August 24, 2025 • 40 mins
If you’ve ever felt like you’re trapped in a time loop of bad relationships or self-destructive patterns, you’re not alone. Why do we sometimes stay in situations that don’t serve us? And were those situations a huge waste of time or something else?
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Episode Transcript
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These are my personal opinions. always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well-being.
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Don't ever take responsibility for wasting someone's life.
I hear from people. they tell me that I was in this person's life for many years and I was emotionally abusive, or I did harmful
behaviors, or I was toxic, or even I was a jerk, or I cheated, and all this stuff that we don't want in a relationship. I agree.
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I hear from people on that side, and then I hear from people on the other side saying they were in my life for 15 years, 25
years. and I feel like I wasted my entire time with them. like all 15 or 25 years, I feel like I wasted all that time with
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someone who didn't care about me, or didn't love me, or didn't give me the life I wanted, and I could have done something else.
We don't want to look at a relationship like that, or somewhere we lived, or a job that we...
When we look at the past as a waste, we're focused on something that happened, but we're not focused on what we learned from
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it. and I know this sounds very simple. we learn from our mistakes. we learn from what happened to us, and then we also tend
to forget how the past shaped us. and we also tend to forget that when we feel we're responsible for somebody else wasting
their time with us, that they had their own decisions to make, their own lessons to learn, and they have a responsibility
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to themselves to stay another day with us or leave.
Now there's a caveat to this, which is we can, or they can be manipulative. they can be coercive. they can make us think they're
going to change. they can make us think, or we can make somebody think that we're going to change or treat them better. maybe
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we made a mistake, and we say we're not going to make that mistake again, and we do.
Maybe there's been cheating, and the person says, "I'll never cheat again," and they do.
Then when we look back on the relationship, we might blame ourselves, or they might blame themselves for being so stupid for
staying so long in something that was just a big waste of time.
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Nothing is ever a waste of time. nothing Nothing.
I've done things that I feel bad about in my past, and I wish I had shown up differently. and I'm sure they wish I had shown
up differently, but we all have a path to travel. and we're not going to make the decisions that we need to make until we
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learn what we need to learn. and sometimes what we need to learn is in the time we're wasting.
It is in the relationship that we're in. it is in the job that we're stuck at.
That's how I have transformed how I perceive what I've done in the past that I might think is a waste of time.
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And of course, I hope that people who have spent time with me and thought I was a waste of time can look back with a similar
perspective and know that there was something to learn while I was with that guy. there was something to learn. What did I learn? What did I take with me?
What did I put in my pocket to carry around with me forever so that I never have to waste my time doing that again?
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It wasn't a waste of time if you got something from it.
This is how I see even toxic situations where we want out, or we want the toxicity to stop.
If you knew what you know now, what would you have done differently?
If you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently?
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Because I can go back into my old relationships where I'm sure they thought I was wasting their time, at least sometimes.
that I could also see how I was showing up.
I could also tell that the way I was showing up was not supportive, not loving.
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So those times I know differently now. so I would go back, if I could go back, and show up differently, have different responses, different reactions.
I couldn't do that if I hadn't gone through that.
This is why even the worst of times can be the best of times later.
I heard from somebody recently, a young gay man, who said, "I wasted his time.
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I wasted six years of his life." No, you didn't.
You don't waste anybody's time because they're choosing to spend their time with you.
So if they thought you were a waste of time, on day two, they would leave.
On day 366, you know, the second year, they realize, hmm I spent a year with you. this isn't working out.
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I'm leaving." But they chose to stay.
Why do we choose to stay in relationships or situations that aren't working?
It's because we didn't know then what we know now. and if we did, we would have done something differently.
If you had the tools, you would have used them.
If you had the knowledge, you would have used that. But you didn't.
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If you had the know-how, if you had the foreknowledge, you would have used that. Maybe. Maybe you wouldn't have.
Maybe there were reasons that you wouldn't have, and those reasons would be legitimate because you stayed in a situation that
you had to stay in until you had the know-how or the tools or the resources or whatever. But this is what happens.
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We stay in a situation until we learn, and we have, we get past any fears.
We have the courage to move forward with what we've learned.
We have the resources to move forward with what we've learned, and they have those too.
So let's just say they are the toxic person in your life, and you are with them, or you have been with them, and you didn't leave for 20 years.
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You might look back and say, "I wasted my life with them." But it's only a waste if you fail to reflect on everything that happened during that time.
If you fail to reflect on all the ways you responded to situations, reacted to situations, and showed up in every other way,
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then you don't get to learn what you need to learn.
Now, you may have already reflected on a lot of this stuff, but you don't want to take what you didn't reflect on into the future. It's important that you reflect.
That's why somebody with a year in a toxic relationship can say, oh I wasted a year." And I can say, no you just got a year's
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worth of education because everything that happened in there you can reflect upon and learn from and decide what to do next
when that happens again." Decide what you're going to do if that ever happens again.
If that particular thing happens again, like it did on your birthday, and that particular thing that happened when you forgot
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to text back, you know, these little things that happen in our lives that we can prepare for in the future. That's what I like to do.
I like to visualize what's going to happen if that happens again.
This is something I teach in my Healed Being program for the people that are the difficult ones in the relationship, typically controlling, manipulative, emotionally abusive.
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They can become triggered by something that somebody does or says, and when they're working on healing and changing that behavior
and regulating themselves and their emotions and trying to show up as the best version of themselves, I tell them, okay "Okay,
now that you have regulated the behavior." because what they need to do first is stop doing what they're doing.
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If they do the silent treatment to guilt somebody and make them feel unloved and unworthy, that needs to stop.
So why did you do the silent treatment in the first place, I might ask.
And then they'll think, well you know, this happened or that happened, and then I went silent because I didn't know what to
say, and I wanted them to stop doing it, so I just went silent." And yeah, I made them feel like they needed to change because
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I didn't like the way they were acting. It's a manipulation.
And so I might say, okay now that we're not going to do that anymore, right?
Now that we're not going to do that anymore, what are you going to do instead?" And they don't want to do the silent treatment. They don't.
I mean, these are people who really want to heal.
They want to stop their bad behaviors.
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And so I asked them, think about what triggered you to get into that space in the first place.
Think about it." For me, it might be looking at my past and seeing my partner eat sweets, which I used to have a problem with.
I don't anymore, but that was me in the past. That's who I used to be.
And so I would put myself in this head space.
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Okay, my wife pulls out a cake, and she eats the whole thing.
How am I going to handle that? Is it going to trigger me?
You know, I have to visualize this.
If I was unhealed, it would be very difficult.
I'd be thinking, "Oh, oh, oh oh God, how am I going to handle this?
I don't, I don't want to handle it.
I want her to stop." So during my healing, this is what I did actually.
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I imagined my partner, my wife back then, my then wife.
And I imagined her doing that when I started healing from my own behaviors.
And instead of being triggered and emotionally withdrawing and being silent and her having no idea where I was inside, I decided
that I would do something maybe the opposite.
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Because sometimes the opposite of terrible behavior is good behavior.
And so I decided that I wasn't going to be silent. and not that I was going to be yelling at her or anything like that, but I was going to join her.
In my mind, I'm visualizing her eating this cake and asking her, hey can I have a piece? that looks tasty.
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Can I join you?" That changed my mindset. That changed my perspective.
I talk about this again in the Healed Being program over at HealedBeing.com.
And that is one of the ways, at least the way I worked on my own emotional triggers, is to visualize whatever was the stimuli
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for that trigger in the past, visualize it happening, and asking myself how would I like to behave or react or respond instead.
And so when I pictured that, I knew the bad behavior, the going silent and making her feel unloved and unworthy, a terrible, terrible thing to do to someone. I realized that was hurtful.
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I realized that was a method of trying to change and control her, which is emotionally abusive.
And I decided that that's not going to happen anymore.
I never want to be that person again.
This is again, this is after I learned about my behaviors and started really focusing on my change and growth and getting
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out of that because it was it was terrible. I was hurting good people.
I was hurting people that didn't didn't deserve to be hurt. And so I needed to change.
And so the visualization of what triggered me and then choosing to respond differently gave me enough preparation subconsciously
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so that I would be a little bit more prepared when it happened again. because the trigger didn't necessarily go away right away.
But what I learned is that when I turn that trigger around, and instead of guilting her and trying to control her and trying
to make her feel bad for doing something that made her feel good, I decided to join her, and that changed everything.
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It changed the entire bad feeling for both of us around that. I still had work to do.
That's what I mean by visualizing ahead what we've learned in the past.
How did we respond in the past, even if we were on the other end? like my ex-wife might look at that situation where she responded
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in a certain way when I went silent.
So when our relationship ended, she could look back on those times and reflect on those times I went into a silent treatment
like that and made her feel bad. and it caused her to dote on me and make try to make me feel better and do everything she
could to bring me back, which didn't work for her.
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She could look at that and say, you know, I'm not going to do that again.
When he did that, it always made me feel bad.
It always came down to him being upset for doing something that I enjoyed doing.
So I'm not going to let anyone do that to me in the future." So I'm going to respond differently.
I'm going to visualize me eating cake or whatever I want to do and my partner or whoever getting upset and going silent.
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Now, how am I going to act differently next time?
And believe me, I'm not putting this, I'm not putting the blame on her for not doing this.
I'm saying that we learn our lessons after a relationship or situation ends because we reflect on what happened. and then
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we visualize that happening again, and then we can choose a response that's different than what was than what we did before.
And when we choose a different response, at least when we're surprised in the moment by some sort of emotional trigger, we
have thought about it ahead of time.
We have some forethought, which wires our subconscious mind to give us maybe a few seconds delay before we do some sort of
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knee-jerk response that isn't beneficial or resourceful for either of us.
So, my ex wife. might look at a situation in our past and remember how she responded to my emotionally abusive behavior and
decide, you know, I'm not going to allow anybody to do that to me ever again." So this is how I'm going to respond to the future if that ever happens again.
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Because this is how we reshape what we get from life.
This is how we tell ourselves, if that happens again, this is how I'll be next time." It might be difficult.
I'm not saying you'll just automatically do it. but sometimes we respond so fast, like that knee-jerk response, because we are surprised. we are triggered.
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And when we're triggered, our brain works at lightning speed and grabs the lowest hanging fruit.
And that lowest hanging fruit could be a poor coping mechanism. it could be a trauma response. it could be something that
we haven't worked on yet or reflected on yet, and that keeps us getting the same results that we always get. And we don't want that.
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We want to prepare. at least this is my suggestion. we want to prepare for the bad results that could occur in the future
if we don't address and reflect the bad results we got in the past.
When I think about this on the outset, like a zoomed-out view, yes, we have to learn from our mistakes. Personal growth 101.
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And I feel silly telling you this because it's so common knowledge, but I think the little extra step of visualizing what
triggered us in the past in some way or what made us feel bad or what brought us down a road that didn't turn out well, when
we think about it happening again and we visualize it happening with somebody else in another situation, we can ask ourselves,
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how else do I want this to turn out?
Do I want this to turn out in a better way?
How did I respond to it before?" I remember I used to be a yes man.
I used to say yes to everyone. I was a people pleaser.
And I remember the times I did that, and every time I said yes to something I felt like saying no to, I felt that pain or
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this feeling, a bad feeling in my chest and my stomach.
And I didn't want to do it, but I couldn't say no because I didn't want to face that response.
I didn't want to face not being liked.
I didn't want somebody to think badly of me.
So I would say yes when I meant no, and I would agree to things that I didn't agree with.
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And so I would carry this feeling around that I wasn't being my authentic self, and now I'm in a predicament that I don't
like with somebody I don't want to be around, and it's a terrible feeling.
So I ask myself, if that ever happened again, what are you going to do instead, Paul? How are you going to change?
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What specifically, and this is the important part, what specifically triggered you into saying yes?
What specifically?" Well, I didn't want somebody to look down on me. I wanted them to like me.
I wanted them not to have a judgment about me.
And then I said, okay let's just say that I said no instead. what would happen?" I usually never visited that part.
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I didn't want to visit what would happen if I said no.
I just assumed that if I said no, it would be bad news.
So I visualize, okay what if I said no?" Well, maybe they wouldn't like me. Maybe they will be upset.
And then I started reasoning with myself, like, okay "Okay, somebody who cares about you and you're saying no to honor yourself won't like you?
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That doesn't make any sense." I started reasoning with myself in a way that made me realize I never visited the prospect of doing what felt right to me. Have you ever done this?
Have you ever done something that didn't feel right to you and later on thought about it and asked yourself, why didn't I do that other thing? What would happen if I did?
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What would happen if I said no to that person or decided not to go that day?" Well, so-and-so would have been upset. And then what?
Well, maybe they would have given me hell every time I saw them. Really?
Is this a person you want in your life?
That's my kind of logic right there.
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I just think about, okay if I honor myself in this moment, if I choose to be authentic and somebody doesn't appreciate it,
yeah, they may not like the decision I make, but can they get past the decision I make, or will they you know give me hell?
Will they put me down for it?
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And if they do, why am I hanging around with them?
Why am I with someone who doesn't allow me to be myself?" I think that's an important distinction and differentiator in how we choose our friendships and relationships.
Because if you can't be yourself with someone and they want you to be who they want you to be, it's very difficult to go through life being authentic.
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Because people like that have their own lessons to learn in allowing people to be themselves and accepting them as they are.
So that's a good discernment for who you allow into your life, is how they respond to you being authentic.
And so I really started off talking about how we can learn from our past and how we can reflect on what had happened in our
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past and what triggered us and what can we do differently next time so that we don't get the same results.
And this visualization process that I talk about, it's quite useful.
I mean, sometimes we have a knee-jerk response.
Maybe our fight or flight kicks in, and suddenly we're doing something or saying something that we didn't mean to say or do.
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And being able to reflect on what triggered us in the past and asking how can we show up differently? What could I do differently?
What is a better path to take when that happens again with somebody else or maybe the same person?
That helps not necessarily bypass the knee-jerk fight or flight response that can happen, but it does insert a small step
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in between the stimuli that occurs and the reaction that we have.
And that small step might give us just enough time before we react to choose a different response or reaction.
That's why the visualization is so important.
And that's why when you're dealing with an emotional trigger inside yourself that causes you to be upset or angry and hurt
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someone else in some way, that you need a moment before that occurs.
And visualizing ahead by reflecting on what happened in the past, very specifically what triggered you in the past, gives
you an opportunity to practice something different. And then here's the best part.
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You get to see what result occurs because of that.
So if I choose to join my partner eating an entire cake, how does it turn out?
Does it turn out with her feeling less loving toward me and less emotionally connected and like she can't do anything right around me?
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Or does it turn out that we both have stomach aches and we're laughing because we just did the silliest thing ever and ate an entire cake?
And that's a lot different result, and we might look at it and go, "God, let's never do that again." But it adds positivity
to the relationship and strengthens the bond because what we did in the past didn't work and probably disintegrated connection.
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And so I mentioned a message that I received from a young man. and he was with his boyfriend for a number of years, and he
mentioned his emotional triggers and how he wasted all this person's time.
And I want to remind him and anyone listening that you never waste someone else's time because if they choose to learn what
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they didn't like in the past, they can make sure it never happens again. because if they didn't have the tools or resources
to step out of that or change what was going on, they probably needed it.
They probably needed those resources. and I'm not saying that it's a good thing all this happened.
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I'm just saying that, hey, if it did happen, let's learn something from it. Let's take something from it. Let's utilize that.
And then the longer it went on, the more education that you can take from it, the more lessons you can learn from it because a lot happens in that timeframe.
You know when we're in a particular circumstance that all these bad things keep happening, that's a lot to learn from.
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There might be similarities and maybe some similar root causes, but this gives us a lot to look ahead and ask ourselves, how am I going to act differently?
How am I going to do things differently?
What do I want to do differently?" And I know there's some courage involved here.
In order to do something differently, we have to show up the way we didn't before, and that might be scary because what happens if we show up that way? What's the next step after that?
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I can only tell you what did happen.
You already know what did happen when you showed up that way, when you reacted or responded that way. You already know what you got.
So you already know that that path didn't work.
And my default question whenever you're changing behaviors is, what would I do or say if I had absolutely no fear of the consequences?" That has changed my life.
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And every time I reflect upon the things that I didn't do or say, or I said differently, I think about that question. "What would I do or say now?
If I had absolutely no fear of the consequences, what would I do or say now?" That doesn't immediately take away the fear.
In fact, I see the fear, and I walk through it anyway.
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But the reason I do that is because I don't want what I already had. And that's key for me.
I don't want what has already happened, you know, if it was bad, if I didn't like it, if it made me feel bad. I don't want that again.
And the young man who wrote to me said, "I'm glad he left." Because if he hadn't, I would never have figured this out and I would have kept hurting him.
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And that is such an important point. That is wisdom right there.
Because if we know ourselves well enough, and let's just say that we are the hurtful one, let's just say I'm the hurtful one
and I know that if we stay together, I'll continue hurting you.
Because when you don't have time apart for you to know yourself, to know who you are, to get to know yourself again, if you've
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lost yourself in a relationship, if you don't know who you are and how you think, and the other person's always in your mind
in some way because of this intermingling of toxic behaviors and love and abuse and all that stuff I talk about on my other
podcast, it is very difficult to change.
When you're with somebody and around them all the time, the stimuli is always there. The trigger is always there.
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That's why in my Healed Being program, I say, you know, it can be easier to be separated while you heal your own things and they heal their own things.
And when they heal, they'll learn who they are again. They'll reconnect with themselves.
And when you heal, you'll realize what you've done and what you're going to do differently and how you need to heal.
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And then you try to bring the best version of yourselves back into the relationship if that's where it needs to go. Sometimes relationships don't last. Sometimes they do. Sometimes there's still love. So you want to try again.
But it can be helpful to be apart, whether that's in the house or in separate houses.
Being apart, giving each other the space they need to ground themselves, to reconnect with themselves, to learn who they are without somebody else in their life.
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That is a huge, important part of healing, is to reconnect with yourself and understand who you are, what you want, what you
don't want, and what is right for you and what is wrong for you.
So that when you get into the relationship or back into the relationship that you've been in, then you can say the things
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and do the things that you may not have been able to do before, because you don't want to lose yourself.
You don't want to lose yourself again in that relationship. And it works for both people.
A person who was hurtful, they don't want to lose themselves in that relationship because then they'll just go and do default behaviors again.
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And those default behaviors may be hurtful patterns that they've done for a long time and we don't want that anymore.
So we try to bring the best version of ourselves and we do that by working on ourselves and sometimes we have to do that with ourselves. And some people don't understand that. I want to work together.
I want to work on this relationship together.
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Work on yourself, then bring the best version of you into the relationship so that you can both understand who you are, what
you want, what you will and won't accept, so that when things do go wrong, you can say, no, I don't like this. I don't want this. We need to talk about it.
And if it continues, I won't be able to handle it.
I won't be able to work with this.
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And that's when you reach something I've called once surety of self. I have a surety of myself.
I am sure of who I am. I know who I am.
I know how I feel right now. I've done some healing.
I don't want this in my life.
So if this enters my life again, this surety of self gives me confidence enough to know that I'll be able to stop it when
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I see it so that it never happens again.
This person ended their message with, I don't know if I deserve forgiveness, but I hope he heals. I had really good intentions.
I never ever wanted to hurt him.
I hate that I am this way.
I'm telling everyone he had the right to leave and I'm so proud of him.
It hurts to know that I hurt him.
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I want to be there for him, but obviously I wasted six years of his life.
That's when he said I wasted those years of his life.
So I want to thank this person for sharing that. You said you don't deserve forgiveness. I'm going to tell you something. Maybe you don't.
I know it's terrible for me to say that.
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That's not necessarily something I want you to take to heart, but I have done things that I don't deserve forgiveness for. I've never cheated.
I've never done crazy things like that, but I've hurt people that didn't deserve it. I don't deserve forgiveness for that. I hurt them. So I'm not looking for forgiveness.
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I'm okay not being forgiven for having hurt them.
So I know that's not a popular opinion.
Everyone probably does deserve forgiveness, but not everyone is ready to forgive and maybe they never will.
I honestly don't believe that forgiveness is required.
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I do believe that you can look at somebody and say, hey, I'm really mad that you did that.
I don't forgive you, but I'm willing to look past this and move on and hopefully work things out, assuming you are never that way again. So let's talk about this.
Are you ever going to be that way again?
Are you ever going to do that thing to me again?
And if they say, no, my God, no, I will never do that again because I feel so bad.
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And they have some remorse and they feel guilt and they feel shame.
That's what they need to go through.
If somebody has done something to hurt you or make you feel bad and you didn't deserve it, then you can choose to forgive or not.
But I don't believe that forgiveness is a requirement.
Forgiveness is something that has to happen on their end.
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And if they choose to forgive, great, that's a cherry on top.
But if they don't, then that is their choice and we honor that choice.
And when we honor that choice, it shows that we're not here to control them. We're not here to manipulate them.
We're here to honor them where they want to be and need to be. And some things aren't forgivable.
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That doesn't mean we can't get past them.
It also doesn't mean we have to dwell on them.
We can look at an event in our life and say, I can't forgive that person for doing that.
But doesn't mean we can't have that person in our life.
Doesn't mean that we can't move on. But forgiveness is a personal choice.
And I don't want to say that this person doesn't or does deserve forgiveness.
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Sure, people might say, but a higher power will forgive. That's fine. That's fine too.
In my program, I like to say don't seek forgiveness. Don't look for it.
Don't expect it because the people who have been emotionally abusive, they shouldn't be trying to get anything else from what they've already taken from a person. So they should not seek it. If they get it, great. They shouldn't seek it.
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So this is why I said, you may not deserve forgiveness and it's okay to be okay with that because you messed up and we have
to take some of that guilt and shame that we feel and turn it around so that we don't do that again in the future.
So this person who wrote to me, you have learned a lot in this relationship and your ex has learned a lot in this relationship
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and I hope he heals and I hope you heal.
And it would be great if he reaches out one day and says, I forgive you. You've really changed. That is amazing.
But it would also be great if he has moved on and healed and he becomes happier in his life. That's a wonderful thing as well.
I look at all forgiveness as self-forgiveness.We have to forgive ourselves for how we showed up at the time.
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And sometimes we messed up in our life and when we messed up, we need to forgive ourselves for not having the tools and the
resources and everything that we probably have today or are probably still learning about.
And I forgive myself a break for not showing up in the way I should have shown up back then.
I forgive myself a break for not being the person I am today because I wasn't.
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If I was, I would have done differently. But I didn't. Therefore I couldn't. Something like that. I am not that person anymore.
I am the person I am today because I was that person back then.
So I forgive myself for not having the ability to make better decisions back then.
I think that's a great way to look at forgiveness and not expect it from others. Not that you can't have it.
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Not that it wouldn't be great to have it.
But when you don't get it, don't be hard on yourself.
Don't think that because you're not forgiven that you should live the rest of your life in shame.
That's not how it's supposed to go.
You have to forgive yourself for what you did, for how you showed up.
Even if you were the victim, how you showed up.
Sometimes we have some self-blame going on, like I shouldn't have stayed with that person for so long.
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I forgive myself for making the decisions I made back then. I forgive myself a break. I give myself a break.
I forgive myself a break for who I was back then. I didn't know.
I didn't know what I didn't know.
I couldn't have known because I didn't learn it yet.
To the person who wrote to me, I want you to know that you're in the right place to start healing.
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Because if you hate who you were, you're going to love who you become.
Because you'll never be that person again.
This is what hate and self-loathing and regret and shame and guilt does to us.
It causes us to take all that energy and transform it into something powerful in the future.
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This is the change we need to make.
I look back and the guilt and the shame and all those feelings of regret that I used to have, and I transform them into every future situation that happened.
If I made somebody feel guilty in the past, now I make somebody feel powerful.
If I made somebody feel unloved, now I make them feel more loved than anyone.
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I transform those negative feelings that I used to have into paying it forward positively.
This is how I continue self-forgiveness.This is how I change who I or who I was into who I am today and who I continue to become tomorrow.
So take all those bad feelings that you have about yourself, turn them around and put them towards your future as powerful
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ways to heal and show up as the best damn version of yourself there could possibly be.
That's what you do with all that negativity inside of you.
You and everyone else will benefit when you transform all that negativity into powerful positive future actions that make people feel great.
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To the person who wrote, thank you so much for sharing that. Stay strong and thanks for listening.
Thank you for listening to another episode of The Overwhelmed Brain. I want to thank our patrons.
These are the people that support, you know, financially every month.
People like Brad and Ashley and Cheyenne and Crystal and Angel and Super High and I'm positive that I'm still not pronouncing
(37:54):
that but I see your name all the time.
Thank you to you and everyone that gives to the program.
I am very grateful and honored that you do that.
Thank you to those who donate and to the patrons who give every month. I'm humbled.
And if you find value in the show like these people do and you want to give back, head over to moretob.com and there are options to do that over there.
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And I talked a little bit about my other show Love and Abuse over at loveandabuse. com.
That is a show on how to navigate the difficult relationship.
If you're dealing with somebody that might be a little bit more difficult than it should be because relationships shouldn't
be that difficult, head over to loveandabuse.com and I've been doing that show since 2019.
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And around 2021, I started working on a program called Healed Being.
And to the person who wrote, listen up.
If you are doing emotionally abusive behaviors and you know you need to work on that stuff, head over to healedbeing.com and
that is where I help people who are doing these kinds of behaviors change.
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Because everything that you're doing obviously disintegrates love and connection. We don't want that. That's over at healedbeing. com.
And with that, always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions.
And be firm in your decisions and actions so that you can create the life you want.
Always take steps to grow and evolve. You are powerful beyond measure.
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And above all, and this is something I absolutely know to be true about you, you are amazing.
These are my personal opinions. always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well-being.
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Don't ever take responsibility for wasting someone's life.
I hear from people. they tell me that I was in this person's life for many years and I was emotionally abusive, or I did harmful
behaviors, or I was toxic, or even I was a jerk, or I cheated, and all this stuff that we don't want in a relationship. I agree.
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I hear from people on that side, and then I hear from people on the other side saying they were in my life for 15 years, 25
years. and I feel like I wasted my entire time with them. like all 15 or 25 years, I feel like I wasted all that time with
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someone who didn't care about me, or didn't love me, or didn't give me the life I wanted, and I could have done something else.
We don't want to look at a relationship like that, or somewhere we lived, or a job that we...
When we look at the past as a waste, we're focused on something that happened, but we're not focused on what we learned from
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it. and I know this sounds very simple. we learn from our mistakes. we learn from what happened to us, and then we also tend
to forget how the past shaped us. and we also tend to forget that when we feel we're responsible for somebody else wasting
their time with us, that they had their own decisions to make, their own lessons to learn, and they have a responsibility
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to themselves to stay another day with us or leave.
Now there's a caveat to this, which is we can, or they can be manipulative. they can be coercive. they can make us think they're
going to change. they can make us think, or we can make somebody think that we're going to change or treat them better. maybe
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we made a mistake, and we say we're not going to make that mistake again, and we do.
Maybe there's been cheating, and the person says, "I'll never cheat again," and they do.
Then when we look back on the relationship, we might blame ourselves, or they might blame themselves for being so stupid for
staying so long in something that was just a big waste of time.
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Nothing is ever a waste of time. nothing Nothing.
I've done things that I feel bad about in my past, and I wish I had shown up differently. and I'm sure they wish I had shown
up differently, but we all have a path to travel. and we're not going to make the decisions that we need to make until we
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learn what we need to learn. and sometimes what we need to learn is in the time we're wasting.
It is in the relationship that we're in. it is in the job that we're stuck at.
That's how I have transformed how I perceive what I've done in the past that I might think is a waste of time.
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And of course, I hope that people who have spent time with me and thought I was a waste of time can look back with a similar
perspective and know that there was something to learn while I was with that guy. there was something to learn. What did I learn? What did I take with me?
What did I put in my pocket to carry around with me forever so that I never have to waste my time doing that again?
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It wasn't a waste of time if you got something from it.
This is how I see even toxic situations where we want out, or we want the toxicity to stop.
If you knew what you know now, what would you have done differently?
If you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently?
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Because I can go back into my old relationships where I'm sure they thought I was wasting their time, at least sometimes.
that I could also see how I was showing up.
I could also tell that the way I was showing up was not supportive, not loving.
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So those times I know differently now. so I would go back, if I could go back, and show up differently, have different responses, different reactions.
I couldn't do that if I hadn't gone through that.
This is why even the worst of times can be the best of times later.
I heard from somebody recently, a young gay man, who said, "I wasted his time.
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I wasted six years of his life." No, you didn't.
You don't waste anybody's time because they're choosing to spend their time with you.
So if they thought you were a waste of time, on day two, they would leave.
On day 366, you know, the second year, they realize, hmm I spent a year with you. this isn't working out.
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I'm leaving." But they chose to stay.
Why do we choose to stay in relationships or situations that aren't working?
It's because we didn't know then what we know now. and if we did, we would have done something differently.
If you had the tools, you would have used them.
If you had the knowledge, you would have used that. But you didn't.
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If you had the know-how, if you had the foreknowledge, you would have used that. Maybe. Maybe you wouldn't have.
Maybe there were reasons that you wouldn't have, and those reasons would be legitimate because you stayed in a situation that
you had to stay in until you had the know-how or the tools or the resources or whatever. But this is what happens.
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We stay in a situation until we learn, and we have, we get past any fears.
We have the courage to move forward with what we've learned.
We have the resources to move forward with what we've learned, and they have those too.
So let's just say they are the toxic person in your life, and you are with them, or you have been with them, and you didn't leave for 20 years.
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You might look back and say, "I wasted my life with them." But it's only a waste if you fail to reflect on everything that happened during that time.
If you fail to reflect on all the ways you responded to situations, reacted to situations, and showed up in every other way,
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then you don't get to learn what you need to learn.
Now, you may have already reflected on a lot of this stuff, but you don't want to take what you didn't reflect on into the future. It's important that you reflect.
That's why somebody with a year in a toxic relationship can say, oh I wasted a year." And I can say, no you just got a year's
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worth of education because everything that happened in there you can reflect upon and learn from and decide what to do next
when that happens again." Decide what you're going to do if that ever happens again.
If that particular thing happens again, like it did on your birthday, and that particular thing that happened when you forgot
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to text back, you know, these little things that happen in our lives that we can prepare for in the future. That's what I like to do.
I like to visualize what's going to happen if that happens again.
This is something I teach in my Healed Being program for the people that are the difficult ones in the relationship, typically controlling, manipulative, emotionally abusive.
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They can become triggered by something that somebody does or says, and when they're working on healing and changing that behavior
and regulating themselves and their emotions and trying to show up as the best version of themselves, I tell them, okay "Okay,
now that you have regulated the behavior." because what they need to do first is stop doing what they're doing.
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If they do the silent treatment to guilt somebody and make them feel unloved and unworthy, that needs to stop.
So why did you do the silent treatment in the first place, I might ask.
And then they'll think, well you know, this happened or that happened, and then I went silent because I didn't know what to
say, and I wanted them to stop doing it, so I just went silent." And yeah, I made them feel like they needed to change because
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I didn't like the way they were acting. It's a manipulation.
And so I might say, okay now that we're not going to do that anymore, right?
Now that we're not going to do that anymore, what are you going to do instead?" And they don't want to do the silent treatment. They don't.
I mean, these are people who really want to heal.
They want to stop their bad behaviors.
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And so I asked them, think about what triggered you to get into that space in the first place.
Think about it." For me, it might be looking at my past and seeing my partner eat sweets, which I used to have a problem with.
I don't anymore, but that was me in the past. That's who I used to be.
And so I would put myself in this head space.
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Okay, my wife pulls out a cake, and she eats the whole thing.
How am I going to handle that? Is it going to trigger me?
You know, I have to visualize this.
If I was unhealed, it would be very difficult.
I'd be thinking, "Oh, oh, oh oh God, how am I going to handle this?
I don't, I don't want to handle it.
I want her to stop." So during my healing, this is what I did actually.
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I imagined my partner, my wife back then, my then wife.
And I imagined her doing that when I started healing from my own behaviors.
And instead of being triggered and emotionally withdrawing and being silent and her having no idea where I was inside, I decided
that I would do something maybe the opposite.
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Because sometimes the opposite of terrible behavior is good behavior.
And so I decided that I wasn't going to be silent. and not that I was going to be yelling at her or anything like that, but I was going to join her.
In my mind, I'm visualizing her eating this cake and asking her, hey can I have a piece? that looks tasty.
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Can I join you?" That changed my mindset. That changed my perspective.
I talk about this again in the Healed Being program over at HealedBeing.com.
And that is one of the ways, at least the way I worked on my own emotional triggers, is to visualize whatever was the stimuli
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for that trigger in the past, visualize it happening, and asking myself how would I like to behave or react or respond instead.
And so when I pictured that, I knew the bad behavior, the going silent and making her feel unloved and unworthy, a terrible, terrible thing to do to someone. I realized that was hurtful.
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I realized that was a method of trying to change and control her, which is emotionally abusive.
And I decided that that's not going to happen anymore.
I never want to be that person again.
This is again, this is after I learned about my behaviors and started really focusing on my change and growth and getting
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out of that because it was it was terrible. I was hurting good people.
I was hurting people that didn't didn't deserve to be hurt. And so I needed to change.
And so the visualization of what triggered me and then choosing to respond differently gave me enough preparation subconsciously
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so that I would be a little bit more prepared when it happened again. because the trigger didn't necessarily go away right away.
But what I learned is that when I turn that trigger around, and instead of guilting her and trying to control her and trying
to make her feel bad for doing something that made her feel good, I decided to join her, and that changed everything.
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It changed the entire bad feeling for both of us around that. I still had work to do.
That's what I mean by visualizing ahead what we've learned in the past.
How did we respond in the past, even if we were on the other end? like my ex-wife might look at that situation where she responded
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in a certain way when I went silent.
So when our relationship ended, she could look back on those times and reflect on those times I went into a silent treatment
like that and made her feel bad. and it caused her to dote on me and make try to make me feel better and do everything she
could to bring me back, which didn't work for her.
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She could look at that and say, you know, I'm not going to do that again.
When he did that, it always made me feel bad.
It always came down to him being upset for doing something that I enjoyed doing.
So I'm not going to let anyone do that to me in the future." So I'm going to respond differently.
I'm going to visualize me eating cake or whatever I want to do and my partner or whoever getting upset and going silent.
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Now, how am I going to act differently next time?
And believe me, I'm not putting this, I'm not putting the blame on her for not doing this.
I'm saying that we learn our lessons after a relationship or situation ends because we reflect on what happened. and then
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we visualize that happening again, and then we can choose a response that's different than what was than what we did before.
And when we choose a different response, at least when we're surprised in the moment by some sort of emotional trigger, we
have thought about it ahead of time.
We have some forethought, which wires our subconscious mind to give us maybe a few seconds delay before we do some sort of
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knee-jerk response that isn't beneficial or resourceful for either of us.
So, my ex wife. might look at a situation in our past and remember how she responded to my emotionally abusive behavior and
decide, you know, I'm not going to allow anybody to do that to me ever again." So this is how I'm going to respond to the future if that ever happens again.
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Because this is how we reshape what we get from life.
This is how we tell ourselves, if that happens again, this is how I'll be next time." It might be difficult.
I'm not saying you'll just automatically do it. but sometimes we respond so fast, like that knee-jerk response, because we are surprised. we are triggered.
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And when we're triggered, our brain works at lightning speed and grabs the lowest hanging fruit.
And that lowest hanging fruit could be a poor coping mechanism. it could be a trauma response. it could be something that
we haven't worked on yet or reflected on yet, and that keeps us getting the same results that we always get. And we don't want that.
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We want to prepare. at least this is my suggestion. we want to prepare for the bad results that could occur in the future
if we don't address and reflect the bad results we got in the past.
When I think about this on the outset, like a zoomed-out view, yes, we have to learn from our mistakes. Personal growth 101.
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And I feel silly telling you this because it's so common knowledge, but I think the little extra step of visualizing what
triggered us in the past in some way or what made us feel bad or what brought us down a road that didn't turn out well, when
we think about it happening again and we visualize it happening with somebody else in another situation, we can ask ourselves,
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how else do I want this to turn out?
Do I want this to turn out in a better way?
How did I respond to it before?" I remember I used to be a yes man.
I used to say yes to everyone. I was a people pleaser.
And I remember the times I did that, and every time I said yes to something I felt like saying no to, I felt that pain or
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this feeling, a bad feeling in my chest and my stomach.
And I didn't want to do it, but I couldn't say no because I didn't want to face that response.
I didn't want to face not being liked.
I didn't want somebody to think badly of me.
So I would say yes when I meant no, and I would agree to things that I didn't agree with.
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And so I would carry this feeling around that I wasn't being my authentic self, and now I'm in a predicament that I don't
like with somebody I don't want to be around, and it's a terrible feeling.
So I ask myself, if that ever happened again, what are you going to do instead, Paul? How are you going to change?
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What specifically, and this is the important part, what specifically triggered you into saying yes?
What specifically?" Well, I didn't want somebody to look down on me. I wanted them to like me.
I wanted them not to have a judgment about me.
And then I said, okay let's just say that I said no instead. what would happen?" I usually never visited that part.
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I didn't want to visit what would happen if I said no.
I just assumed that if I said no, it would be bad news.
So I visualize, okay what if I said no?" Well, maybe they wouldn't like me. Maybe they will be upset.
And then I started reasoning with myself, like, okay "Okay, somebody who cares about you and you're saying no to honor yourself won't like you?
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That doesn't make any sense." I started reasoning with myself in a way that made me realize I never visited the prospect of doing what felt right to me. Have you ever done this?
Have you ever done something that didn't feel right to you and later on thought about it and asked yourself, why didn't I do that other thing? What would happen if I did?
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What would happen if I said no to that person or decided not to go that day?" Well, so-and-so would have been upset. And then what?
Well, maybe they would have given me hell every time I saw them. Really?
Is this a person you want in your life?
That's my kind of logic right there.
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I just think about, okay if I honor myself in this moment, if I choose to be authentic and somebody doesn't appreciate it,
yeah, they may not like the decision I make, but can they get past the decision I make, or will they you know give me hell?
Will they put me down for it?
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And if they do, why am I hanging around with them?
Why am I with someone who doesn't allow me to be myself?" I think that's an important distinction and differentiator in how we choose our friendships and relationships.
Because if you can't be yourself with someone and they want you to be who they want you to be, it's very difficult to go through life being authentic.
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Because people like that have their own lessons to learn in allowing people to be themselves and accepting them as they are.
So that's a good discernment for who you allow into your life, is how they respond to you being authentic.
And so I really started off talking about how we can learn from our past and how we can reflect on what had happened in our
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past and what triggered us and what can we do differently next time so that we don't get the same results.
And this visualization process that I talk about, it's quite useful.
I mean, sometimes we have a knee-jerk response.
Maybe our fight or flight kicks in, and suddenly we're doing something or saying something that we didn't mean to say or do.
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And being able to reflect on what triggered us in the past and asking how can we show up differently? What could I do differently?
What is a better path to take when that happens again with somebody else or maybe the same person?
That helps not necessarily bypass the knee-jerk fight or flight response that can happen, but it does insert a small step
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in between the stimuli that occurs and the reaction that we have.
And that small step might give us just enough time before we react to choose a different response or reaction.
That's why the visualization is so important.
And that's why when you're dealing with an emotional trigger inside yourself that causes you to be upset or angry and hurt
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someone else in some way, that you need a moment before that occurs.
And visualizing ahead by reflecting on what happened in the past, very specifically what triggered you in the past, gives
you an opportunity to practice something different. And then here's the best part.
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You get to see what result occurs because of that.
So if I choose to join my partner eating an entire cake, how does it turn out?
Does it turn out with her feeling less loving toward me and less emotionally connected and like she can't do anything right around me?
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Or does it turn out that we both have stomach aches and we're laughing because we just did the silliest thing ever and ate an entire cake?
And that's a lot different result, and we might look at it and go, "God, let's never do that again." But it adds positivity
to the relationship and strengthens the bond because what we did in the past didn't work and probably disintegrated connection.
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And so I mentioned a message that I received from a young man. and he was with his boyfriend for a number of years, and he
mentioned his emotional triggers and how he wasted all this person's time.
And I want to remind him and anyone listening that you never waste someone else's time because if they choose to learn what
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they didn't like in the past, they can make sure it never happens again. because if they didn't have the tools or resources
to step out of that or change what was going on, they probably needed it.
They probably needed those resources. and I'm not saying that it's a good thing all this happened.
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I'm just saying that, hey, if it did happen, let's learn something from it. Let's take something from it. Let's utilize that.
And then the longer it went on, the more education that you can take from it, the more lessons you can learn from it because a lot happens in that timeframe.
You know when we're in a particular circumstance that all these bad things keep happening, that's a lot to learn from.
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There might be similarities and maybe some similar root causes, but this gives us a lot to look ahead and ask ourselves, how am I going to act differently?
How am I going to do things differently?
What do I want to do differently?" And I know there's some courage involved here.
In order to do something differently, we have to show up the way we didn't before, and that might be scary because what happens if we show up that way? What's the next step after that?
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I can only tell you what did happen.
You already know what did happen when you showed up that way, when you reacted or responded that way. You already know what you got.
So you already know that that path didn't work.
And my default question whenever you're changing behaviors is, what would I do or say if I had absolutely no fear of the consequences?" That has changed my life.
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And every time I reflect upon the things that I didn't do or say, or I said differently, I think about that question. "What would I do or say now?
If I had absolutely no fear of the consequences, what would I do or say now?" That doesn't immediately take away the fear.
In fact, I see the fear, and I walk through it anyway.
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But the reason I do that is because I don't want what I already had. And that's key for me.
I don't want what has already happened, you know, if it was bad, if I didn't like it, if it made me feel bad. I don't want that again.
And the young man who wrote to me said, "I'm glad he left." Because if he hadn't, I would never have figured this out and I would have kept hurting him.
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And that is such an important point. That is wisdom right there.
Because if we know ourselves well enough, and let's just say that we are the hurtful one, let's just say I'm the hurtful one
and I know that if we stay together, I'll continue hurting you.
Because when you don't have time apart for you to know yourself, to know who you are, to get to know yourself again, if you've
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lost yourself in a relationship, if you don't know who you are and how you think, and the other person's always in your mind
in some way because of this intermingling of toxic behaviors and love and abuse and all that stuff I talk about on my other
podcast, it is very difficult to change.
When you're with somebody and around them all the time, the stimuli is always there. The trigger is always there.
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That's why in my Healed Being program, I say, you know, it can be easier to be separated while you heal your own things and they heal their own things.
And when they heal, they'll learn who they are again. They'll reconnect with themselves.
And when you heal, you'll realize what you've done and what you're going to do differently and how you need to heal.
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And then you try to bring the best version of yourselves back into the relationship if that's where it needs to go. Sometimes relationships don't last. Sometimes they do. Sometimes there's still love. So you want to try again.
But it can be helpful to be apart, whether that's in the house or in separate houses.
Being apart, giving each other the space they need to ground themselves, to reconnect with themselves, to learn who they are without somebody else in their life.
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That is a huge, important part of healing, is to reconnect with yourself and understand who you are, what you want, what you
don't want, and what is right for you and what is wrong for you.
So that when you get into the relationship or back into the relationship that you've been in, then you can say the things
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and do the things that you may not have been able to do before, because you don't want to lose yourself.
You don't want to lose yourself again in that relationship. And it works for both people.
A person who was hurtful, they don't want to lose themselves in that relationship because then they'll just go and do default behaviors again.
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And those default behaviors may be hurtful patterns that they've done for a long time and we don't want that anymore.
So we try to bring the best version of ourselves and we do that by working on ourselves and sometimes we have to do that with ourselves. And some people don't understand that. I want to work together.
I want to work on this relationship together.
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Work on yourself, then bring the best version of you into the relationship so that you can both understand who you are, what
you want, what you will and won't accept, so that when things do go wrong, you can say, no, I don't like this. I don't want this. We need to talk about it.
And if it continues, I won't be able to handle it.
I won't be able to work with this.
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And that's when you reach something I've called once surety of self. I have a surety of myself.
I am sure of who I am. I know who I am.
I know how I feel right now. I've done some healing.
I don't want this in my life.
So if this enters my life again, this surety of self gives me confidence enough to know that I'll be able to stop it when
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I see it so that it never happens again.
This person ended their message with, I don't know if I deserve forgiveness, but I hope he heals. I had really good intentions.
I never ever wanted to hurt him.
I hate that I am this way.
I'm telling everyone he had the right to leave and I'm so proud of him.
It hurts to know that I hurt him.
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I want to be there for him, but obviously I wasted six years of his life.
That's when he said I wasted those years of his life.
So I want to thank this person for sharing that. You said you don't deserve forgiveness. I'm going to tell you something. Maybe you don't.
I know it's terrible for me to say that.
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That's not necessarily something I want you to take to heart, but I have done things that I don't deserve forgiveness for. I've never cheated.
I've never done crazy things like that, but I've hurt people that didn't deserve it. I don't deserve forgiveness for that. I hurt them. So I'm not looking for forgiveness.
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I'm okay not being forgiven for having hurt them.
So I know that's not a popular opinion.
Everyone probably does deserve forgiveness, but not everyone is ready to forgive and maybe they never will.
I honestly don't believe that forgiveness is required.
(31:18):
I do believe that you can look at somebody and say, hey, I'm really mad that you did that.
I don't forgive you, but I'm willing to look past this and move on and hopefully work things out, assuming you are never that way again. So let's talk about this.
Are you ever going to be that way again?
Are you ever going to do that thing to me again?
And if they say, no, my God, no, I will never do that again because I feel so bad.
(31:42):
And they have some remorse and they feel guilt and they feel shame.
That's what they need to go through.
If somebody has done something to hurt you or make you feel bad and you didn't deserve it, then you can choose to forgive or not.
But I don't believe that forgiveness is a requirement.
Forgiveness is something that has to happen on their end.
(32:04):
And if they choose to forgive, great, that's a cherry on top.
But if they don't, then that is their choice and we honor that choice.
And when we honor that choice, it shows that we're not here to control them. We're not here to manipulate them.
We're here to honor them where they want to be and need to be. And some things aren't forgivable.
(32:25):
That doesn't mean we can't get past them.
It also doesn't mean we have to dwell on them.
We can look at an event in our life and say, I can't forgive that person for doing that.
But doesn't mean we can't have that person in our life.
Doesn't mean that we can't move on. But forgiveness is a personal choice.
And I don't want to say that this person doesn't or does deserve forgiveness.
(32:50):
Sure, people might say, but a higher power will forgive. That's fine. That's fine too.
In my program, I like to say don't seek forgiveness. Don't look for it.
Don't expect it because the people who have been emotionally abusive, they shouldn't be trying to get anything else from what they've already taken from a person. So they should not seek it. If they get it, great. They shouldn't seek it.
(33:20):
So this is why I said, you may not deserve forgiveness and it's okay to be okay with that because you messed up and we have
to take some of that guilt and shame that we feel and turn it around so that we don't do that again in the future.
So this person who wrote to me, you have learned a lot in this relationship and your ex has learned a lot in this relationship
(33:44):
and I hope he heals and I hope you heal.
And it would be great if he reaches out one day and says, I forgive you. You've really changed. That is amazing.
But it would also be great if he has moved on and healed and he becomes happier in his life. That's a wonderful thing as well.
I look at all forgiveness as self-forgiveness.We have to forgive ourselves for how we showed up at the time.
(34:11):
And sometimes we messed up in our life and when we messed up, we need to forgive ourselves for not having the tools and the
resources and everything that we probably have today or are probably still learning about.
And I forgive myself a break for not showing up in the way I should have shown up back then.
I forgive myself a break for not being the person I am today because I wasn't.
(34:36):
If I was, I would have done differently. But I didn't. Therefore I couldn't. Something like that. I am not that person anymore.
I am the person I am today because I was that person back then.
So I forgive myself for not having the ability to make better decisions back then.
I think that's a great way to look at forgiveness and not expect it from others. Not that you can't have it.
(35:03):
Not that it wouldn't be great to have it.
But when you don't get it, don't be hard on yourself.
Don't think that because you're not forgiven that you should live the rest of your life in shame.
That's not how it's supposed to go.
You have to forgive yourself for what you did, for how you showed up.
Even if you were the victim, how you showed up.
Sometimes we have some self-blame going on, like I shouldn't have stayed with that person for so long.
(35:27):
I forgive myself for making the decisions I made back then. I forgive myself a break. I give myself a break.
I forgive myself a break for who I was back then. I didn't know.
I didn't know what I didn't know.
I couldn't have known because I didn't learn it yet.
To the person who wrote to me, I want you to know that you're in the right place to start healing.
(35:50):
Because if you hate who you were, you're going to love who you become.
Because you'll never be that person again.
This is what hate and self-loathing and regret and shame and guilt does to us.
It causes us to take all that energy and transform it into something powerful in the future.
(36:14):
This is the change we need to make.
I look back and the guilt and the shame and all those feelings of regret that I used to have, and I transform them into every future situation that happened.
If I made somebody feel guilty in the past, now I make somebody feel powerful.
If I made somebody feel unloved, now I make them feel more loved than anyone.
(36:42):
I transform those negative feelings that I used to have into paying it forward positively.
This is how I continue self-forgiveness.This is how I change who I or who I was into who I am today and who I continue to become tomorrow.
So take all those bad feelings that you have about yourself, turn them around and put them towards your future as powerful
(37:11):
ways to heal and show up as the best damn version of yourself there could possibly be.
That's what you do with all that negativity inside of you.
You and everyone else will benefit when you transform all that negativity into powerful positive future actions that make people feel great.
(37:32):
To the person who wrote, thank you so much for sharing that. Stay strong and thanks for listening.
Thank you for listening to another episode of The Overwhelmed Brain. I want to thank our patrons.
These are the people that support, you know, financially every month.
People like Brad and Ashley and Cheyenne and Crystal and Angel and Super High and I'm positive that I'm still not pronouncing
(37:54):
that but I see your name all the time.
Thank you to you and everyone that gives to the program.
I am very grateful and honored that you do that.
Thank you to those who donate and to the patrons who give every month. I'm humbled.
And if you find value in the show like these people do and you want to give back, head over to moretob.com and there are options to do that over there.
(38:14):
And I talked a little bit about my other show Love and Abuse over at loveandabuse. com.
That is a show on how to navigate the difficult relationship.
If you're dealing with somebody that might be a little bit more difficult than it should be because relationships shouldn't
be that difficult, head over to loveandabuse.com and I've been doing that show since 2019.
(38:35):
And around 2021, I started working on a program called Healed Being.
And to the person who wrote, listen up.
If you are doing emotionally abusive behaviors and you know you need to work on that stuff, head over to healedbeing.com and
that is where I help people who are doing these kinds of behaviors change.
(38:56):
Because everything that you're doing obviously disintegrates love and connection. We don't want that. That's over at healedbeing. com.
And with that, always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions.
And be firm in your decisions and actions so that you can create the life you want.
Always take steps to grow and evolve. You are powerful beyond measure.
(39:22):
And above all, and this is something I absolutely know to be true about you, you are amazing.
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