woman at such a young age. Though they were separated,
I didn't put two and two together. So that was
like my very first memory as a kid.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Okay, so let's go backwards, All right, let's go back.
So you were not talking. You didn't really start talking
until you were two, No, after that, three four, maybe
five five? Okay, all right, so that would have been
something that would have jumped out. Okay, yeah, but at
two you said your parents divorce. Right, Can you talk
to me about that period of time because it sounds
like that that was a separated or separated but that's

(13:40):
a significant event for sanchi, young child to us no
language to even understand what was happening. Yeah, So what
was all that like?

Speaker 2 (13:47):
Well, it was interesting because my mother's Filipina. She was
raised long story, shortened poverty and moved here to the
States and created a nursing agency called Nurse Provider. So
she opened up the very first nursing agency. Like how
we as talent have agents. So she was very, very busy.
And I was born in eighty four and that's when

(14:09):
her company had just started, so there wasn't a lot
of I guess I was raised with my Filipina nanny
more than anybody as far as my parents go. So
there's that We're living in the Bay Area where I'm from,
and I just remember going bouncing from house to house.
So my father's home for a couple of days, and
then my mom, you know, but then my Filipina nanny

(14:31):
was with me at all times. Oh so she'd go
from house to back correct yes, yes, yes, yes, but
still like she wasn't able to drive, she couldn't speak English.
So that was another reason why I didn't talk, because
we had two different languages spoken in home.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
You had a lot going on, and that kind of
the chaos, the multiple languages, all of that. I mean,
now we would probably have assessed a child like you
very differently. Well, what I'm hearing is busy parents, yes,
distracted parents, Yes, you're going back and forth. The only
consistent through line in your life is a paid kit
nanny who didn't speak who didn't speak English. What I'm

(15:05):
hearing is being affected. There was attachment.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
I am totally anxious attachment.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Okay, all right, And so let's talk a little bit
about any anxious attachment is because people are going to say, well,
what does that mean if someone's anxiously attached? What does
it mean to you? Before I launch into sort of
a professorial what anxious?

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Okay is? I love this already. I could talk to
you for weeks. I have anxiety when it comes to
first of all relationships but abandonment issues. It's interesting because
me and my therapists were talking about this in length,
actually about avoidant versus anxious, and I am a little
bit of both, but I'm mainly anxious though the avoidant

(15:40):
had just started to happen because of the fear of
feeling needy and maybe feeling rejected because of my anxious
attachment issue that I then quickly switch over to becoming avoidant.
So it all like it's not either or what.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
Does that look like when you become So if you go.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
So like if I feel rejected by let's say, if
I'm like, oh, let's cuddle, or like I'm becoming I'm
extra vulnerable right through my body and I don't feel
like that other person is open to it, then I
will right away my wall.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Fast right and and so you know, with this protective
you're protecting, I'm protecting myself and this kind of you know,
the kind of early inconsistency in mild chaos you were
living in, will impact attachments, so totally. You know, the
gold standard that what we hope for for everybody is
a secure attachment, of course, and with the secure attachment,
the child feels safe, They feel that they're they can

(16:40):
they have readily available caregivers that they can beckon and
make needs known to, and they feel safe expressing those
needs and that those needs would not be rejected or
the child will be abandoned. It's so interesting to me
to see you. You literally gave this big expence. Oh,
I said that. You know that that is something that
you want and want and wish for. Right, Yeah, children.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Can be then realize that only I can do that for.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Myself as now, But some children can be securely attached
to one caregiver and not to another. Of course, but
when we get into the area and.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
We had my second caregiver who admosted me.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
There you go. See. So that's what we're going to
get you that now, when a caregiver engages in harm,
you were older than then I would know. So yeah,
so not much older, but those early early caregiver attachments,
those become really profoundly important. As other people come into
the sphere of the child, it's still going to affect attachment.
The way they researched this was they would actually look

(17:35):
at what's called separation behavior and reunion behavior. So children
being separated from their caregiver. Usually in this research, it
was a mother how they would do it goodbye, and
how they would do it hellodbye, and that's them. I
was mom was dressed up in a ball gown and
like mind you, she was working like long hours. I
remember grabbing onto her ank I'll never forget it. And

(17:56):
she was with her friends. And it's with any goodbyes,
any goodbyes. Did generalize says to all goodbyes. Right, So
the goodbye is chaotic and there's a lot of distress
and it takes a minute to soothe the child. Then
the child does their thing. Then when the child comes
back with the caregiver, there's this almost like almost like
a don't like you're back, don't leave me again, and

(18:17):
almost like a pro right. That's the only way I
could describe it.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
In the avoidantly attached child, when the point of separation comes,
they kind of walk off and when the parent comes back,
there could be some tears, some agitation, but by and
large they remain disinterested.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
What are the parents like when you're avoidant attachment.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
They're neglectful. There's much more. It's very much a.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
Different like neglectful versus intrusive busy.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Well that's that's a neglect. But there's also there was
intrusiveness too, right, there was also like it's not as
though you didn't think there was anyone there, you know,
it's that they were there and they were kind of
like up, down, in out, probably overinvolved, under involved, that
kind of thing that it's not like nobody there.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
And can you get to the secure attachment.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
It takes a lot of work, it does, you know.
But here's the thing you said, you're in therapy. Therapy
becomes actually one of those places where the secure attachment
gets created again. You know that the therapist is there
on time, and they're there and available, and they don't
reject you because you say something. And that if in
long term psychotherapy, that can be one place for it.
Really healthy friendships that persist for a long time. We

(19:27):
can have these safe, secure bases we slowly start to create.
Some people will say some of that starts for them
when they have children, that they become a secure base
for the child. Now, some anxiously attached parents can also
be hovery. So they really need to get their stuff
in order before they have a child. Is a good
way to do it. Have a dog first, you know,
have a dog first. I think it absolutely can be

(19:48):
it can be reworked in adult relationships, but it has
to be intentional. It can't just be that you get
lucky and you find it good. But then you said,
at the age of three, I just want to understand
what happen that you walked in on your father. Yes,
and he was having sex with someone obviously no mother, Yeah, no, no,
how did it look at my mother? Okay, okay, you

(20:09):
had to type how did that? You obviously have?

Speaker 2 (20:12):
That was traumatic?

Speaker 1 (20:13):
That's traumatic.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah, and I'll never forget as well. Like I remember,
you know, because I was staying there so I had
to shower, you know, and I needed help, so he'd
make me shower with this like woman who was his secretary. Yeah,
it was pretty traumatic seeing that. And I just remember
seeing opening the door and seeing just like the back
of her she had long black hair. It was it's interesting,
like and she was naked.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Obviously.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
This is how much detail I know. I was sitting
in my dad's brown leather chair watching Sesame Street on PBS,
and I wanted him to change the channel. And I
go in and there was like a crack in the door,
and then I saw him, you know, being with this
other woman. And obviously I didn't know it was his
secretary back then, obviously I didn't know. I couldn't put
anything into words at the moment, but of course it

(20:55):
was traumatic, and I think that was the start of
you know, what I thought was and.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
What what would that be?

Speaker 2 (21:03):
That would be all unhealthy? I guess toxic traits of
a man, which is a narcissistic personalities abuse. And I
don't just say that because of my father. I say
this because of the perpetrator as well, the person who
actually abused me. And then on top of it all,

(21:24):
like the pattern that's that was my definition of love
was the man who wasn't available.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
Well, that's what it is. It's the chaos, right love.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
I would still say, I'm a recovering addict, but still
like there is that feels like home still sometimes like
my lazy brain, as I say, which is just me
not being present or conscious as much. It goes back
to that like easily.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
So that early instance, Okay, you walk in on your
so your father who is in theory, these are his
few days with you. He's not being an attentive caregive
no instead, what he's doing is you know, having this
fling with his secretary. You see this, Okay?

Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah, and he knows I would assume he knew.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
Right this one instance was I mean sheheryl. People have
walked in on their on parents, maybe even parents and
someone else having sex. Right, It's an image that often
stays with people. That event was one. How did that
connect to your larger relationship with your father, because it
doesn't sound like that that was so.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
He left that country for his own selfish reasons. So
my dad was a very successful lawyer in the bar
area and then followed his passion and I won't say
it here with the P and the Y, but open
up a bunch of strip clubs. That's his passion, right, correct?
It was rest and peace. I'm sure it's no longer
his passion.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
I would hope you never know what happens on the
other side, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
I can't tell you any different. I mean, I'm just
assuming or maybe dreaming that he's now like this. Who
knows anyway, Rest and peace dad? But yeah, so he
had a bunch of strip clubs in Pataya, in Thailand,
and clearly he loves loved his Asian women and opened
up a bunch of strip clubs. I was exposed to

(23:06):
that world because my mom wanted me to continue having
a relationship with my father. Didn't want to obviously, I
guess promote me not talking to him or seeing him.
So it was like a once a year it was
a family getaway to Pataya, not at his strip clubs.
But he did live on top of his strip clubs

(23:27):
called Bubbles.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
So when you would go to Thaighland for these vacations
on a top of bubbles and.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
With my stepdad, with my stepsister by mom, So your
mom's a family affair mom stepfather's sister, my mom remarried. Yeah,
So would you.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Stay on top of bubbles or would you.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
No, we would stay at the Holiday Inn. Okay, it's
way nicer there. Just y that it is here.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
Stay at the Holiday Inn. But it was you were
very aware of the whole What was it you mean clubs?

Speaker 2 (23:57):
It was a clubs. I was never going in the
club right, And my dad was an alcoholic, so he
was only able to talk to us in a silver
way after five pm, So we wouldn't talk to him
before five and we would see him between the windows
of five and eight, and he loved to have long
dinners and long talks and conversations. I'd be jet lag,
I'd fall asleep wherever we are, and he would take

(24:20):
my stepdad out once a year and it would be
at one of his clubs. That's all I remember. And
then the rest we went to go see elephants like
it was not very eventful.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Okay. So what that also communicates is that your father
made a choice. He left his one daughter, yeah okay,
and when she's a very small child to pursue his
strip club dream in Thailand. So he's not doing this
in the Bay Area. Now, he's doing this on the
other side of the world and leaves you for his

(24:52):
own need with no awareness, no reflection, no empathy.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
And no care really care. Yeah, honestly, Like I remember dancing,
when I started in the ballroom dancing competitive world, my
mom signed me up to do this competition in Hong
Kong and we're like, oh, because it's close by. You know,
your dad can finally see you in person. After all
these years he hasn't come to see you, and he
I'll never forget. I got a call the night before
our flight and he flaked and That was very, very

(25:21):
traumatic for me because he was just not available, and
when he was it was between the hours of five
and eight.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
How old were you in the ballroom dancing competition?

Speaker 2 (25:31):
I was like thirteen or fourteen.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
So all those years you kept maintaining hope around Yeah,
of course.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
And it was interesting because to this day, I feel
like my real father will always know more about me
than my mom in a way, because I felt like
I was never judged by him because he couldn't tell
me what to do because he was never there. As
I got older, we would have long talks and conversations
like as if he was a buddy of mine. But
still so much pain. You know, I could and always

(25:59):
still wanting to feel like I was being though I
wasn't validated. I'm still yearning for that, you know.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
Every child? Yes that though, I think that what we
forget about children because it's not comparable to describe what
happens to a child with a narcissistic parent is what
happens to an adult in a narcissistic relationship. Right. The
child can't be taught that the parent is never going
to see you, get you, recognize you, acknowledge you. I

(26:26):
mean he wasn't around, He wasn't in your life physically,
so it wasn't a real safety need, like he wasn't
sort of like the one locking the door at night,
but it was more of a that psychologically, we feel
like we have to have these attachment needs and they
shape who we are. I am valid because my parents
love me, right, and so the hope that a child
keeps creating around that. And when parents are chronically disappointing,

(26:49):
as many narcissistic parents are. And remember narcissistic parents, they
come in two forms. Either they're over intrusive and they're
constantly in your stuff. You know it wasn't that right
and were then you have these detached narcissistic mom Your
mom was right, So you're detached, detached narcissistic parent who
they will think nothing of not showing up. They'll think

(27:10):
you should just get over it. You're just your secondary thought.
If it had lined up for him and he had
some reason to be in Hong Kong, he would have
shown up at your thing.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
And except the fear of flying, it was paranoia, nothing
to do with me.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
Right, fear of flying. He managed to get to Thailand.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
Right, nothing to do with me. Yet I thought back
then everything to do with me, You feel like it's
your fault, everything is your fault, and then those are
the men I needed.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
That's right, and that that idea of everything your fault,
that's at the center of classical formulations of trauma, like
Judith Hermann's work, who studied children who have gone through trauma,
and then her work is sort of seminal work on
this idea of the child takes responsibility Judith Herman, and
that stays with the person their entire lives. We will

(27:52):
be right back with this conversation. And so, okay, you've
gotten interested in dancing, and your mom has invested the
money for you to take dance classes is cheap, which
is not cheap, and now you're competitively dancing all over
the world, all over the amazing So you are just

(28:13):
really loyal at this obviously, which we now know for sure,
But even at thirteen, well, I was wanting to like,
that's my personality.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
As you know, I'm an addict. I'm a recovering addict.
But you know I'm all or nothing, which is why
you know, my therapist and I have for years now
worked consistently on the gray area because it is very
black or white for me in my mind.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
Have you ever thought of all or nothingness like that?
Almost to be a form of dissociation. It's a way
to not feel pain, right.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
Girl, you're speaking by language, Yes, I just got jills. Absolutely,
I'm really good at productivity. That's my new drug.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
Productivity is actually the It's the drug of the twenty
first century. And everyone thinks you're a hero for engaging,
especially in this.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
Country because I've lived everywhere almost and I swear this
is the only kind that celebrates the hustle, and it's
actually nothing to celebrate because with that comes stress, With
that comes to oh my god. I mean I could
talk about that for hours, but yes, and my mother
was that right. So is that she was raised in
a Filipino family where vulnerability wasn't celebrated. It was a

(29:18):
shamed like you were not supposed to show that side
of you, coming from the Asian culture. And then on
top of it all, she numbed through productivity. I mean
she went from rags to riches and that was her
straight up her by herself hustle.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
I mean again, motion is very good, but I think
also having something that absorbs your mind. That's healthy, something
that absorbs your mind, But using that to numb yourself
and in essence to it unconsciously, that's right, because you're
not processing the stuff you need to process now, and
then you're doomed to keep repeating these trauma cycles because
you're not actually addressed ceiling. Right, So your numbing was

(29:55):
coming through this competitive dancing. Then it was alcohol, and
then it was alcohol. When did you start?

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Dream When I moved here and when I started dancing
on the Stars in two thousand and six, I was
twenty one. I started when I was legal, Okay, legal? Okay,
So you're dancing Advice and my Debutant's Ball when I
was eighteen.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
Okay, so you're you would you dance competitively? Dad's not
in your life, doesn't.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
My stepdad is my dad at the step.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
Okay, okay, you step father. Your stepfather's great, wonderful is So.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
However he did I mean, I'm not saying, I'm just
saying the facts here. He the person who sexually molested me,
came from you know, his side, I guess came. He
brought this man who was taking care of his daughter.
You know, I'm not blaming him by any means. But
you know, I'm just letting you know the fricks.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
But that was also a disruption in our minds. We
we pair things, we learned things through association. So as
much as you you love him and he's been a
good person in your life, he is associated with then
bringing in this really harrowing experience into your life. But
then what you get to eighteen?

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Okay, well you know, thirteen to eighteen, okay, so that's
my virginity at thirteen. You know, ballroom dancing is very intimate.
We're basically dry humping each other, just so that everyone
knows this is how intimate it is. A ballroom industry
reminds me of the entertainment industry. A lot lots of narcissists,
lots of great things as well. It's all about the

(31:18):
you know, unfortunately, the way you look, and it's all
about like it's old school. It is a man's world
in a way. The man leads, the woman follows, and
it's like that in real life behind the ballroom and
all the glitz and glamour of it as well, and
we're all just hustling, competing, fighting for our lives for
a stupid trophy at the end of the day. I mean,
it's not like you win millions of dollars, like if anything,

(31:40):
you're spending Yeahney, which then is why you know, like
when it comes to traveling. You know, my mom obviously
she worked her ass off, you know, and she paid
for everything. But not everyone can do that in the
ballroom world, right, So like you know, these kids are,
you know, sometimes dancing on the streets, and I remember
doing that in Union Square once because my mom and

(32:00):
I got in a fight and she goes, I'm not
paying for your airline ticket to England and I dance
on the street. I mean like two thousand dollars with
my dance partner, like just for the day. So it's possible,
right to do it. But when you're a teenager, the
hustle was already starting for me, and I was going
to England just to quickly mention this Blackpool was like
our version of the Olympics, and that happens every May,

(32:23):
and so you'd have to take political lessons. You have
to like go there and train and we would spend
summers there and my mom couldn't always come with me.
I couldn't always have a chaperone because both parents were
working full time, and you know, my chaperone was my stepsister,
which honestly was not a great chaperone. I had a
chaperone her at some point, but like really, it was
like you are living this world of playing dress up

(32:46):
and working your ass off blood, sweat, and tears, and
you're with this one person who's your dance partner. So
things are abound to happen.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
So it was a dance partner, yeah, okay, And so
that sounds like that was sort of was a normative
in the world, you know, not normal. I also looked
like this when I was thirteen, so okay, well, so okay,
So then you know, you were I was very developed, okay,
and that's young though, thirteen years young and start to
start having sex. And so you go from thirteen to eighteen,

(33:16):
did you do school remotely or did you go back
to school?

Speaker 2 (33:19):
I would go to high school.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
You go to high school and then do the dancing
on the weekends.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
Then I was like living two lives. And then I
had a boyfriend also after you know, that first partner.
Because I had like a total of eight to ten
partners throughout my competitive world and dance partners. Dance partners. Yeah, no, no,
not my sophomore year. I got into two very abusive relationships.
That was when that started.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
That's young again, young for these things. An adult person's
brain can't process an abusive relationship. And after already having
been through really abandonment by your father. Abandon it might
be a strong word for your mother, but she certainly
was not in your life, you know what I'm saying,
as much as as much she could have been, but

(34:00):
she was there, she was supporting you financially, did the
best she could. You were sexually abused, and now you're
thirteen having sex. You're young, and then my parents didn't
you know, And you're in emotionally abusive relationships and you're
far away from it, and.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
I'm looking out for outside validation clearly by joining this ballroom,
competitive world full of lashes, rhinestones, and spray dands.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
So those are your teens and then you turn eighteen, right,
I mean that's sort of the magic adult moment. Did
things shift in terms of you graduated high school?

Speaker 2 (34:31):
I had a debutant's ball. Oh that's my mom's fault. Okay,
she made me Okay, I was very shy growing up
in my teens, but again, dance was my way of communicating,
so that was the one thing I knew I was
good at. I was never good at school. I wasn't
curious and I didn't care, and I was kind of
a loner. So I was with this protective, jealous boyfriend

(34:53):
for most of my high school and with that comes
no friends. And then I also had my dancing life
that I was kind of ashamed of in a weird way.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Protective jealous boyfriend was okay with dance world.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
Didn't know. Dad didn't know, he would know. But then
I would just go back and forth because there was
a certain time where my mom wouldn't let me be
away from it. So I had rules to follow, and
those were the times that i'd go to the dance
studio because I knew he was going to be jealous
and controlling and protective. Yeah, okay, So there were moments
of like that, and then the make up breakup, makeup, breakup,

(35:26):
and then there was another one. And then there was
a dance partner that I danced with who was also abusive.
That was yeah, and then I moved to l.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
Were these physically abusive relationships emotionally abusive, both Okay, so
that's a huge pardon to care.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
And no one knew at that time. I was not
in therapy, but I had a lot of older friends
in the ballroom world who helped me through, you know, yes,
because I didn't feel comfortable enough to go to my parents.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
Right, So all of this is unprocessed. There's now multiple
unprocessed from us at this point. Oh yeah, was your
dad completely out of your life?

Speaker 2 (36:00):
Then my real dad?

Speaker 1 (36:01):
Yeah, you're probably alogical dead in Thailand.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
I think there was a moment there where we stopped
talking for a few years, but it was a constant letdown,
you know, and as I got older, I saw it.
But then I remember, like that Hong Kong trip, I
stopped talking to him for like a few years. That
was a choice that I made. And yeah, so I
mean I wouldn't even consider him to be somebody I
could call and talk to. But I did tell him

(36:25):
everything afterwards after the fact.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Did two of you ever get on a more normalized
relationship together?

Speaker 2 (36:32):
And that's normal. I would visit him, we would, I would,
and I brought my dance partner at the time of
my dance coach. We went and then I saw his
strip clubs really like active happening face to face there
when I was like eighteen nineteen. And then I remember
taking my ex husband there when he was basically on
his deathbed.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah, you and your dad was on his deathbed.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Basically am in there? Okay.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
He stayed in Thailand for the rest of his yes life. Okay,
so now this all you If you're going into adulthood,
you're continuing to dance, but you're also continuing to be
in relationships.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah. Oh I was never single.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
Okay, you were, Oh, you were never single, So talk
about that now.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
This is the longest I've ever been single. Oh for
a year and a half almost, all right, Yeah, and
I choose to date myself right now, I really do
not want to date anybody still, Okay.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
So then if you were never single, what was that?

Speaker 2 (37:21):
Like so much energy emotionally, like an emotional rollercoaster, but
I was addicted to Like, without it, I felt like
my life was boring and stagnant. Though that's my goal
now to be boring but not boring, you know what
I mean. Like that feeling of just being okay and
at peace and at ease was something that I was
not necessarily craving because I labeled it as boring and

(37:42):
you're not in love. Then for me, being in love
was the drama that you see on TV.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
That's trauma bonding. Yeah, that's right there, that's trauma bonding.
The chaos becomes conflated with love. And so getting into
a relationship that doesn't have the highs and lows and
the good days and the bad days and all of that.
When it's sort of steady, people will say, well, that's
a friendship or that's not love, or I'm not feeling it.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Mom and stepdad, and I was like, oh, they're definitely
bored with each other, but really, no, that's just a
healthy I wish I would have seen that as a
little girl.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
I'm just curious about this because you were in so
many relationships, one after the other after the other. Was
there a commonality between all of these people that they
were all abusive? That was one? Okay, there you go.
Not I was hoping you'd say they all had brown eyes,
but okay, so the commonality.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
They were all most of them were narcissists, and the
ones that weren't I wasn't that into.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
Okay, So let me ask you this then, because It's
interesting when you've had a life where you've had multiple
relationships within validating toxic, narcissistic people. What attracted you to
these people? I kind of think I know the answer,
but I never want to present.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
One of them reminded me of my father.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
Okay, well there you go.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
It is one hundred percent true from either the way
they look or and the personality traits. I've been cheated
on multiple times and knew about it, and it was
just a little tiny version of Steve Burke.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
When did you have the insight that all of these
men that you've dated over the years somehow reminded you
of your father?

Speaker 2 (39:11):
So this was just maybe five six years ago, Oh recently.
So I have two therapists. I have a Semitic and
then I have a traditional one, doctor Wexler now for
a decade every week and ten years ago so I
was still drinking. So when she would try and talk
to me about I just she told me I wasn't
having it. So none of it.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
So in those early years, you were just going from
man after man who signed The quality of them resembled
your absolutely the same chaos, betrayals, all of that over and.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Like clockwork, yeah, okay, yeah, everything.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
It must have been hard there to start stop so
many relationships that takes a toll on you too, and
it kind of makes it sort of concrete that this
is just how it is.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Well, I don't know, so this is what it was.
I could tell my body that when it was a
nice guy, I was disgusted by them. Discussed literally so discussed,
which just shows you how much I really loved myself,
which was not a lot. Right, So because I didn't
know that, I didn't know that, it was very foreign
to me. The only thing that felt like home was
these abusive whether it be emotionally being gas lit, and

(40:14):
that's what I was attracting, and that's what got me going.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
Okay, so let's go back a little too to what
was happening then. Yeah, when the abuse was happening in
the relationship, I didn't like.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
The physical abuses. Okay, I just want to be clear
with anyone listening. Obviously it's not something that I wanted.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
No, no, no, no no. But when let's use the emotional abuse,
because that's what's so common narcissistic relationships. When the emotionally
abusive moments were happening, which I'm guessing were things like
dismissiveness and criticism and mom jealousy and validation, jealousy, control, manipulation, gas, Like, yes,
what was the story you were telling yourself at those times?

Speaker 2 (40:47):
Oh my god, I don't think I was even aware
back then. I don't think I was having that dialogue.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
So it was almost like this is just a relationship.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
I mean, I watched Pretty Woman when I was too young, obviously,
but my nanny, who didn't speak English, she watched three movies.
Well Dynasty wasn't a movie, but Dynasty, and I was
watching this with her Pretty Woman and sound of Music.
Sound of Music's more like it, but at like between
ages three and six, like I shouldn't be trying to
look like Julia Roberts, like an undressed like a hooker,

(41:14):
and say, Cheryl, you know it was interesting. I started
this YouTube channel during the pandemic and I went through
all my mom's VHS tapes. For those of you that
don't know what a VHS tape is, look it up.
And I saw myself. This was insane, Okay. I saw
my molester there having like Thanksgiving dinner with all of us,

(41:34):
and how avoid and how nobody was paying any attention to,
like how creepy this man was hovering over me, and
you know the kids there. And then on top of
it all, I saw myself cut to another scene Do
I look? Pretty? Do I look? And I was like,
oh my, this poor child and that was me. And
I can tell that I was being influenced. And I

(41:55):
do have to tell you that pretty Woman. I can
recite it like I wrote the script, and it's just
not a.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
Pretty woman is not okay. And that's maybe one day
we'll do an episode on all the reasons pretty Woman
is not okay.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
I seriously though, I still love it, but it's not
okay at that age.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Right, right, I don't know that it's okay at any
age really to actually, you know, I mean when you
really think about it, right, I think they tried to
make it that what was the feminist line? Like one
day the prince rescued her, but she rescued him first.
I'm like, oh no, honey, it's too late for that line.
I think we have just we have done too many
problematic things. You are not cleaning this film up with
one little rescue line. So but I do think though

(42:35):
that what you do bring to is this the sexualization.
Say you were sexualized as a child and this wasn't
being seen. I mean, I think that that is something
we see in any of these sort of what we
could call traumatogenic environments, especially where sexual abuse is happening,
where it is this unawareness and this disconnection from the

(42:56):
experience of the children, from the dynamics within the room.
Everyone sort of so caught up in their own thing
and their own shick and all of that. It was
real hard for me to watch this.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
There was so many emotions going through my body from anger, resentment.
I wanted to reach through the VHS tape the TV
screw of my laptop and just be like shake everybody,
like what don't you see it? This was an interesting thing.
I don't know if I recommend it, because if you
do do this, I have somebody with you that you trust.
Because it was very It was like reliving it, but
then it was healing mm hmmm, all at the same time.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
Well, I think it can be, because I think that
these things can be. You can see it, you can
understand what the influences where you could understand. You were
too young to see it. You didn't make sense of
that kind of a storyline, how it gets confused in
a child's mind. So now you're going through this sort
of series of bad relationships. They're beginning and they're ending.
When these relationships would end, who was ending them there?

Speaker 2 (43:48):
Well, there's lots of ending and coming back together because
I loved the reuniting.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
So sometimes it would be the same guy for a back.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Especially this high school one.
It was like and I mean to the point where
he was like stalking me and I was like, uh,
but I always had somebody ready for me to pick
up the pieces, you know what I mean. Gale from relationship,
I'm not kidding. I went from relationship to relationship. So
I went from like this high school boyfriend straight to
my last partner. There was never really a huge gap

(44:14):
of transition for me, like right in a way spaced
it out or I didn't have the strength to leave
somebody until I had somebody else lined up. And that's
that was the pattern.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
So the relationships became a place of soothing. They became
right that you know, more of the numbing that you
have no matter what, because you didn't have to simply
be with yourself, right, That's what there from doing that,
so I have a very full picture here. Okay, the
relationships continue in this cycle. Stop, start, they come, they go, chaos, abuse,

(44:46):
gas lighting. You're not seeing it. There's no part of
you saying what am I doing? Okay? And that's very common, Yeah,
very very common. There's nothing unusual about that.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Well, the worst was like those silent treatments. Oh my god,
that would kill me to the point where I actually
it was interesting those like depending on how long the
silent treatment went on, like if it was from my
dance partner, who like I was there in New York
with then moved from the barrier to New York, and
I remember I never forget, like over Thanksgiving it was
like he was gaslighting me and he wouldn't talk to

(45:17):
me and didn't talk to me for like a week,
and I would call my mom and cry and tell her.
But when it comes to any other type of abuse
like physical or mental, I never called my mom. It
was just realizing this as I'm talking to you. Interesting,
why do you think that was? Why do you think
that that because it's silent treatment, that was like more
painful than anything.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
Because that was an abandonment.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
Oh of course that was what my dad did.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
It was the loss of engaging.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah, I felt so alone. Yeah, I felt very I
felt abandoned, period, point blank. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
You know, the silent treatment is it's a common gambit
in narcissistic relationships, especially once they realize it works. Right,
It's very passive, aggressive, And what I'm about to say
is going to sound very cynical even, I mean, it's
just even I'm surprised by the cynical. But they get
a lot of bang for their buck on them, right,
for no effort. And once they learn it works, they're

(46:07):
going to keep doing it right because they're.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
Like, oh, meaning like I'm effected.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
You're getting a rise out of the other person's does
that make sense?

Speaker 2 (46:14):
Yes? And control them. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
And now the silent treatment isn't punitive for everyone, but
for most anyone who has even a secure attachment, it's uncomfortable.
But if you have an anxious attachment, it is like
flaying a person alive. Yeah, because it's the ultimate. It's
worse than abandonment because it is true abandonment. They're not
communicating with you, They've not used to exist, right, that's

(46:37):
the ultimate fear.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Vers is when you're working with the person too, and
then you're living in like a little box in Harlem
and the only door separating the two of you is
a bathroom door. And then wow, it was powerful and
it got me every time, like I felt paralyzed. I
don't think I've ever felt that much. I think pain
or paralyzation since that time.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
Being stuck, being frozen, can't That actually is a sympathetic
nervous system response. Right when we think of how you
know the sympathetic nervous system is an animal, any mammal,
it's in a human being, and it's fight, flight, freeze,
and fawn. Those are the four.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
Eraphist that I'm addicted that I only know those feelings
so still to this day.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
Well, it's a response when you think something catastrophics happening, right,
not right or not. But see, the thing is the
silent treatment. When we think about the sympathetic nervous system,
it's the same reason why a zebra is able to
run away from a lion. Right, everything gets mobilized, All
systems shut down except the system that are going to
make that zebra's legs move as fast as can be

(47:39):
away from the lion. Once they're out of harm's way,
they go right back to parasympathetic functioning and they graze,
just chill. Right, So, a lion chasing the zebra is
a true mortal threat. A person giving you the silent
treatment is actually not a mortal threast, but your brain
interprets it that way. But when the you keep turning

(48:00):
the sympathetic nervous system on and off, on and off, freeze, freeze, freeze, freeze,
there's all this weird in the box.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
Amen, sister, Amen, That's what it is.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
And to wear and tear. It's not as simple as
like I'll just keep fight, fighting and freezing. No no, no, no, no,
you don't want there's an opportunity to cause there.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
So is there a way now to get a little
deeper on this? Is there a way to be addicted
to it?

Speaker 1 (48:22):
To those responses? I don't know that you were addicted
to the sympathetic.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
Response, like I only know that.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
I always use the word addiction very carefully when it
comes to sort of these relational cycles, because it turns
the person being harmed into an active actor participants.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (48:43):
And and so I always steer away from that because
I think that languaging has been used to use a
disease model to capture a person who's going through psychological manipulation.
So that's but it's also not putting survivors in a
passive role. But you only knew what you knew, and
for you, the relief of tension that would come when

(49:06):
the person would come back around was still the fantasy
you held around the father, who was not going to leave,
who was going to show up, who's going to come
to Hong Kong, who was going to be there, who
was going to be a decent human being at some
level when you needed him to be a father? That
men could be safe, but your templates for men across
the board were unsafe. And even though you loved and

(49:26):
cared about your stepfather, he brought danger into your life unwittingly.
So you see what I'm saying. So it's like all
of that became danger and so yes, then and every
man and every man behaved in a way that was dangerous,
that represented that right, and so the hypothesis kept coming.
And then the safe men were disgusting, so you weren't
interacting with them, right, it's not crazy, It actually kind

(49:49):
of makes sense.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
No, it's not right, yeah, no, totally.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
It does.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
It helps with feeling more compassionate towards myself.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
So you said you haven't been in a relationship for
a year and a half, Well, yes, divorce, okay's been single.
So you got married. May I ask how long you
were married? For?

Speaker 2 (50:04):
Two years?

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Two years? Okay? And how long were you together before
the marriage?

Speaker 2 (50:08):
So we were together in the beginning when I first
moved to LA I would say two thousand and seven,
for a couple of years, broke up for ten years,
reunited for a year and a half, got married.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Okay, all right, so it was on and out relationship
and then you got married.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Did you also find yourself repeating some of your same
patterns in this relationship?

Speaker 2 (50:26):
Okay, I'm not saying anything about that person, but yes,
what you're asking about the similar patterns. Yes, absolutely, for sure.
They looked very.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Much alike your father and this person.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
So, I mean he would agree to if you heard this.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
So, so you have not had a relationship with an
adult man, an intimate romantic relationship with an adult man
that was ever healthy at this point. No, no, okay,
all right, So do you have hope that you can yes,
about to get myself healthy. Okay, yeah, got it all right.
So it's not as though you've ruled that out, because Cheryl,
there's people in your position will sometimes say I'm out,

(50:59):
I fold, this is not my game, and then I'm
not doing it. I'm going to be alone forever.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
Oh well, I can only live right now, right like
I don't. I can't tell the future. However, I love
to get married again, but less this is another thing.
I have to work on it therapy. I go from
like zero to a thousand, So of course I still
believe in it. I mean, I don't know if I
know the definition of a perfect relationship is, but I
know that I will continue the pattern if I don't

(51:24):
change myself.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
So let me ask you this, what do you think
a healthy relationship looks like two individuals?

Speaker 2 (51:30):
That's very important because I thought that, uh, we were
one here. Notebook doesn't help, so they should take that
off the fucking sorry excuse me.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
Oh no, you can say, talk away the notebook. You
mean the movie?

Speaker 2 (51:44):
The movie needs to go away? All these movies about love.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
We can need movies?

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Or is it dysfunctional? I think dysfunction is normal.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
So he was really stocky in the beginning of the
relationship the notebook, Yeah, I heard that. You think like
he jumped, he climbed up the ferris wheel, you see.
Like I was like boundary violation. She's she's saying no.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
No, yes. I was like, why does that happen to me? No?

Speaker 1 (52:13):
No, no, Stocky, Stocky, Stocky, And they've romanticized, and like,
I'm going to keep coming by, and I'm going to
keep coming by, and you're about to braise someone else.
I'm going to keep coming about to watch it again
by keep coming by. I really should have healthy movie night.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
No, really, you should do like a.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
Screening and we'll come together and say, can we talk
about why that was not helping?

Speaker 2 (52:33):
No, that was so attachment avoided attachment and psychopathic personality traits, Like,
that's definitely what you should do.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Well, I think what happens is it's an ends justify
the means kind of thing, like oh, they were old
together and they had the kids and they had this
and then you know whatever, the health and the shower
of sex and the swans and the water, But ahead
of all of that was the stocky fair behavior. Right,
she had a terrible mother.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
That's what I seriously I mean, it would get me
every time that stockery behavior, like.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Okay, so that was a note just no stalking. Some
clims of Ferris Wale don't date that.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
It actually reminds me of how I basically in a
weird way, the stocking from my ex was actually enticing.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Okay, so it's good. And here's the thing. I think
it's so important you say that out loud, righty, because
there's absolutely no shame in saying that, because you're saying, like,
this was love, that was your definition of love, because
you know what it was. It was unmistakable, right. So
it's like a volume button. If something's that volume ninety,
you're gonna hear it, right, whereas anything more subtle that

(53:43):
that's oh I don't know about that. But like, because
of that, not being able to get that consistently, especially
from your father, there was no ambiguity. Stalking is like, oh,
you're into me, right, So it becomes this massive over correction.
And so it's really important that you say that. You
and I think for people to say, well, I don't

(54:03):
want to say that entice me because then that makes
me look bad. No, it doesn't. No, it helps you
understand what was happening, and then the work becomes you know, unravel, Yeah, unpacking.
Why that would have been enticing because many many people
feel like they're like they must feel like they're crazy, honestly, Well, no,

(54:25):
what a lot of people feel is that. And I
get this is doctor Romney, Are you kidding me? Like
I feel guilty, I feel dirty. I liked love bombing.
I'm like, love bombing's great. If you could find a
respectful that's the whole full court press. Baby, you're my everything, presence,
dinners out take, you know, showing up a lot, texting
you twenty five times a day. I can't stop thinking

(54:46):
about you, right right, And so yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
I'm not My love language is not gifts, but it's definitely.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
You know what I mean, the intensities that the flowers
the night out gotten me every time. Yep. And so
somebody said, well, is there ever healthy love bombing? And
I mean, if you could find a person in text
who is nice, kind, respectful, all that disgusting stuff, right right,
and don't love that bombing you tend they tend not

(55:14):
to go together. Like a healthier person is going to
have a little bit more of a like trust pace, right.
So let's talk about the healthy relationships. Okay, so you've
wonly given me two individuals.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
Two individuals. Okay, Trust for me is accountability. I've realized
this recently that I can even have friends who don't
hold themselves accountable. It's great, okay, supporting each other obviously
as someone who is not jealous in that sense of
your career or success, very secure attachment would be great.
Wanting to evolve constantly, learn, grow, and patience and kind.

(55:52):
Cute would help. I'm kidding, that's fine. And successful their
own life. Successful meaning not just like the amount of
money they have in their bank account, but successful like
the confidence that they have from within. Yeah. Okay, so listener,
a good listener.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
Great, Great, I.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
Mean I can go on all day.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
These are the things that make a healthy relationship. Two individuals,
and by that I understand what you mean. Not two
people are so and men, not like one. Yeah, so
two people. There's a sense of separateness, but you know.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
All in like, there's no forty fifty in my eyes.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
Right, trust, there's trust, there's accountability. If the two people
support each other, there's a sense of safety, growth, orientation,
patient kind that you find them cute, these are things
that describe a healthy person. Some of this could asking
about relationship. What makes a healthy relationships?

Speaker 2 (56:45):
I think really though, for me, I think just because
I only can talk based off my experience. But it
is allowing for the other person to be their own person. Okay, right,
that is a big thing for mer. I tend to
get very consumed.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
Got it. Okay, so I got that.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
It's a person or a job. Right? Communication? Key?

Speaker 1 (57:05):
What does communication mean to you?

Speaker 2 (57:08):
Well? Responsive communication would help, meaning like, I'm also this weird,
not weird. I'm very like to the second, you know,
with time and so when someone says they're going to
be there and they're not there at that time, with
no phone call saying that they're going to be late,
it really urks me. So then my brain starts to think,

(57:28):
oh my god, they're cheating. Oh my god, like I
fall down this rabbit hole.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
Oh so it's shit, which could and it's interesting you
go there because you could take it. It's like they're
they're actually not respectful of a standard that I put out.
Oh no, no, no, no, which is what they're doing. And
that is enough for it to be a problem. Yes, right,
that's enough for it to be a problem. Okay, so
I'm hearing so far that you've got here. Now we're

(57:52):
going to talk about a fancy word, but it's a
good fancy word. There's a term out there called inter subjectivity.
It's used by a guy named Dan Jaw who's a therapist,
just fantastic work in narcissistic relationships. But the concept of
intersubjectivity is the idea that two people can be in
a relationship and have their own experience and perceptions and

(58:14):
simultaneously also recognize that the other person is having their
own experience and perceptions.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
Right.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
So that's kind of the opposite of gaslighting. Right. So
simplest example, you go out to dinner with somebody and
he says this was absolutely terrible, and you're like, oh
my gosh, this was the best lasagna I've ever had.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
Two different things, right, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
And you don't say to him, so you're wrong, there's
no way you're positive, or he couldn't turn to say
there's no way your lasagna was good because my meal
was bad. That would be in a great example of
their intersubjective. It's an overly simple example, but it's that
capacity to do that that's a core pillar here. And
what you're talking about also though, is respecting boundaries and

(58:57):
expecting boundaries.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
And also I think transparency it is very important.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
Okay, yeah, right, and that goes back to the trustingnibilities
and so. But a lot of the stuff you're laying
out here, interestingly, Cheryl, is very much related to stuff
like trust boundaries.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
I think it's my number one right.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
It's understandable because that's all going back to that secure
base kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
Safety is everything to people who've been through trauma.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
Not to everybody.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
I think that for everybody in general, they already have
that internalized sense of it, so they sort of feel that.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
They expect that that is.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
There's a risk in that too, though, because you know,
if something terrible happens to them, they may go through
the world as though it's a little bit safer. I'll
put it this way to you. I am a trauma
survivor too, not nearly at the level you have, but
definitely a trauma survivor, and I definitely go through work
a little bit like military. You know, yes, hypervigilance, supervigilant.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
No, it's never it's not a good I mean, if
you're a label.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
It's not good.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
I am so, and I don't. I think the ballroom
community the competitive because we dance all in the dance
floor together. So my hypervigilance is quite scary.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
What you mean by scary because that to me, it's
a normal trauma response.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
But I'm too vigilant to where like it's hard for
me and I don't know if there's such a thing,
but like I am too aware of my well.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
It's exhausting. Paranoia almost well, I think that it's exhausting
if it's paranoia, if you think it's resulting in people
coming at you or harming you, I used to Okay,
so that's come down a little bit a lot of it.
Then it's the idea is that, But hypervigilance is exhausting.
It is so right you almost want to view it
as when you have too many apps and stuff open
on your phone, your phone's running slow. That's what hypervigilance does.

(01:00:35):
It just slows you down and it completely depletes your
bandwidth because you're like, and there's a thing over there,
and there's a sound over there, and there's a this,
and there's a that, and it SAPs our capacity to
be mindful right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
And since my sobriety it's been even stronger.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
My conversation will continue after this break, so that talk
about your journey of sobriety, because you had talked about
how you are sober. So around twenty one year, I
did first drink, and then what happened.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
And then I used it. When I first started drinking,
it was mainly to calm my anxiety down from paparazzi.
It was pretty bad when I first came here in
two thousand and six. My dance partner, just to give
you some perspective, here was Nicko Lachet's little brother, Drew Liche.
This is during the height of him and Jessica Simpson's course.
So I come here from New York at the time,

(01:01:30):
and I had no voice, like, I had no opinion,
didn't know what my favorite color was, and then all
of a sudden, people wanting to ask me a question
when I was so used to taking the back seat
and being a follower not a leader. Was an adjustment.
So my anxiety was through the roof, though I couldn't
even put words to it at that moment. So alcohol helped,
but I was a functioning alcoholic, so no one knew

(01:01:53):
that I was even I mean, I was normal in
their eyes.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
So you didn't have impairments at work. It's not like
you miss rehearsals or never shows or anything like that. Okay, So,
but it was the drinking got out of control.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
It got out of control to the point where I
was drinking seven days a week. Now, it never when
people ask me what my rock bottom is, It's almost
like my rock bottom was the fact that I was
at my height of success when I was drinking, and
that I never really my rock bottom if you were
to think about it now for me, at least as
a sober person trying to stay sober one day at
a time. If I think back, like when big things happen,

(01:02:26):
like my divorce or you know, leaving Dancing with the Stars,
when something mildly trauma traumatic, I guess because I don't
know if you want to, I don't know if you
don't measure it. But if anything traumatic like that, or
anything that changes in my life that's drastic, I do
at times think about drinking, and then I think about,
you know what, fuck it. I was the most successful

(01:02:47):
when I was drinking anyway, so that to me is
a rock bottom. It's not necessarily checking into rehab.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
Right, right, So do you got sober on your own?
You did twell step, Yes, I'm still. I'm still very much.
I do have a sponsor. And to say it's not
a battle it would be a lie. But I quit
basically for vanity reasons, because I started as soon as
my dad died. I came home, had a drink and
I just I busted out into hives. And this was

(01:03:17):
right before my engagement party. And so I decided to
stop because of vanity reasons. Okay, well any important storm,
I would guess though those hives were probably famous. Yes, right,
you co located them with the alcohol, so my body
whatever it is, Yes, yes, I think that reality things
were happening at the same time.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Yeah, and I didn't know how to feel it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
So now you have to cope without the alcohol. You've
taken one form of numbing away, but you've acknowledged that
another form of numbing is the You've also taken two
forms of numbing away, the chaotic relationships and the men
and the alcohol. You've now turned to work. Yeah, and
you know and that you know or staying busy. That
can be a tricky pattern. But now you've been single

(01:03:58):
for a year and a half.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
I tell people that people who are coming out of
narcissistic relationship, and in you, your case has been a
series of many narcissistic relationships, right is that I tell them?
I tell me you got to do doctor Romney's twelve
month detalks. And by that, I mean you got to
spend a year. Can it be more all alone? It
can be absolutely more than twelve months. And people say,
what are you about? What's the twelve months of it all?

(01:04:19):
And I said, in that year, you have to encounter
every single anniversary, date, thing, issue, street, corner, restaurant, you
fought alone? Right and so? And holidays are tough for people, right, Holidays, birthdays,
dates that something can happened in your relationship that had
some meaning, and press take them all back, and you

(01:04:41):
need a year. A lot can.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Happen in a year. It is more than a year.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
And I think more than a year is into bad thing.
But a minimum of year. And people are saying, are
you kidding me? A year? And I said I know
that too.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
I was like, if you told me this years ago,
I'd be like, I'm not talking to you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
No, And a lot of people have said that, like
saying no sex, no touch. I'm like, yep, and you will.
I mean, even if it's a way of finding self,
embrace whatever that looks like to you. But that coming
back to yourself because healing from narcissistic abuse, the narcissistic relationships,
the key pillar of that is coming into yourself, allowing

(01:05:19):
yourself to be an individual outside of the shadows of normal.
What I'm doing not only absolutely normal. I'm signing off
on it, and I don't sign off on much, so
it's yes, I mean, it is that twelves.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
I'm not even interested.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
Good like I don't because that's great.

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
Is it sixty years then since I've dated maybe it's
a total of six to seven narcissism.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
Yeah, no, no, you might. You might need longer than
you my dear, after all, I'm therapist, But it's it's
a coming back into oneself. And I don't believe a
person can go on that journey with somebody else. Right,
I say to people, you don't even know what thermostat
setting you like, because it was always what they wanted. Right,
You don't know, you don't know a favorite color, I

(01:06:01):
don't know anything. So you need to go out there
and have all that. What pizza toppings do you like?
Do you even like pizza? Do you want the thermostat
at sixty eight or sixty two or seventy five? What
kinds of movies do you like?

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
You know what's actually I'm the part of myself. I
can answer all your questions.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
See that's great. And a lot of folks will say
they'll struggle, they'll say, I know what that is, but well,
and they'll recognize they're still using the narcissistic person as
a frame of reference. So that's really what coming out
of it is.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
Like I said, we could just do a ten parter
to this. This could be a whole season.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
Just Cheryl and doctor Romeny. Great, I'll do that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
Yeah, that's great, exactly, super No, But this is all
very helpful. I love I just love this all. I
love it. Though it's hard to hear sometimes, but it
just helps.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
What was the hardest thing you learned about narcissistic relationships
that you had to take in that was necessary for
you to push through your healing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
I think what was hard for me, first of all
was to wrap my head around the fact that I
was only attracted to them. However, it helps to continue
to educate myself by, for example, listening to your podcast
and doing more research, and it helps to then find
the compassion because when you really hear repeatedly over and

(01:07:16):
over again that it has something to do with the survivor,
you can breathe. It takes a load off.

Speaker 1 (01:07:20):
Yeah, and I'm actually going to push back on this idea.
You say, well, I've always been attracted to narcissists. I
don't actually think that's true. I think that that was
my true. You were attempting to work through a pattern. Right,
If you're to bring people down to some brass tacks,
especially trauma survivors, it's the seeking not only of safety,

(01:07:41):
but of attachment and of love and of connection. Right.
What you were trying to do was healthy. You were
trying to bring connection into your life, love, attachment, all
of that. Your template was skewo and damage and harmed

(01:08:03):
by trauma right at a young age, at a young age.
And so then what ends up happening is is that
there is a the up and down and the chaos
of those relationships. Is you don't you're not registering them
as a problem, right, Right, And keep in mind to Cheryl,
I think one of the challenges of narcissistic relationships is

(01:08:23):
it's not terrible every day. The good days were really good, really.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
Good, Yeah, And that's what I would hold on to, right.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
And you'd hold on to that and then into huge narratives.
Can that's why the make up and break up with
some right obviously, then you got to have it all
again and have it all again. And so I think
that this idea of the narcissistic person is having horns
and a forked tail and all of that is nonsense.
These are incredibly charming, charismatic, fun interesting period is definitely yeah.

(01:08:53):
I mean that's that's They're very compelling, and so be
hard on anyone to be hard on themselves for saying
I was drawn to someone who's really interesting, smart and compelling.
That's a normal want. It's the also giving yourself permission
to say that might have all been good, but this
is not healthy. So I got to disengage from that.
For you, that disengagement was never going to happen, because

(01:09:15):
that was still working through this other kind of a cycle.
Doctor Jennifer Fry, she talks about this thing called betrayal
blindness and how when we're being betrayed. You don't see it,
you don't acknowledge it, you almost don't register it. And
when you don't do that, the relationship can continue.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
Right, And is it because you're avoiding to see it
or you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
Just don't see it's not safe to see it. It
means you're not going to be able to maintain attachment,
connection and love, like you'll lose something too important. Right,
You've had to learn to do that since you were
so small, Right, seeing that having sex through a door,
having been abused, and in fact, interestingly in that case,
you were willing to acknowledge what it was, which was

(01:09:57):
actually quite remarkable. But you know, in the sense of
you testified in that case because not everyone you know,
but yes, not everyone testified. But then in these other
relationships in adulthood, you know, treating me badly, cheating on me,
whatever they're doing, it's like whosh. In fact, you use
this beautiful analogy, but just whoshes away. And when it
wishes away, you can stay in the relationship. But the

(01:10:18):
problem is that comes with an opportunity cost, as you
kind of just whishing all this and rubbing all that
stuff away, like that's not a thing or no, that's
a thing.

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
You just like being blind, being literally what she calls.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
Betrayal blind, that's how she calls it, but.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
She refers to it as it away, but like protecting.

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
Those betrayals, like okay, yeah, we're good, we're good, right.
The problem is is that we're good, it's not really
because this it's all piling up, and as it piles up,
you're feeling anxious, you're feeling sad, you're feeling a sense
of despair, you're drinking, you're feeling worthless. So all this
unhealthy stuff is coming up behind it, but you keep

(01:10:57):
having that not acknowledging, not acknowledging, not acknowledg JA And
then one day you acknowledge in each of those relationships.
So six seven relationships, something happened and like you said,
you'd quickly pivot into a new relationship, but something ended it.
Maybe you kind of saw it, but it seems like now,
after all you've been through being in therapy, yeah, you

(01:11:17):
are now able to see, oh that person cheated on me,
that person mistreated me.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
And you can't see it, yes, right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:24):
And then you can see it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:26):
No, And but it was interesting the very first physical
abusive relationship was pretty bad that and then it was
interesting how I was blind to seeing like the welts
on my legs and that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
You know, I'm not acknowledged, I'm not processing it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
But now I'm so sensitive to any type of emotional
abuse and let alone, wouldn't they person wouldn't even dare
to touch me. But I maybe it's an overreaction, but
I don't think it is. It's just, you know, for me,
it's a boundary that you just don't cross, and that's great,
and whether whatever, and right away it's a red flag.

(01:12:01):
So then I leave like it's just like you're done
in two seconds.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
So the last few questions, Sure, okay, you've worked on
your mental health, you've worked through a lot of your trauma,
you're maintaining sobriety. How is all of that going for you,
especially in light of your you've gone through some major
relationship changes and you know, and leaving Dancing with the Stars,
these are two big changes for you. Yes, okay, So

(01:12:27):
how do you balance you know, all of the healing
against these two major transitions.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
I don't think it's separate, Okay, I think that the
reason why I did leave both situations you just mentioned
is because of the fact that I'm healing, and I
think that it works hand in hand. Yes it does,
but it's scary as shit. And I'm not going to
say that my sobriety has been easy and that I'm healed,
because it's it's going to be a lifelong battle and

(01:12:53):
amazingness sometimes and not so amazing sometimes, and I just
my job is just to take this life one day
at a time.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
Well, it is a lifelong battle, and I think that
that's the reality of it, that there will be those
dark knights of the city. It's not a battle, I
guess because the journey, it's a process.

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
It is and it's like it's heaviest shit and it's exhausting,
But there's more days of not feeling like that than
if I were just a wing it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
Yeah life, Yeah, that's great, I mean, and that's progress.
And now what I hear that's so promising is that
you acknowledge what happened. Right, if we talk to you
like you said nine years ago, you wouldn't even have
been like what and.

Speaker 2 (01:13:30):
And they've been defensive about everything right.

Speaker 1 (01:13:33):
And then, and that just simply means you weren't in
that moment of readiness, just like you had with your therapist,
she'd bring it up. You're like, no, thank you, And
for any of us who are therapist like, okay, not.
I think there's certain things I'm still not ready to
talk about and you'll likely right. You know, you'll get there.
So how do you feel about getting into a new relationship?
Not not okay. So that's me, myself and my friends,
and you're dark. I love that, okay, and.

Speaker 2 (01:13:54):
I am just currently. Look, there's moments of feeling lonely,
but I'm more alone than lonely. I'm not lonely. That's
a big I actually crave being alone now, and I
guess I'm not for small talk anymore. Like there's a
lot of things that I'm learning about myself becomes a
very small, tiny little group of people. Great. Since I

(01:14:14):
got sober, my whole everything's changed. But also as hard
as I have been curious to work, a lot's changed.
And I'm proud of myself and I don't think I
could have ever said that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:24):
Which is great because I think that what you're saying, though,
is that you're able to in being alone you feel safe,
and that's.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
A big feeling.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
Yes, right, and there was a time when you didn't
feel sw when you were alone. That's a huge sort
of a transitional Yeah, you know, so you're right, which
is really really great. You're also talking about discernment. You
have a small group of friends. That is about discernment
that not anyone can get through the gate. Yeah, and
that's a big deal for survivors.

Speaker 2 (01:14:50):
Right, boundaries in general.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
Yes, boundaries jail. But say that again. You said you're
proud of yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
No, I am really proud of myself. I love myself
like I actually do. And the more I continue to
make these decisions, whether they be big, smaller, or however
you want to measure it, it's it had to be
done in order for me to continue on this path
of healing. Because if I continued in any type of
relationship or workplace with feeling like I'm not being respected

(01:15:19):
or treated the way I should be, I'm leaving.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
Which is again we're back to discernment, which is a
huge part of healing from these relationships. And I have
to say, listen, nobody else can do sixth grade for you. Right,
you got to go through the pain of all of
algebra and whatever you've got to do in sixth grade.
It's the same thing with this. I think that when
a person can get through this, they can see it.
They have the supports, they have therapy, they have friends,

(01:15:43):
they have activities that they love to do. I love
to dimond pain, you know, perfect diamond pain or diamond painting,
arts and crafts, which is great. You have your pup,
you have all those things. Is all I have to
tell you. One thing I don't know that I'm going
to ever be to do is my fantasy has always
been I could help people get ahead of it. I

(01:16:03):
could teach people how to identify these patterns and stop
them from ever getting into the first place. I'm not
seeing that happen. You know, most people say, anyone who
hasn't been through it, they are no interest in what
I have to say. And I hate to say it,
but I'm like, everybody's gonna go's gonna come by this
bus stop soon enough, so don't you worry about that?
And you don't. Yeah, it's almost like telling a teenager,

(01:16:27):
don't do this, don't do this. You have to just
hope that I call it sort of harm reduction. At least,
How can we make your fall as soft as possible,
because you're going to fall, kind of going to make
them a stair so you know it's white.

Speaker 2 (01:16:39):
Yeah, it's gonna be you're falling. Your story is.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
Amazing because you've been through it and you are so
self reflective on what happened and how it happened and
even the parts of it that were enticing, and you
own it and you know you've come to this place.
I don't think you could come to this place without
in some ways sat walking through some of these steps.

Speaker 2 (01:17:02):
And this is actually a really big deal. I don't cry,
but like I'm trying just to feel and so thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
It's amazing. You don't know how many people need to
hear this, because it's really it's it's remarkable when I
hear someone come all the way you came.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
So thank you for everything you do.

Speaker 1 (01:17:19):
Well, I'm so happy, op I think I'll touch more
cynical than darling Oprah, but I think that you know what,
we need a cynical Oprah in that's the world order.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
I mean, Asian.

Speaker 1 (01:17:36):
We got it. And you know what, there's more people
in Asia than anywhere else, so we've got the viewers.
That's what I'm your sister, and you are too, and
I can't dance a step, so maybe one day you
can teach me. I will, that's right, and then I
can keep teaching you about as free sessions.

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
We're good tea any day.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
Here are my takeaways from my conversation with Cheryl. First,
people often think that finding love is the ultimate sign
of success and healing. However, for many people, it actually
may be a period of solitude. Cheryl's story shows us
that getting to know who you are outside of a

(01:18:16):
relationship is the true summit of healing. Your process might
not look like everyone else's, and that's okay. In our
next takeaway, Cheryl talked about stalking being enticing. Now, what
she's calling stalking may be that obsessive, intrusive, unrelenting interest,

(01:18:37):
the constant checking in, or the incessant need to pull
someone back into a relationship. Cheryl's feelings are common. As
a psychologist, I've seen many people shamed for admitting that
they found this behavior appealing. For people like Cheryl who
have acknowledged attachment issues, this intense interest can feel like

(01:18:58):
an antidote to the fear of a band and create
a false sense of security. But unfortunately will lead to
a very unhealthy and toxic relationship. In this next takeaway,
Cheryl found that understanding attachment styles was very helpful. Understanding
attachment behaviors means going back to early childhood. Remember, children

(01:19:23):
need attachment to survive, but if there are early disruptions
in these attachments that will have implications for our adult relationships.
There are believed to be four types of adult attachment styles.
The first is secure. These are folks who are able

(01:19:43):
to make mutual, safe, and sustained relationships, are not preoccupied
with being abandoned or with rejection while they are in
relationships and are comfortable with closeness. The second is the
avoidant attachment style, which looks like someone who has not
comfort with being or getting close and may feel that
they don't need their partner. People with this attachment style

(01:20:07):
may pull away when people try to get close. With
the third style the anxious attachment style. This is someone
who feels insecure about close relationships even as they want
these relationships. There can be a real fear of abandonment
or rejection and a belief that they overwhelm partners with
their needs for closeness. And finally, There's also the anxious

(01:20:31):
avoidant mix, where people are not only not comfortable with
close relationships, but they are also anxious about the relationship,
so trust and a fear of getting close to a
partner are issues. It can be useful to know your
attachment style as well as your partners if you're in
a relationship, because it can give you insight about how

(01:20:51):
you move through relationships and the cycles you get stuck into.
Having a history of narcissistic parents or early trauma can
definitely put a person at risk for anxious, avoidant or
anxious avoidant attachment styles, and having an anxious or an
avoidant anxious attachment style can also put you at risk
for getting stuck in unhealthy, antagonistic, and narcissistic relationship cycles.

(01:21:15):
You aren't doomed, and therapy can be an important place
to explore these patterns within yourself and establish secure attachment
skills you can take into close relationships. In our show notes,
you'll find a quiz that can help you determine your
attachment style. In this next takeaway, Cheryl shared that for

(01:21:36):
a while, healthy people who could offer her a healthy
relationship disgusted her, and that is not unusual especially if
someone is prone to trauma bonding and has a relationship
template that love is rejection and chaos and invalidation and
of actually finding comfort in the breakup makeup union cycles.

(01:22:01):
It makes sense and it is part of what she
observed at a young age, but we are not defined
by our histories. It does take work to make the
transition to experiencing these less volatile and chaotic relationships as satisfying,
and that work often has to be done while we
are not in a relationship and through psychotherapy. And for

(01:22:23):
our last takeaway, Cheryl shared that she is single now
and has been for over a year after an adult
life of only being in relationships. Solitude is an essential
part of healing from narcissistic relationships. And I wasn't kidding
when I talked about a twelve month detox, a period

(01:22:46):
of time when you are out of a romantic relationship
and learning about yourself and learning how to be with
yourself without a relationship, to become familiar with who you
are without having to shape yourself to what someone else
needs you to be. This development of identity, autonomy, and
sense of self can be stolen if you have been

(01:23:08):
in NonStop narcissistic relationships from a young age and spending
time on your own, overwhelming as it may feel, is
essential to healing. Relationships can be a place to hide,
numb and not do the work of becoming our authentic selves.
It's a chance for your nervous system to take a
rest and for you to be able to focus on

(01:23:29):
your emotions and your whole self.

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