Episode Transcript
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(00:14):
Welcome back to the show. Today's episode is one I've been
chewing on for a while, and I already know it's going to step
on some toes, but hopefully in agood way.
The kind of stepping that makes you stop and check if that pain
is actually yours or, I don't know, something you've been
carrying around from the last five relationships.
I think we've turned red flags into this sort of TikTok trend.
(00:36):
Yeah, a checklist, a meme, or like a convenient way to ghost
people and call it protecting our peace.
Don't get me wrong, some of you guys do need to run, like,
immediately. But most of us, I don't think
you're spotting red flags, to behonest.
I think you're spotting your ownfear.
(00:58):
I think a lot of us are mistaking the ache of
vulnerability for danger, and rightfully so.
Our nervous system has been through a lot, but that isn't
what healing is. So today I want to talk about
how fear dresses up as what we would call discernment and how
our nervous system rewrites stories.
(01:18):
And lastly, how to stop throwingaway connections just because
they don't feel instantly safe. So let's get into it.
First things first, this obsession didn't come out of
nowhere. The Internet handed us bite
sized therapy. You might know it as pop
psychology or therapy speak. And if you've followed or liked
(01:42):
any one of these pages or posts,you've probably seen it all over
the place, whether it's through your friends stories or explore
page or in DMS, threads about healthy relationship, all that
stuff. And don't get me wrong, there's
nothing inherently evil about all of this.
I've benefited a lot from these pages.
(02:03):
I mean, that's kind of why I think my page is as successful
as it has been. People love to be encouraged and
they love to have their internalbiases validated.
And while I'm not a real therapist or anything like that,
I am the real person and all I'mdoing is literally writing out
my thoughts. I think we all have this innate
(02:25):
desire online to just feel like we've been seen.
But the problem is when everyone's quoting the same 5
slogans all the time without anycontext given, then what we end
up with is hyper vigilance disguised as empowerment.
You know these quotes? I've probably posted some sort
(02:50):
of variant of one of these. Some of the more popular ones
are. If they wanted to they would.
I think I did something recently.
Like if they wanted to they would.
Because when you wanted to, you did.
And I didn't really give too much context, but that one kind
of pissed some people off. Another one is protect your
peace. This is one that I really hate
(03:11):
and kind of really disliked since I've heard it, I think a
decade ago or something. And then another familiar 1
might be something like you don't owe anyone anything.
So again, these are all true to some degree, but also these are
kind of most often just weaponized to protect someone's
(03:31):
arrogance. You see, when we take complex
emotional experiences and boil them down to slogans, we forget
that relationships require discomfort.
In this discomfort, we see growth and also a lot of nuance.
For example, sometimes people don't respond right away because
(03:52):
they're busy. Sometimes they really are scared
or neurodivergent. Not everybody is out there to
try and manipulate you. If you've ever been betrayed or
gaslit, your nervous system is doing what it was trained to do,
right? And that's just simply to scan
for danger. And then that's where all of
this hyper vigilance comes in. A study from Cleveland Clinic
(04:15):
points out that hyper vigilance is a common trauma response.
You see people who are hyper alert do catch more red flags,
but more often than not they also see danger where there is
none. It's like that smoke detector
that I know everybody has had intheir house that goes off every
single time you toast a bagel. Any small amount of smoke just
(04:38):
gets that thing screeching and you're over there trying to fan
away whatever faint smoke there is with a rag or a towel.
It's not the smoke alarms fault that it does what it's supposed
to do, but it is your responsibility to air out the
small space that all that smoke is getting to.
It's your responsibility to check yourself, to think
(04:59):
logically about all these things.
So let's walk through some examples of what we would call
false positives when something is not actually a red flag.
But maybe because you've been sotrained to scan for things due
to trauma, your default is always going to be a false
positive scenario. One you've ever been in a
situation where you know someonedoesn't text you back for like,
(05:23):
I don't know, 246 hours. What happens?
You start to spiral like, oh, there goes to me, red flag or
oh, shoot, they freaking hate me.
You know, I'm the worst person ever or could.
God, they can't even tell me they're busy or anything Like
this is going to be a telltale sign that they can't even
communicate. No, they could have been in
(05:44):
meetings. Maybe their social battery was
low. Maybe they've been thinking all
day how to respond with care. And I know what you're thinking.
Oh, but why don't they just textthat, you know, they're busy or
they're stressed or they're thinking about how to respond
and they'll get back to you later?
My friend, you are literally constructing that social
(06:07):
expectation that you are findingyourself imprisoned in, right?
We love to tear down social constructs, but at the same
time, it seems like we're not realizing when we're hurting
ourselves because of the new expectations that we're building
in society. There's a million reasons why
(06:27):
somebody doesn't live with theirphone sewed onto their fingers.
It's not always neglect. Sometimes it's pacing, Sometimes
it's healthy boundaries this person could have with their
phone. I don't know.
There's a million ways. Doesn't have to mean it's
intentional neglect. Maybe you've been in a situation
like I have 100 times where somebody says something kind of
(06:52):
off or that didn't quite make sense at first because, you
know, communicating is freaking hard.
And it kind of what they said kind of stings a little or kind
of, you know, triggers somethingin you and you think, Oh my
gosh, they're gaslighting me or,Oh my gosh, they're trying to
manipulate me. Or maybe, you know, maybe
they're just an awkward person or maybe they're currently
(07:15):
stressed or maybe they didn't know how it would land or how
they're sounding. Because again, you know, having
a conversation with somebody that doesn't live in your head
24/7 is kind of difficult. Or what if you're in a brand new
relationship and things are going great, right?
You've had a fun, fantastic first few dates and you're
(07:36):
getting really into this person and so you feel comfortable
expressing a little more or using a little bit more intimate
language. And what if that person, you
know, starts to flinch a little bit romantically, mentally,
whatever, as you guys are getting close, they're starting
to kind of pull back. Or if you're unsure about some
things, you know what that couldactually be because maybe
(07:58):
they're scared. Maybe they've never had slow
less model to them. Maybe they've never had
something that's how they model to them and their brain doesn't
know how to respond. They could be lying to
themselves. They're thinking communicating
is hard. You see, we need to stop
confusing different with dangerous because a lot of what
(08:21):
we call toxicity is actually just unfamiliarity.
And you see, unfamiliar doesn't mean unsafe.
There are plenty of new experiences I've know you've had
in your life that you were afraid to go into or to
experience because you've never done something like that before.
(08:43):
I remember my whole life I was terrified to get on planes
because I thought we were going to crash and die.
Ironically, at the age of 27, I rode on a plane for the first
time in my life, was terrified before the plane took off.
And I remember feeling so like energized and, and in amazement
(09:06):
as that plane actually took off.And I was looking out that
window and I could see everything below me gets smaller
and smaller and smaller as we got higher and higher.
And I suddenly I felt this immense rush of wonder come over
me as I looked at the earth below me.
And I left that experience in awe of just the beauty that
existence has to offer and how someone like me could be so high
(09:29):
up in the sky that everything below is just becomes more and
more unrecognizable the higher we climbed up.
The unfamiliar doesn't always mean the unsafe.
You see, I don't think most of us are actually scared of red
flags. I think we're just scared of
(09:50):
being seen because if somebody sees us and stays, then we have
to stay too. And that means at some point I'm
going to get tired being myself under this full suit of armor.
I'm going to have to drop this. At some point, I'm going to have
to be myself. I can't pretend to be someone
(10:14):
else or somebody that this person likes or somebody that I
think this person likes. And that means then that you
have to risk everything. And so if you've been abandoned
or cheated on, you know you've felt discarded in your life.
You've probably taught yourself that the best way to stay safe
and love is to leave first. Or to deny it.
(10:37):
Or to reject it, or to second guess it.
To scan for flaws, to find reasons not to attach.
To trust. Here's the thing.
Insecure attachment styles are actually deeply linked to mental
well-being. Check this out.
Last year in 2024, a study of nearly 400 adults showed
(10:59):
researchers that people with insecure attachment styles,
especially the avoidant or approval seeking ones, reported
significantly lower psychological health than
securely attached people. In other words, if you're always
interpreting discomfort is danger, you might also be
cutting yourself off from connection, and that isolation
(11:22):
is what eats up at your well-being.
So how do you tell danger from discomfort then?
That's what we call discernment.How do we discern between what
makes me uncomfortable versus what is actually a really big
sign of danger? Well, I think we could do so by
adding two more items into this checklist that we can ask
(11:47):
ourselves before we consider, you know, if something is
dangerous or if we're just in discomfort.
Because I'm, I'm, I'm not here to tell you to ignore your, your
stomach, to ignore your gut. I'm just suggesting we learn how
to calibrate so we can ask ourselves three things.
Is this a red flag? In other words, am I in actual
harm right now? Has a boundary of mine been
(12:10):
violated? Have I been blatantly lied to
about something that could have or has compromised my safety?
The second one is a different flag and this is is this a
yellow flag? Yellow flag is are we having a
miscommunication right now? Is he not?
Are they not? Is she not understanding what
(12:31):
I'm saying, what I'm trying to communicate or are there
different needs right now? Are there patterns before me
that are unfamiliar? And lastly, the third item we
should bring with our flags, is this a mirror?
So we ask ourselves, is this a mirror?
Is what is happening right now triggering my past?
(12:52):
Maybe what they're doing, what I'm seeing, what I heard, what
I'm witnessing, what I'm thinking is triggering something
in me, but it isn't inherently wrong.
When you feel triggered, pause and ask yourself, is this a
wound or is this a warning? If it's a wound, then reflect,
maybe journal, turn it into art,write about it.
(13:13):
It's what I do. I love that it helps me
understand my emotions so freaking much to make them
tangible. I feel like I can rule over
them. I feel like I can see them for
what they are. If it's not a wound, then it's a
warning. That's when you set boundaries.
That's when you start to observe.
You protect yourself with clarity, not assumptions.
(13:35):
How do you get clarity? You ever heard the phrase ask a
clarifying question? You see, when you give each
other the permission to speak into each other's lives or to
speak with the intention of the betterment of that person's
life, you then ask for clarity without fear of rejection or
guilt or shame, because ultimately that those questions
(13:58):
are stemming from a a bed of desire for this person should
be, you know, to keep them safe,to honor them, to see them grow.
So we don't get offended by clarifying questions.
We don't take these things personally.
We communicate. So here's what I want to leave
you with in this episode. Everybody's healing, right?
Everybody was listening to this.I would assume it's in the
(14:20):
business of healing something. So then understand that healing
isn't about becoming so smart, so educated that you never get
hurt again. No, my friends, you can be in a
season of just health and prosperity.
You really can. You can truly live weeks,
(14:42):
months, years, a decade being ina healthy state of mind, having
accomplished so much whatever. Just have the best experiences
of your life. It's fine to get hurt again
because healing initially shouldbe about being able to build the
capacity to sit with uncertaintyso that you could differentiate
(15:05):
discomfort from danger and then allow yourself to stay when it's
actually safe enough to stay. See, not everything is a red
flag. Sometimes it's your nervous
system yelling from a place of love and fear.
So it's totally OK to communicate and somebody be
like, hey, I need to ask you something that I know comes from
(15:29):
a place of fear in my heart because of some past experiences
I've had. So please know that what I want
to ask you, it's not a sign of anything other than a trauma
response. And I don't want to live and
exist in this relationship with that in the back of my head.
The moment that you realize thatsometimes it's your inner child
(15:50):
reaching for the exit, sometimesit's just Tuesday.
Let yourself be surprised. Let people surprise you.
Let nuance exist, Reject the binary, and let your own
softness lead the way back. And the next time you start to
feel yourself spiral when thingsare getting good with yourself
(16:12):
or with life or at work or with somebody you're seeing, ask
yourself, am I reacting to this person or am I reacting to my
past?