We talk with Lisa Sitze (#1 international bestselling author) about growing up with a mother later diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and how gaslighting teaches a child to distrust their own mind. We break down what actually helps you heal: naming the pattern, setting real boundaries, and choosing responsibility without slipping into shame or victimhood.
• Lisa’s story of a late NPD diagnosis and how it reframes a lifetime of confusion
• Why narcissism is a buzzword and how NPD differs from everyday narcissistic tendencies
• How manipulation can fool authority figures and deepen self-doubt
• Golden child and scapegoat dynamics and how they affect feedback, trust, and identity
• Why healing requires holding both the negative and the positive
• Boundaries as actions we control and why an information diet can be necessary
• The risk of labels becoming excuses and how agency prevents codependency
• “Demons” as limiting beliefs built to protect us and how to let them go safely
• RAD tool: Recognize, Acknowledge, Decide
Links:
Instagram: lisa_sitze
Facebook: Alyssia Rhys
LinkedIn: Lisa Sitze
Email facingyourdemonsbook@gmail.com
Website facingyourdemonsbook.com
Bio:
Lisa is a writer, mother of five grown children and granny to seven grandchildren. Her favorite hobbies are playing Enshrouded, exercising, sewing, and gardening. She homeschooled her five children for sixteen years and ran a successful homeschool group for three of those years. She has been life coaching since 2021, being certified through Dr. Sears Wellness Institute. Lisa’s individualized program, to help people do deep dives into themselves, teaches clients how it is possible to use their agency to create their life their way while still respectfully balancing the needs of others.
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SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
One of the things that a full-on narcissist will
do is that they will convinceyou it's like, oh, you're they
it's the whole gaslightingthing, right?
This isn't really the truth.
And the and the hard thing forme was when I look back on it,
and I still look back on it, andit still hurts my heart to think
about how many people go throughthis.
(00:20):
It's like not only is yourparent gaslighting you, the
world is gaslighting you.
SPEAKER_00 (00:30):
Welcome to the Upside of Bipolar, where we
uncover the true sources ofbipolar symptoms and share
proven tools for recovery.
I'm your host, MichelleReitinger, number one
international best-sellingauthor of the Upside of Bipolar
Seven Steps to Heal YourDisorder.
In this podcast, I bring yousolo insights from my journey
and guest interviews withleading researchers and experts.
(00:51):
Join us to transform chaos intohope and reclaim your life.
Let's heal together.
I am your host, MichelleReitinger, and I have a
phenomenal guest today.
Lisa Seitz is my guest.
(01:12):
Lisa is a writer, mother of fivegrown children, and granny to
seven grandchildren.
Her favorite hobbies are playingenshrouded, exercising, sewing,
and gardening.
She homeschooled her fivechildren for 16 years and ran a
successful homeschool group forthree of those years.
She has been a life, she hasbeen life coaching since 2021,
being certified through Dr.
(01:33):
Sears Wellness Institute.
Lisa's individualized program tohelp people do deep dives into
themselves, teaches clients toknow how it's possible to use
their agency to create theirlife or their life their way
while still respectfullybalancing the needs of others.
And you are a number oneinternational best-selling
author, am I correct?
SPEAKER_01 (01:53):
That is correct.
SPEAKER_00 (01:54):
Yay! I'm so excited for you.
And your book is phenomenal.
So I'm super excited to talkabout that today.
But why don't we start with yourstory?
Welcome to the podcast.
I'm so happy you're here.
And let's start with your story.
SPEAKER_01 (02:06):
Well, I'm glad to be here because you're one of my
favorite people ever.
So my story started.
I was born into I was born to amother who had narcissistic
personality disorder, but wedidn't know any of that at the
time.
It's interesting becausenarcissism became a coined was
coined in 1956, but didn't getput into the DSM V, which is um
(02:29):
this diagnostic diagnosticstatistical manual, I think I
said that right, um, until 1984.
So it it's it's it's adefinitely, you know, and they
and they don't put it things inthere until they have a full
thing about what they are andand all the stuff behind it.
So it wasn't something thatpeople really understood, and
(02:53):
people still don't fullyunderstand it.
And that was one of the reasonswhy I wrote the book.
I when my mother was diagnosed,I was um, I believe 54, and it
was it what it just it changedmy life.
I didn't, I mean, I at first Ididn't have a clue, and I went
into researching it, and themore I learned about it, it was
(03:15):
I was the more it was like mylife started, my childhood
started to make sense.
It's like I see things now thatI didn't see before, and it's
not all me.
I'm not really as much of aproblem as I was normal, you
know, and that was that was justlife-changing for me, that I was
a normal kid instead of somepunishment from a past life,
(03:36):
which is what she told me, andother things.
But it's the kind of thing thatyou don't know about because
when you're born into that kindof, I'm gonna call it abuse,
when you're born into that kindof parenting or that you you
don't understand because you'venever known any different.
And so when people would say,you know, how wonderful mothers
(03:59):
are and you know, and how muchthey love you regardless.
And I just didn't, I thoughtthere was something wrong with
me that I couldn't see my motherin that same light.
And now I understand why.
It wasn't that she was bad or ahorrible person, it's because
she had a psychologicaldisorder.
But then I had, as I did myresearch, I had to come to terms
with, well, what does that meanfor me?
(04:19):
And what do I do about that?
And, you know, I chose to to nothate her.
I did have to hate her for atime.
I had to give myself some spaceand let myself, that was how I
was able to process through, youknow, the grief and the and the
anger and all the stuff.
But that luckily that onlylasted for about a year and
(04:40):
maybe a little more, but I Ididn't want to live there.
I like to say I didn't want toset up a house and get my ad,
get my mail there, you know.
I didn't want to live thereforever because I don't like
hating anything or anyonereally.
I want to understand wherethey're coming from, and then if
I need to, I can put them overthere.
(05:02):
You know, it's like I can set myboundaries, right?
But I don't didn't want toforever.
And so I chose not to.
And that meant I had to set myboundary, I had to figure out
how to set boundaries, and I didthat for a while, and then and
she died and not too long ago, acouple years ago, and uh now I'm
free from that.
(05:22):
I don't I don't have to cater toher manipulations, but that was
the boundaries I had to set, ison the manipulations and stuff
like that.
SPEAKER_00 (05:30):
Yeah.
Okay, so you wrote a book.
We talked, we I talked aboutthat at the very beginning.
Your book is Facing Your Demons,Healing Beyond Narcissistic Fist
uh Family Relationships.
And when I first met you, youwere in the process of writing
your book.
Yes.
What what led you to write thebook in the first place?
(05:51):
What what and that's a veryvulnerable thing to do.
So what made you feel like Ineed to do this?
SPEAKER_01 (05:57):
I um really felt like there was a lot of people
that talked about whatnarcissism is and that, and and
it's a buzzword.
And a lot of people see it, youknow, they they use the term
very loosely.
And I the more I did the myresearch, the more I understood
what this was, what thispsychological disorder meant uh
(06:19):
for my mother and for me, Ireally wanted to clarify that
for myself.
And so, like every people saythe first draft that you write
is for yourself, right?
And so my first draft wasliterally so I could flesh out
like how do I feel about whatdoes this mean for me?
How do I what you know, how do Igo from what do I do from here?
(06:40):
And how do I live my life nowthat I'm not have somebody
manage micromanaging every timeevery part of my being?
And it really, you know, I gotmet more and more people that
just didn't really fullyunderstand what narciss what
narcissistic personalitydisorder really is.
And so I was able to flesh outthe difference between oh, I
(07:00):
wrote it down, narcissisticpersonality disorder versus
narcissistic tendencies.
SPEAKER_00 (07:08):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (07:08):
And so we we all have narcissistic tendencies,
all of us, you know, part of itis survival.
We need to survive, you know,we're gonna like push somebody
away while we're trying to notdrown.
It's just a natural thing,right?
But at the same time, somebodywith narcissistic personality
disorder has um so they'rethey're they're not they're not
(07:33):
born, they're created.
And in a sense, we create our ifwe're to become, let's say I
become a narcissist, I'm gonnacreate myself.
I'm going to protect my ego.
I'm gonna protect myself becausesomething bad happened and I
just need to protect it.
And we all do that, right?
That's just natural, human, weneed that.
And so we I make thisprotection, and then maybe
(07:55):
something else happens, I makeanother protection.
And then, but then a narcissist,somebody who has narcissistic
personality disorder, creates somany of those protections.
It literally builds and buildsand builds and builds and builds
on itself to the point wherethey can't even reach their own
ego anymore.
And we cannot make changes toour thinking, to our lives, to
(08:18):
our we cannot make those changeswithout being vulnerable.
Because to make to be in adifferent space than we're
familiar with, we have to bevulnerable and they can't do
that because they've that's whatthey've done is they've
protected themselves from beingvulnerable and they can't do
that.
So that's why it's that's whypeople say they can't change,
(08:38):
because they've they reallycan't, because they can't get to
their own ego to changethemselves.
And so I wanted to be able toclarify that in my book, and
that's why I think I did.
I had a number of people whohave read it, and a couple a
number of psychologists actuallyhave read it and said, Yeah,
that that you've you've prettymuch hit the nail on the head.
So I feel like I've done it.
SPEAKER_00 (08:59):
Yeah.
And I think that it's importantto to distinguish, like you
said, it's a buzzword.
It is, you know, I you hear onsocial media all the time, and
you hear it in in conversationwith people.
My boyfriend is a narcissist, ormy mother is a narcissist, or my
brother is a narcissist.
Like we hear people say that allthe time.
And I think that we it has ithas diluted the understanding of
(09:23):
what narcissism is because it'slike you said, we all have
narcissistic tendencies.
Narcissistic tendencies areself-preserved, self-centered,
self-yeah, well, andself-self-focused.
Like it's it's viewing the lensthrough how does this affect me,
and without without the capacityto view how it's affecting other
(09:46):
people, and without without theability to have empathy for
others, without, you know, andso it's I think that there are
varying degrees of narcissismwithin the population, right?
Because because I think thatthere are people who become, and
you know, I think that there'slots of reasons that it happens.
(10:06):
I think our society kind offosters narcissism in uh in
people.
We have social media tends to umkind of feed narcissism, you
know, when people are sofocused, we we become
disconnected from other peoplebecause we're not seeing that
the way that what we're sayingor doing is affecting others,
and we're not considering, youknow, we just are like want the
(10:27):
dopamine hits from you know,likes and clicks and you know,
and and so I think that we'vegot a lot of uh a lot of things
that kind of reward narcissisticbehavior, but that is a big,
there's a big difference betweenchoices and behaviors that are
narcissistic, like self-centeredand self-focused, and the the
(10:49):
extreme situation what you'retalking about, which is
narcissistic personalitydisorder.
And can you can you talk alittle bit more about, first of
all, it's very as as far as Iunderstand, it's very uncommon
for somebody who hasnarcissistic personality
disorder to actually bediagnosed, right?
Because they're notintrospective, they're not
somebody who thinks that there'sanything wrong with them.
SPEAKER_01 (11:10):
There's nothing wrong with me.
I'm good.
SPEAKER_00 (11:13):
So are you okay sharing like how this happened?
SPEAKER_01 (11:17):
Because this is kind of an unusual situation, right?
It is a big deal.
And and I've often said thatwhen I've mentioned that when
mom was actually diagnosed, andthat was because she had tried
to commit suicide for I don'tknow what time what time this
was, how many times, you know,it's been it was multiple times.
And it's and I understand thatit was a a need to be focused
(11:43):
on, and she wasn't feeling likeshe was being focused on enough,
but she was so at this pointtime she had put herself into a
coma and my stepfather, notknowing what else to do, had her
admitted into a hospital, andthey diagnosed her there while
she was there.
So that's how she got diagnosed.
So it wasn't even on her, um, onit, it wasn't even something
(12:07):
that she'd went in and asked forbecause my what I've been told
by people, multiple people, isthat a narcissist um will never
ask to be evaluated.
SPEAKER_00 (12:22):
They just won't.
Because that requiresvulnerability.
That's one of the things thatyeah.
Well, that's one of the thingsthat I've like the more
research, my own personalexperience and the more research
I've done with bipolar, youknow, is which is the whole
point of my podcast, is somebodywho's struggling with these
symptoms, we are there arepeople who are good with getting
(12:46):
the the diagnosis and then justsuffering for the rest of their
lives because they don't, youknow, and and often I think it
has it has to do with wounding,you know, they're so deeply
wounded that the re the level ofvulnerability that would be
required for them to go back andlook at their life and be
willing to face trauma and face,you know, unhealthy thought and
behavior patterns, and that isis too much for them.
(13:08):
And they don't, they're notwilling to go there.
And so I think that they're youknow, it's it's understandable
when somebody's been deeplyhurt, you know, it's it's kind
of like an animal who's beendeeply wounded, and they're
like, you go you keep trying togo to help them and they keep
like fighting you, right?
Yep.
Uh it's sensible.
SPEAKER_01 (13:25):
It's natural for us to fight back when we are afraid
of something.
That's just yeah, that's justlike ingrained in in our human
nature.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (13:34):
Yeah.
And so I one of the reasons whyI love your book is that you
talk about, because most peoplewill never be diagnosed, you
talk about what your experiencewas as a you know, as a child,
as a youth, you know, like youtalk about your experience, you
talk about what you experiencedfrom your mother.
And and there's a few thingsthat I want to actually talk
(13:55):
about with your early story,because you, as you mentioned,
when you are, when you're raisedas a child, especially when
you're little, you have no otherframe of reference.
Your life is is your life, andthat's what is normal to you.
That's what you think everybodyelse has.
It's only when we get out intothe world that we start noticing
(14:16):
differences and start toquestion, like, wait a minute,
why is you know, like you weresaying, like people talking
about how loving mothers are,and you're thinking, you know,
and and you, your tendency tolook back at yourself and think
there must be something wrongwith me that my mother doesn't
love me.
Like it's instead of looking atyour mom and saying there's
something wrong with my mother,like she's not a good mother,
(14:37):
she's not a kind mother, she'snot, you know, she doesn't, it's
always looking it back atyourself.
And I think it's super helpfulto people to understand the
psychology behind what happensto you as a as a person being
abused by somebody who hasnarcissistic personality
disorder.
So can you talk about like whenyou first started recognizing
(14:58):
that there was somethingdifferent or something wrong and
and what it felt like you withyou, because you talk a little
bit about like the dissonance itcreated within yourself.
SPEAKER_01 (15:07):
Yeah.
The first time I experiencedlike, wait, something's not
right.
What my mother's doing isabusive.
And I started questioning,right?
And I went to uh a schoolauthority, and because I kept
being told, well, it waspromoted, you know, if you're
being abused, tell somebody, youknow.
(15:28):
So I did.
And my experience was the the,you know, they they have to have
the police go.
So the police went, talked to mymother, but my mother, you know,
is beautiful.
She has very, very good withwords, and she she was able to
convince, and she's very, andthat's what narcissists, full-on
narcissists are.
They are very good atmanipulation.
And so she just explained tothem that I was this, that, or
(15:52):
the other thing.
And they came to me and told meto my face that I had been
getting my friends to beat me upto um so that I could get my
mother in trouble for all thebruises that I had.
And it was it was something thatat the time just proved to me
that there really is somethingwrong with me, not not wrong
with my mother.
(16:13):
Okay, so it's really not abuse,it's just me.
I'm just I'm just broken.
There's something wrong with me.
And um, but it it it was yearslater before I um just decided,
I don't know, somewhere alongthe line, I just decided to just
sort of live my life and and notworry about abuse.
Just, but when she was diagnosedand I started researching it,
(16:36):
that's when it really, reallykicked over.
So in my childhood, I hadquestions, but I I kept having
experiences that proved that Iwas wrong, you know, and and and
I think that's one of the thingsthat a full-on narcissist will
do is that they will convinceyou.
It's like, oh, you're you'rethey it's the whole gaslighting
(16:57):
thing, right?
This isn't really the truth.
This is and the hard thing forme was when I look back on it,
and I still look back on it, andit still hurts my heart to think
about how many people go throughthis.
It's like not only is yourparent gaslighting you, the
world is gaslighting you.
Oh, mothers always love theirchildren, they love their
(17:18):
children completely.
There's nothing, there's no wayyour mother would ever say what
you know what you're saying shesaid.
And so it's like, but I did hearit.
I did hear that.
And yet I'm being told my motherwould never say something like
that.
So I know I never did recordwhat she said.
SPEAKER_00 (17:35):
Right.
Well, and you gaslight yourself.
Like you start you have there'san inability to trust your own,
your yourself to, you know, youdon't feel like you can trust
your mind, you don't feel likeyou can trust your feelings.
Can you talk about what thatfelt like?
SPEAKER_01 (17:49):
And yeah, and then when you get authorities that
tell you, like the police thattell you to your face that
you're the one that's in thewrong, you know, I that's that's
the tough part was coming toterms with all of that.
And like the year that I wasstudying and researching what
narcissist narcissisticpersonality disorder actually
(18:11):
was, and what the DSM containsabout it, explains it.
That year I went through allsorts of grief, you know, and
all sorts of all the levels ofrecovery and that kind of
healing and stuff, because Ijust I had just put that on the
shelf, you know, from myexperience and from others that
(18:32):
I had prior and before andafter, that I just put that on
the shelf.
So um just spelling it out in mybook really helped a lot because
it gave me the confidence to beable to say, okay, this really
was my life.
And even, you know, though Ihave family members who didn't
(18:53):
have the same experience,because backing up a little bit,
where when I was born, I was anonly child for the first seven
years.
And from the time I was twountil I was five, my mom and I
were the only, you know, she wasa single parent and I was the
only child.
So I was the golden child andthe scapegoat, all rolled up in
(19:16):
one.
And so I could sometimes in thesame sentence, she would tell me
how wonderful and awesome I was,but I wasn't going to amount to
any, I wasn't going to amount toanything because she had, you
know, she she just she playedboth sides.
I was in both sides.
So I still to this day struggle.
If anything, anybody complimentsme, I like I back off.
(19:38):
If anybody tells me a criticism,I back off.
It's like I can't, I have toreally focus my mind on the
present moment and say, okay,where am I?
What is this?
What is happening right here?
You know, this is it's okay, youknow, and allow for either side
and just say, okay, how do Ireceive this?
(19:59):
And all of this happens within ahalf a second, you know, because
I've learned to be able toprocess a lot faster now.
But it was for for a minutethere, there it was like I had
to just sort of get out ofthere, whatever wherever I was.
It's like, don't compliment me,don't tell me I'm wrong,
nothing.
Just don't do any of that.
Just don't do anything.
(20:20):
I don't care if it's you know,positive criticism, just don't
give me anything.
Just don't talk to me.
Yeah.
It was really hard to figure outhow to balance that.
But that that was that firstyear of figuring out what all of
that meant.
And then fleshing out my bookwas just like the answer to my
prayers, because that was itwhere I was able to show, you
(20:43):
know, yes, these things reallyhappened.
Yes, I really feel this way.
And and I learned how to balanceboth the negative and the
positive.
And so the there's a lot of talkabout like we got to be
positive, which yes, we need tobe positive.
But if we completely ignore thenegative, then we are negating
(21:03):
to use the term, negating theexperience.
You know, you can't just look ata problem and say, this
happened, this bad thinghappened, so I'm gonna ignore
the bad part and I'm gonna justlook at the good side side.
And you can't do that and andand have a whole experience.
You know, we have to balanceboth sides so that we can have a
(21:24):
complete experience.
And sometimes the negative ismore than the positives, and you
have to just sort of look at itand decide for yourself whether
you want to accept what itreally was, or do you want to
just sort of throw that out andbe only positive?
And to me, for myself, that justtakes away from it.
(21:48):
I need I need to find I'm I'mliving in the negative.
I was born and and was taughtvery negative thinking.
And uh to to create the positivethinking, I had to say.
And okay, see the glass is halfempty, but the liquid is
disgusting and I'm halfway done.
So I had to like find my waytowards positive.
(22:09):
And I still do that sometimes.
Sometimes I'm like, okay, youknow what?
I can't see this as anything butnegative.
But you know, but maybesomething, something good is
coming.
You know, I have to, I have tobe able to balance both because
if I push away only the if Ipush away all the negative, then
I lose the the meat of theexperience.
SPEAKER_00 (22:29):
So can you talk about, I I think we need to
probably for our audience whohaven't read your book yet,
which everybody needs to readher book.
It's phenomenal.
Thank you.
Can you start with what yourgrowing up looked like?
So when we talk aboutnarcissistic narcissistic abuse,
what what did that look like foryou?
Okay.
So can you share with ouraudience what that what that was
(22:50):
like for you?
SPEAKER_01 (22:51):
Sure.
Um let me see how I can phrasethis.
When I was a child, I thoughtlike a child, but I I was a
normal child.
And when I was being what I wasbeing told was everything that I
was doing was one of the thingsshe liked to say was, I would
(23:13):
find the worst place to stickthe knife in and then twist it
and make it hurt the most forher.
And I kept wanting to like, no,no, I'm not, no, I'm not.
I'm trying to do, you know, I'mtrying to be.
It was hard to see things theway she explained them to me.
You know, when I was two, shetold me I was the adult in our
(23:36):
relationship.
And at two, I didn't know how toadult.
And so I all the every time Idid something wrong, I just felt
like I was wrong.
And there was something bad inme.
And sorry, the the name isescaping me, but there's a a
doctor that, and I have it in mybook.
He he said that as a child, weneed to see our parent as
(23:59):
godlike.
You know, they have we have tosee them as godlike.
So what we will do is we willtrans um transpose anything that
happens as it's all our fault,because then we can keep them in
the God role and we're thedevil.
That way they're not, you know,because we can't we can't
(24:20):
process the idea that we'reliving with the devil as our
leader, you know, as the personthat's having charge over us.
We have to see them as godlike.
And so we will always take thepoor side, like it's it's my
fault.
I did it wrong.
Somehow I'm the wrong.
And I look back and I no longeram angry for her about that.
(24:43):
I just just it just it breaks myheart that she couldn't see the
value in having a child and andand the beauty, because I've
loved my children, and I I justI just like my children aren't
like my world, you know, and Ijust can't imagine not
(25:04):
experiencing that beauty.
She missed that.
So as a as a child, I justthought I was wrong, but I look
back and I'm like, no, I wasn'twrong or bad or a mistake or a
problem.
But even though she saw myindependence as a fatalistic
(25:25):
flaw, I can still look at it asit is what got me through.
My independence got me throughall the abuse.
And now I can use it forsomething positive and something
good.
SPEAKER_00 (25:38):
Yeah.
Most people, when they gothrough that kind of dissonance,
develop symptoms of likeanxiety, depression.
Can you talk about what kind ofsymptoms developed around the
abuse and the like constantdissonance in your life where
you're, you know, you talk aboutthe need to feel connected with
your mother, and and you talkabout constantly working to try
(26:02):
and please her so that she wouldwant to connect with you?
And what is that?
I mean, that kind of thingcreates anxiety in people
because you never you're wantingto approach and you're wanting
to feel close and also afraid atthe same time because you never
know what you're gonna get fromthem.
So, what what kind of symptomsdeveloped around the life
experience that you had growingup that way?
SPEAKER_01 (26:24):
So, my my book is called Facing Your Demons, and
the demons that I talk about areour limiting beliefs.
So we are amazing as humans.
We have such capacity, our ourminds are so incredible, our
bodies have an amazing abilityto heal.
You know, we cut ourselves.
(26:44):
People can like, you can get cutourselves, and we know generally
we know, like, okay, well, it'sgonna heal, and there's gonna be
a time to process through that,but we don't understand, you
know, the internal are alleverything is connected, and all
the parts that need to heal aregoing to heal over time.
We just need to allow that andgive ourselves the space to do
(27:09):
that.
And I think I went off yourquestion.
What was your question again?
SPEAKER_00 (27:12):
Just like what kinds of symptoms developed around
like growing up with this likeconstant, like wanting to
approach and feel connected, butbeing afraid of what might come.
Like it's that creates likeconstant fight or flight.
You're constantly, you know.
So can you talk about like whatkind of symptoms developed
around that?
Thank you.
I was going there, I just hadforgotten where I was.
Yeah, yeah.
That I've done the same thing.
SPEAKER_01 (27:34):
I do have ADHD.
So that that has been an awesomediscovery because now I know why
I go off track.
Anyway, so when when I waslearning how to process what
happened, I was able to get movetowards allowing the disconnects
(27:57):
that I learned and movingtowards, I think I lost it
again.
I don't know why.
Moving towards the ability torecover.
I have lots of demons still leftover.
And I like to say I had 15mountains, now I only have like
two or three.
So I've gone through a lot.
(28:20):
And there are gonna be some thatprobably stay with me through to
the end of until my death.
And it's what I've come to isit's okay.
I can work with them.
I've learned now how to workwith them as they show up.
You know, I don't have to getrid of them.
It's like that, like I have torecognize the negative and the
(28:40):
positive and balance it, youknow, and figure out how to
balance because those negativesare with me.
Those demons are going to bewith me.
All the disconnects are stillgonna be with me.
I'm still gonna go intosomething new that I'm not
familiar with and question can Ido this?
(29:00):
You know, am I really capable ofthis?
Is this something that I canactually do anything about?
Or should I do anything about?
Maybe I should just let it be.
Sometimes things just processout through their themselves.
And sometimes our minds cancycle and sometimes we just need
a day off, you know, we justneed to take a day.
(29:21):
Sit with a hot mug or, you know,maybe read a book, maybe I don't
know, watch a movie, whateverwe're doing, you know, just just
sometimes we just need to backout and stop moving forward so
fast, especially.
And we talked about earlierabout, you know, in our world
where things are, it it creates,it's it's very good.
Our world is very good atcreating narcissists.
(29:42):
Yeah, but we don't have to beone.
Right.
We can choose to allow our needsto be met without harming other
people.
unknown (29:54):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (29:54):
Right.
So when I get to a moment whereI'm like, the demons are
overwhelming me.
I'm gonna lash out if I'm notcareful.
I will, I will literally find myway back to my home in my little
office where I'm safe.
I like plants, as you can see,and I just nature, nature, I
just need nature.
So I will just get around natureand and recenter.
(30:18):
Sometimes I only need 10minutes.
Sometimes I need a whole day.
But I just allow myself to bewherever I need to be, and I
just gotta keep tuning in andjust keep tuning in to where my
brain is at the moment.
SPEAKER_00 (30:37):
And you you talk about how you had your mom had
modeled this kind of parentingfor you your entire life.
And so when you became a parent,that's that's what you knew.
That's how you that's how you soyou but you recognized, you
started to recognize this isn'thealthy.
So can you talk about like howdo you how do you recognize this
(30:58):
isn't healthy?
And then how do you change?
Especially if you don't have anunderstanding of what was wrong
in the first place.
That's really important becausea lot of times we don't always
understand entirely where ourdysfunction or the unhealthy
thoughts and behaviors arecoming from, but that doesn't
mean that we can't do anythingabout it, right?
SPEAKER_01 (31:16):
Absolutely.
That is so true.
My personal circumstance was Icall it a personal Armageddon
because I literally bottomedout.
I had been, I use the wordobsequious to my mother and then
to my first husband, tobasically giving in to whatever
they wanted because that was myjob.
(31:37):
As the adult in therelationship, I had to um be,
you know, give in to whateverthey thought was best because I
couldn't do, I wasn't capable ofmaking the good choices.
So in my particular situation, Ihad a literal bottoming out.
And so um from that moment, Iwas, I was, um, I'll describe
(32:04):
it.
I was, I literally woke up and Iwas sitting on the floor and
rock with my knees to my chest,rocking back and forth and
sobbing convulsively.
And my daughter at the time, Ihad only one child at a time.
She was uh a year and a half orso.
She was standing over me,patting me on the back, saying,
(32:25):
it's okay, mommy, it's okay.
And I'm like, oh no, no, no.
That like woke me up.
I'm like, I am not going to havemy daughter raise me.
Like I was raised, I wassanctioned to raise my mother
because no.
So I had to figure out, but atthe time I didn't know how to be
an adult.
I I mean, I was still not ableto be an adult because I'd never
(32:47):
kind of moved on from giving mypower to everybody else because
everybody else knew better,right?
And so I still I didn't know howto do that.
So I had I had to start at thatmoment and move forward.
And it doesn't matter whetheryou have a personal Armageddon
or not, if you decide thatsomething needs to change, then
(33:08):
you're the one that needs todecide that needs to change.
And you can only, I love BeckyKennedy, Dr.
Becky Kennedy.
She talks about boundaries andthat boundaries are something
you tell somebody you will do,but it requires the other person
to do nothing.
So regardless of whether theymake changes or not, you have to
(33:31):
set your boundaries for you.
And if that per and you have todecide for yourself whether that
person crosses that boundary ornot, then you got to decide what
that means for you.
So do I leave?
Do I, you know, set a differentboundary?
I mean, like that's the thing isdon't don't change, set your
boundaries.
And yes, they need to adjustbecause life happens and you
(33:52):
grow and you change and youmature, but you got to set
certain boundaries and they haveto be solid.
And sometimes you need to set aboundary that as you grow,
you'll never have that boundaryagain.
You know, I chose some peoplewho will completely separate
themselves from theirnarcissistic parents,
(34:14):
narcissistic personalitydisorder parents.
And other people like me willset my boundaries.
And when my mom would call and Iwas not in a good place to be
taking her stuff, then Iwouldn't answer.
You know?
And and that's okay.
That was okay.
I had to give myself the graceto not answer, and I didn't have
(34:38):
to give her every aspect of mylife.
In fact, at that point, I hadmultiple children, and I wanted
to give my my energy to mychildren, you know, and and it
was still a bit disconnected,but I wanted to give what I had
to them, and I had no longer hadthat space to give to my mother
(35:01):
all the time.
I had, I chose to give some ofit to her, but I would have to
again check in and limit what Igave her and what I didn't.
I didn't have to tell hereverything.
I didn't have to give her mywhole life story at the moment,
whatever was happening in mylife.
(35:22):
You know, I could give I Ilearned, I got really good at
learning what I could say andwhat I didn't, what I couldn't
say, you know, because she wouldreact to certain things.
And I, but I already knew mostof that.
So there were times when Ithought I could share something,
as you were talking aboutearlier, and I wanted to
connect.
So I would say something, andshe wanted, she was like, I want
(35:44):
you to be able to tell meanything.
I was like, no, she did.
She wanted to be a meter to beable to tell her anything, but I
didn't want to be able to tellher anything because I knew that
she would use it against me.
So I had to learn what was safeand what was not safe, and just
allow it to be.
And if she found out something Ididn't tell her, it's like, why
didn't she tell me that?
(36:05):
I guess I, you know, I just hadI sometimes, yes, I lied.
Sometimes I would be like, Ijust forgot.
And that was, I mean, I likeliterally gave myself grace to
to be able to lie to my mother,which I would never have done as
a child.
unknown (36:20):
No.
SPEAKER_01 (36:21):
Ever.
SPEAKER_00 (36:21):
That was just not allowed.
So you had this kind of likeawakening experience.
Well, tell me what what thingslook like after that, because
you're not just trying to figurethis out for yourself because
your way of looking at the worldwasn't healthy at the time.
So, what things did you do totry to learn how to unwind this
dysfunction in yourself and theunhealthy thought and behavior
(36:44):
patterns and learn how to setboundaries?
Talk about what things look likeafter that point.
SPEAKER_01 (36:51):
That's a hard uh question to answer because I was
so disconnected from realitythat I had to literally create
my own reality, realize thatthat wasn't still quite reality.
So I had to change it again andagain and again and again and
again.
And it was more persistence thatgot me to the place where I
(37:15):
could finally see, okay, this isreality, you know, and I would
meet people, and the interestingthing is meeting people, and
they're very a lot of people arevery good at presenting.
And we talk about this on on theinternet and and um social
media, people will present thisperfect picture of how things
(37:38):
are, and they're not.
And so I had to learn,especially growing up in the
world, as as social media wasjust beginning to take off,
right?
And so I was learning as thiswas all coming into play how to
see things for what they wereand learn how to distinguish,
okay, that's somebody's perfectpicture, but I know them
(38:03):
personally, and that's not whattheir house looks like, or
that's not what they eat, orthat's not what they actually
say, you know, and I and it wasa good time for me to be
learning that because, like Isaid, social media was just
starting to take off, and it wassomething I could learn as
social media was beginning toblossom.
(38:24):
I could learn how to distinguishthe difference between right and
wrong for me and what I waswilling to present and what I
wasn't, and and see, and see thetruth in things.
But it took me a long time, andand that was where the grace I
kept giving, I had to givemyself grace to get it wrong
(38:46):
multiple times.
Wasn't I wasn't good at makingmistakes and allowing my
daughter to make mistakes wasreally hard because I just
wanted her to do it all rightand have everything right.
And it was like I was takingaway her childhood again, like I
had been, my child had beentaken away just because out of
okay, well, let me make sure youdid all right so that you can
(39:09):
have a good life.
And just like that's not a goodlife.
Experience, mistakes, fallingdown, scraping your knees, all
the things, all the negativesalong with the positives.
That's the balance, that's theimportant part of of living this
life and and becoming whole.
We can't become whole if we onlytake the positives.
SPEAKER_00 (39:30):
You know, we have to have negatives as well.
Did you have tools that youused?
Like, did you go to therapy?
Did you journal?
Like, did you use any tools thathelped you to unwind any of
this, or was this all justintuition and you just worked
through it yourself?
SPEAKER_01 (39:44):
I just it well, it took me years and years and like
you know, decades, and and Iworked through it myself.
I did go to therapy when Istarted having trouble in my
second marriage, and we went totherapy, and I then especially
after my mother was diagnosed, Idid a lot of research and
started seeing things thatthat's how it is.
(40:04):
That's that's that is thereality of the things.
And you know, I I had this, so Ihad to take this attitude.
Something can work for me,whether it's right or wrong, it
doesn't matter.
If it works for me, I canutilize it.
And then when it doesn't workfor me, I can adjust and change
and grow.
(40:25):
As long as I'm not harming otherpeople, that was just my
personal, you know, motto.
I don't like doing things thatare harming other people.
I wanted to adjust and changefor myself without hurting other
people.
So if I so I tried to give mychildren the space to be able to
(40:47):
make mistakes, but I just had avisit with my daughter this last
week, and she made it prettyclear there was once or twice
where I absolutely did not allowher to make mistakes because I'm
like, no, you can't do it thatway.
And it's interesting because Ican look back and I'm like,
yeah, I can give reasons andexcuses for why I did that.
(41:08):
But the truth is she had everyright to make mistakes, and I
had the responsibility and thestewardship to allow her to make
mistakes.
And I didn't in that moment.
But there were a lot of othertimes when I did.
I keep, you know, I can I canjust hope that she can look at
those someday too and see that Iwas, yeah, I made mistakes.
Yeah, I I made mistakes.
(41:30):
Don't we all?
We all I like to say a lot ofus, a lot of my friends and I
like to say, yes, we put ourkids through therapy because we
give our kids reasons to go totherapy as parents.
That's just that's just part ofparenting.
It's like we sign a contract orsomething.
Yes, I will make sure my kids gothrough therapy.
SPEAKER_00 (41:49):
I know my aunt and uncle used to joke that they
were already saving up for thetherapy their kids were gonna
need when they were done withthem.
Right.
All of us make mistakes asparents.
Like we're we're we're humansthat make mistakes that are that
were raised by humans that mademistakes.
Like it's just everybody isgonna struggle, right?
Um, but one of the things that Iwanted to talk a little bit
(42:09):
about is I think I think thatone of the trends that I see
with like describing everybodyas narcissists online and in in
social media and that isrelieving themselves of the any
kind of personal accountabilityor responsibility.
And I think that that's one ofthe dangers of some of these
(42:30):
diagnoses, most of thesediagnoses is the person who
receives the diagnosis, whetherit's a narcissistic personality
disorder or bipolar disorder oranxiety disorder, it ends
curiosity into what actually isgoing on.
You think, oh, I I'm just I justit's just the way I am, right?
And and so it creates it turnsthem into victims because they
(42:53):
don't feel like they can doanything about it.
And so they kind of give uptheir agency in the process.
They kind of surrender, I feellike we we, your agency is still
available to you, but peoplekind of surrendered, surrender
their agency.
I know that I, in some ways,feel like I surrendered my
agency a bit when I was, when Iwas diagnosed because I I would
believed what I was being told.
I believed that bipolar wasincurable lifelong.
(43:15):
I would have it for the rest ofmy life.
And so when I would experiencesymptoms that led to behaviors
that were unhealthy, you know, II didn't like it, but I didn't
feel like I had any control overit, you know.
Right.
And I had a I had a you know acrisis moment where I like all
of a sudden things shifted.
I started realizing I'm ruiningeverybody's lives.
I can't end my life because Iwill ruin my daughter's life if
(43:36):
I do.
Something's gotta change.
Nobody's coming to save me.
I gotta find a way to savemyself.
And that was a turning point forme in my life where I started
like I thought I was beingresponsible for by going to the
doctor and taking themedication.
And I didn't have any controlover the other stuff, right?
I think the other side of theWell, and I think the other side
(43:58):
of that is.
That we tend to give, makeexcuses for the people who've
been diagnosed.
Yes.
You know what I mean?
Like we, we well, they can'thelp it.
You know, they can't help it.
That's just the way they are.
They have this disease, theyhave this disorder, you know.
And so we surrender some of ouragency and we make ourselves
victims because we feel like,well, they can't help it.
(44:20):
And so I just have to makeallowances for it.
I have to, you know, and we endup with these super unhealthy
relationships.
It's very common for somebodywho's struggling with any kind
of disorder, any of the kind ofthese mental health disorders,
to end up in really unhealthyrelationships because they
don't, they're not takingresponsibility for themselves.
Yeah.
And the other person doesn'tfeel like they can take the
(44:42):
responsibility for themselves.
And so you end up withcodependency.
And so sorry, that's a long wayto say that I think that it's
unhealthy for us to go aroundlabeling people as narcissists
because why does that matter?
And what am I going to do aboutit?
Right.
Yeah.
(45:02):
And so can you talk about you'vetalked about boundaries.
Can you talk about what it, youknow, you were able to see your
mother through through a morecompassionate lens once you saw
what she was, that she had apsychological disorder.
But you then acceptedresponsibility for your own
healing.
unknown (45:19):
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 (45:20):
You made a choice to heal.
You you had already startedestablishing boundaries, even
though you may not have clearlyunderstood what you were doing
at the time.
Exactly.
So can you talk about what whyit's so important for us to take
responsibility for ourselves andbe accountable to ourselves and
make choices that are, you know,helping us to choose to be
healthy and not to be victims?
SPEAKER_01 (45:41):
Well, that's just it.
If, you know, one of the thingsum a a full-on narcissist will
do is blame everybody else.
It's not my fault.
I didn't mean to.
It's not, you know, that wasthat wasn't my intent.
It's like it doesn't matter whatyour intent is.
If if other people are harmed,then you can take responsibility
for that, apologize and and andmove on.
(46:02):
But they won't.
You know, they don't takeresponsibility for that.
So I had to realize that mymother was not going to take
responsibility for the thingsthat she did to me, you know,
because she couldn't only allshe could see is telling me at
two years old that I was theadult in the relationship was
that she was boosting my, youknow, my my self-esteem.
(46:26):
And that was the last thing thatthat did.
You know, parentifying a childis not helpful.
I don't care what age they are.
And she would not see that.
So, you know, we can only, youknow, live our own lives.
We live with other people.
So we have to decide forourselves what are we going to
(46:51):
do when that person does thesethings or that the other thing.
And we have to decide ifsomebody is going to cross our
boundaries or limit our needs.
Maybe we have a need forcompassion and we have a friend
who's compassionate, but forwhatever reason, they're in a
(47:11):
they're having a bad day andthey're not going to be
compassionate today.
You know?
So we can decide for ourselves,but only we can decide this.
We can decide, okay, she hatesme forever.
She's always hated me.
I can't believe that I've everbeen friends with her.
Or we can decide, she's having abad day.
Like I will go to a grocerystore, I will buy something, and
(47:32):
the cashier sometimes will belike, she's just having a bad
day.
And I can try to, you know, saysomething positive.
You know, I will, like I said, Iwill check in and I will like,
is this something I should sayanything about?
Or should I just sort of let itgo?
But I don't need to take itpersonally.
I can choose to take itpersonally.
(47:53):
Okay, she hates me.
No, it has nothing to do withme.
And sometimes somebody can lashout at you, and it's very
personal when they do this, butmaybe it's very personal that
when they do this particularlashing out, and and they're
just, you know, all over theplace about how bad you are at
this or that or the other thing.
And it's like you can listen towhat they have to say and decide
(48:20):
to take on that baggage or not.
That's all on you.
You have complete control overwhat you take from other people.
And if somebody is willing tohear you, maybe you can help
them through it.
Maybe they're not willing tohear it.
Maybe they just need thatmoment.
They didn't have a way to gohome and get away from people,
(48:43):
and they, you know, we're justmaybe their dog died.
I don't know.
I like to say maybe, maybesomething really in close to
them, right?
Somebody really important tothem died and they just don't
know how to handle it.
And so, you know, I'm me yellingback at them is not gonna help
their situation.
And it's not gonna make me feelbetter.
(49:04):
I'm just gonna, you know, lowermyself to their their current
thinking at the moment.
And it's like you choose, wechoose for ourselves where we
stand in relationships.
We can we can have arelationship for decades and you
know, best friend, and then forwhatever reason, they decide
(49:27):
that you're an enemy.
You know, maybe you don't evenknow why, but do you you don't
have to go the same route andstart hating them?
You can say, well, hopefully oneday we can work this out.
But it's hard because especiallywhen we're that attached to
something or someone, you know,to let go of those feelings that
(49:49):
we have for that person.
Had I went, like I said, I wentthrough that year of hating my
mother.
And I had to, I had to figureout where I wanted to land with
that.
But in the moment, but in thatmoment, I literally hated her.
I just like I wanted nothing todo with her.
I didn't even want to thinkabout her.
I didn't want to say her name,nothing.
(50:10):
I just didn't, I didn't evenwant to, I didn't want to talk
to her.
It was, it was a really toughtime because I felt like I was
wrong and I was bad.
And there was something wrongwith me for not giving her the
space to be where she was.
And yet I didn't even understandwhat that meant at that time in
my life.
So I have come to understandthat now.
(50:31):
And that's where I was able tofinally say, she's she is who
she is.
I will never have a relationshipwith my mother like everybody
talks about on Mother's Day.
I will never have that.
And I can decide to continue tohate her, or I can just finally
just say, you know what, I justwon't have that and learn to be
(50:53):
okay with that.
But I had to take, I had toprocess that.
That had that had that neededprocess time.
And I had to give myself thegrace to process through all
that pain and all that loss andthat grief and you know, all
those the five, the five stepsof grief or something that you
go through.
And I went through them multipletimes and I landed on, you know,
(51:15):
acceptance finally.
SPEAKER_00 (51:18):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (51:18):
But I chose to land on acceptance, and that's the
thing is we choose to land wherewe land.
And sometimes we can stay in aplace for a very long time.
Maybe we're angry for years andyears and maybe decades, but we
can choose to move on to thenext space.
And that's we can always choose.
We don't just because we've beenthere for 20 years doesn't mean
(51:40):
we have to stay there forever.
We can choose.
SPEAKER_00 (51:44):
And you talk about choice.
I love the language here becauseI want you to talk about why you
call them demons.
You change you, you named yourbook facing your facing your
demons, right?
Sorry, I just it just went outof my head all of a sudden,
facing your demons.
And and I want you to talk aboutwhy you call them demons and
what you what it means to you,what that meant to you, like
(52:06):
facing your demons, what doesthat look like?
And you talk about how you'veresolved, you know, some demons
and there's still some hangingout.
So can you talk about that thatlanguage and why you chose that
and what that what that actuallylooked like in your your healing
journey?
SPEAKER_01 (52:19):
Sure.
When I was younger, and Idescribe some of this in my
book, when we have a problem ora trauma or something bad, like
let's say something simple seemsnot simple when we're going
through it.
Say we fall off our tricycle,you know, we're three, we'd fall
off our tricycle, and that isthe end of the world, right?
(52:40):
You know, we just we're gonnadie.
My gosh, I I scamed my knee andyou know it hurts, and I'm gonna
die, and everything's awful.
And when you don't have somebodythat can acknowledge you where
you are, because at that moment,it really is the end of the
world for you.
You feel like it, right?
And so you need to allow time toprocess through those emotions
(53:00):
and get to the point where yourealize, okay, I didn't die.
I'm I'm alive.
And then you skin your knee thenext time.
If you are able to process, youskin your knee again, and you're
like, okay, well, I didn't dielast time, so I should be okay.
But man, it hurts.
And so you can cry about it.
And, you know, and you maybe younever stop crying.
And I'm like, if I fall, I stillcry.
Sometimes I'm like, okay, thathurt.
(53:22):
And there's, you know, a tearcoming down.
I'm 61 and I still sometimesallow myself the ability to just
have a moment, and it's okay toprocess through those things.
But when we have that trauma, ifwe're not able to process
through it, we have we create alittle picture around it and
(53:44):
what it looks like and what thatmeans to us.
And when we're not able to getthrough that process and see the
other side, oh, well, I didn'treally die, then, you know, if
we're not able to do that, thenwe have what I call the demons
that kind of show up and theythey start becoming real to us
because it's like, oh, well,you're fine.
(54:07):
The world is horrible, but butyou know, this is I will protect
you.
I've got your back.
It's good.
I've got you here.
And because you need somebody todo that for you.
And when you don't have anybodyto do that for you, you create
somebody to do that for you.
And and I call them our demons.
We create our limiting beliefs.
(54:27):
Well, you know, if if I ride atricycle, I'm gonna fall and I'm
gonna hurt, I'm gonna die.
So I can't, I can't ridetricycles anymore.
You know, I'm I'll never ride abike because I'm just I'm gonna
fall, I'm gonna die.
And so that's kind of an obviousone that as an as adults, we can
look back and think, yeah, okay,that probably wasn't, we weren't
(54:47):
gonna die.
But we didn't know that at thetime.
And when we're not able toprocess, we don't ever believe
that.
If we if we do grow and wechange and we have some a much
worse trauma and we create alimiting belief around it to
make sense of it, because we'retrying to make sense in our
(55:09):
thinking at the moment, whereverwe are at that moment, in our
three-year-old self, you know,that that thinking in the moment
is this is the world, this iswhat it is.
And so we make sense of it bycreating these beliefs.
And maybe they're limitingbeliefs, maybe they're real
beliefs.
I don't know.
But as we process through them,if we don't change the
(55:32):
perspective of how to view it,because we've got, let's say
we've got new information andwe've never accept the fact that
riding a tricycle and fallingoff doesn't mean you're gonna
die.
If we never accept that, thenthose, those, those limiting
beliefs become something sonefarious and and they just grow
(55:55):
in, you know.
So we then then we're like, oh,well, I can't walk on a sidewalk
because I'm gonna fall off, or Ican't walk, you know, I can't
climb a mountain because I mightfall.
You know, and and it just as weget older, we do harder things.
We can't do those things becausewe might fall, and then we'll
die.
You know, we can't do thisbecause we might die.
And and it literally startstaking over our lives.
(56:17):
And we have to choose.
At any point, we can choose.
We just gotta do the hard thing.
It literally is a hard thing,especially if we've had it since
three years old.
You know, we can look back andwe say, okay, as an adult, we
can look back and say, that'snot probably not gonna happen.
I'm pretty sure at this pointthat it's not gonna happen.
So we can get back on thattricycle.
(56:39):
Maybe we actually go back to atricycle, you know, maybe we
just get on a bicycle, maybe wejust climb a mountain, maybe we,
you know, have a friend hold ourhand while we do something
really hard that for us meanswe're gonna die.
But they can help us throughthat.
And that's where we we canchoose.
(57:00):
That's where we can choose tokeep our keep our limiting
beliefs, our demons close, or wecan let them go.
And sometimes we need to hold onto them.
Like, you know, I needed to holdon to the one for a while.
I needed to hold on to the onethat like I'm responsible for my
mother.
And I wasn't.
I never was.
(57:20):
I should never have beenresponsible for my mother.
But even when I saw thedifference, I had to like, okay,
I'm not ready to let that one gobecause I've got some others I
need to hold on to.
I mean, to let go of.
And then those letting go ofthose other ones gave me the
space to um to let go of thatone because that one was a big
one.
(57:40):
I was, I was responsible for mymother, you know?
And if, and that's ingrained inyour mind it too.
You hold on to that one becausethat is your life blood.
You know, if I if I don't takecare of my mother, I might lose
her, I might, and then I'll bethen then who's gonna take care
of me?
Then how am I gonna live?
You know, where am I gonna go?
I'm gonna sleep in the ditch oroh my god, who's gonna feed me?
(58:03):
I don't know.
It's gonna be awful.
So I can't do that.
So I I had to hold on to thatone for a very short time until
I could let go a few others thatwere um kind of carrying that
one.
And then once I let go of those,then I could let go of that one.
And it was so freeing.
SPEAKER_00 (58:20):
Yeah, and I think that's I think that's a really
important thing to understand isthat when we're trying to heal
long-held deep-seated emotional,mental beliefs that are
unhealthy and and ways ofexperiencing the world that are
unhealthy takes time.
(58:41):
The way that I described it onetime is like trying to pull the
weeds out without ripping outthe garden.
Like you're trying to, you'retrying to unwind the weeds from
the plants because you don'twant to rip the plants out.
Yeah, you don't want to rip theplants out, but they're all the
weeds are designed to destroylife, right?
They they go in and they spreadtheir roots and they wind around
and they choke out the goodplants.
(59:03):
And so when you get in there anddecide, like, this is a mess, I
gotta clean up my garden, youknow, your brain, you have to go
in and take the time to unwindso that you don't rip the good
things out with the bad things.
But it's really hard to tell thedifference a lot of times.
It's hard to see like what'swhat's healthy and what's
unhealthy.
And and so it's so important tobe intentional and patient with
(59:26):
healing because it's because ittakes time.
You're you're changing the waythat you interact with the
world.
I've talked before about howthere's two pieces to the
healing.
You have to heal the trauma, butyou also have to change the
habits.
You've got all these habits thatyou've lived with your entire
life that were designed toprotect you.
(59:47):
They're not doing a great job,but that's what they were doing.
They were trying to do it, youknow, even if they were doing it
in a poor way.
unknown (59:52):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (59:53):
You know, and so you can't do one without the other
and and expect to actually heal.
You can't, you can't just changethe habits because if the
underlying trauma is stillthere, your brain is going to
keep going back to the troughto, you know, try and you know
or going back to these habitsbecause that's what it knows.
It knows that this is hurt andthis is what how I protect.
(01:00:13):
But we also can't just heal thetrauma without changing the
habits because the trauma mightgo away, but we've got these
habits that have are deeplyingrained in us.
And if you don't actively changethe habits, you'll keep doing
that and you'll keep living withthe unhealthy thought and
behavior patterns and unhealthyway of interacting with the
world.
Absolutely.
(01:00:33):
So I first of all, thank you somuch for coming on today.
I love your book and I wanteverybody to read it.
So I I'm gonna have that linkedin the show notes.
Please go get a copy of it.
It is really phenomenal.
And I think you said thataudiobook is the audiobook out
yet or is it coming out?
SPEAKER_01 (01:00:47):
Audiobook is out.
Yes.
Yay.
So excited about that.
Yes.
I'm a big audiobook fan, so Ilisten.
Well, I had to get it on a wheelbecause that was how I listen to
books.
SPEAKER_00 (01:00:59):
Yes.
Yes.
Yep.
I I unfortunately don't have alot of time to sit and read
anymore.
And so I am a big fan ofaudiobooks because it's a great
way to be able to still read andlisten and gain new information
and knowledge and enjoyment.
Um, so please go get a copy ofher book, Facing Your Demons.
And can you give us one?
(01:01:20):
What is the one thing that youwould encourage the audience to
do today to help themselves movetowards taking responsibility
for their own healing?
What is a tip that you can givethat will help people to make a
choice today that will help themmove towards healing and taking
responsibility for themselves?
unknown (01:01:36):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (01:01:38):
I have a tool I call RAD.
It's recognize, recognize theproblem, the the issue, the
disconnect, acknowledge yourpart in it.
So, you know, it's like you haveresponsibility to make changes.
Nobody else has can changethings for you.
You change yourself.
So what you know, acknowledgeyour responsibility in it,
whatever that is, and then youdecide what you want to do with
(01:02:02):
that.
Maybe you want to just leave italone.
But, you know, once if yourecognize it and it's a problem,
then you you get you afteryou've acknowledged and you
decide what to do with it,that's where you decide.
Is this something that I'm like,okay, actually I'm okay with
that?
Or no, I really need this tochange, then you can decide how,
(01:02:22):
you know, take the steps to makethat change, but be okay with
the process of whatever thatmeans.
Because if it's big, you'regonna take time more time to
process than than you know, thanif it's a small thing.
SPEAKER_00 (01:02:36):
Yeah, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_01 (01:02:38):
That's my that's one of my favorite tools.
I call it RAD.
SPEAKER_00 (01:02:41):
I love it.
And that's I like acronyms too.
They always make it easy toremember things.
Lisa, thank you so much.
You're amazing.
And I'm so grateful for yourbook.
I'm grateful for yourvulnerability and your
willingness to share yourexperience to help others.
Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01 (01:02:55):
Thank you.
Thank you for having me on.
SPEAKER_00 (01:02:57):
Absolutely.
And you can get the link in thebio.
I have I have Lisa's informationlinked there, so make sure you
connect with her.
Where can they connect with you?
I'll have you share that onhere, and then I'll make sure
it's all linked in the bio.
SPEAKER_01 (01:03:08):
Sure.
Um, I have a website calledfacingyourdemonsbook.com.
And so and an email, uhfacingyourdemonsbook at
gmail.com.
So you can use either one.
I'm also on Instagram with myname and LinkedIn.
So I mean, I got a lot of, I'min a lot of different places.
Yeah.
But my website is a great placeto start because it's got a lot
(01:03:31):
of different I've got all theconnects there, and I'm still in
the process of changing mywebsite.
So it's a little small rightnow, but I'm I'm working on it.
SPEAKER_00 (01:03:40):
That's fantastic.
I'll make sure I'll make sureall of that's linked in the show
notes so you guys can go thereand and connect with her.
Thank you so much, Lisa.
I really appreciate your comingon today.
I'm so glad I have you as afriend.
Absolutely.
It's mutual.
All right, until next time,upsiders.
(01:04:00):
Thanks for joining me on theUpside of Bipolar.
Your journey to recoverymatters, and I'm grateful you're
here.
For more resources, visitwww.theupsideofbipolar.com.
If you're ready to dive deeper,grab my book, The Upside of
Bipolar, seven steps to healyour disorder.
If you're ready to heal yoursymptoms, join my monthly
membership, The Upsiders Tribe,to transform chaos into hope.
(01:04:24):
Until next time, Upsiders.
One of the things that a full-on narcissist will
do is that they will convinceyou it's like, oh, you're they
it's the whole gaslightingthing, right?
This isn't really the truth.
And the and the hard thing forme was when I look back on it,
and I still look back on it, andit still hurts my heart to think
about how many people go throughthis.
(00:20):
It's like not only is yourparent gaslighting you, the
world is gaslighting you.
SPEAKER_00 (00:30):
Welcome to the Upside of Bipolar, where we
uncover the true sources ofbipolar symptoms and share
proven tools for recovery.
I'm your host, MichelleReitinger, number one
international best-sellingauthor of the Upside of Bipolar
Seven Steps to Heal YourDisorder.
In this podcast, I bring yousolo insights from my journey
and guest interviews withleading researchers and experts.
(00:51):
Join us to transform chaos intohope and reclaim your life.
Let's heal together.
I am your host, MichelleReitinger, and I have a
phenomenal guest today.
Lisa Seitz is my guest.
(01:12):
Lisa is a writer, mother of fivegrown children, and granny to
seven grandchildren.
Her favorite hobbies are playingenshrouded, exercising, sewing,
and gardening.
She homeschooled her fivechildren for 16 years and ran a
successful homeschool group forthree of those years.
She has been a life, she hasbeen life coaching since 2021,
being certified through Dr.
(01:33):
Sears Wellness Institute.
Lisa's individualized program tohelp people do deep dives into
themselves, teaches clients toknow how it's possible to use
their agency to create theirlife or their life their way
while still respectfullybalancing the needs of others.
And you are a number oneinternational best-selling
author, am I correct?
SPEAKER_01 (01:53):
That is correct.
SPEAKER_00 (01:54):
Yay! I'm so excited for you.
And your book is phenomenal.
So I'm super excited to talkabout that today.
But why don't we start with yourstory?
Welcome to the podcast.
I'm so happy you're here.
And let's start with your story.
SPEAKER_01 (02:06):
Well, I'm glad to be here because you're one of my
favorite people ever.
So my story started.
I was born into I was born to amother who had narcissistic
personality disorder, but wedidn't know any of that at the
time.
It's interesting becausenarcissism became a coined was
coined in 1956, but didn't getput into the DSM V, which is um
(02:29):
this diagnostic diagnosticstatistical manual, I think I
said that right, um, until 1984.
So it it's it's it's adefinitely, you know, and they
and they don't put it things inthere until they have a full
thing about what they are andand all the stuff behind it.
So it wasn't something thatpeople really understood, and
(02:53):
people still don't fullyunderstand it.
And that was one of the reasonswhy I wrote the book.
I when my mother was diagnosed,I was um, I believe 54, and it
was it what it just it changedmy life.
I didn't, I mean, I at first Ididn't have a clue, and I went
into researching it, and themore I learned about it, it was
(03:15):
I was the more it was like mylife started, my childhood
started to make sense.
It's like I see things now thatI didn't see before, and it's
not all me.
I'm not really as much of aproblem as I was normal, you
know, and that was that was justlife-changing for me, that I was
a normal kid instead of somepunishment from a past life,
(03:36):
which is what she told me, andother things.
But it's the kind of thing thatyou don't know about because
when you're born into that kindof, I'm gonna call it abuse,
when you're born into that kindof parenting or that you you
don't understand because you'venever known any different.
And so when people would say,you know, how wonderful mothers
(03:59):
are and you know, and how muchthey love you regardless.
And I just didn't, I thoughtthere was something wrong with
me that I couldn't see my motherin that same light.
And now I understand why.
It wasn't that she was bad or ahorrible person, it's because
she had a psychologicaldisorder.
But then I had, as I did myresearch, I had to come to terms
with, well, what does that meanfor me?
(04:19):
And what do I do about that?
And, you know, I chose to to nothate her.
I did have to hate her for atime.
I had to give myself some spaceand let myself, that was how I
was able to process through, youknow, the grief and the and the
anger and all the stuff.
But that luckily that onlylasted for about a year and
(04:40):
maybe a little more, but I Ididn't want to live there.
I like to say I didn't want toset up a house and get my ad,
get my mail there, you know.
I didn't want to live thereforever because I don't like
hating anything or anyonereally.
I want to understand wherethey're coming from, and then if
I need to, I can put them overthere.
(05:02):
You know, it's like I can set myboundaries, right?
But I don't didn't want toforever.
And so I chose not to.
And that meant I had to set myboundary, I had to figure out
how to set boundaries, and I didthat for a while, and then and
she died and not too long ago, acouple years ago, and uh now I'm
free from that.
(05:22):
I don't I don't have to cater toher manipulations, but that was
the boundaries I had to set, ison the manipulations and stuff
like that.
SPEAKER_00 (05:30):
Yeah.
Okay, so you wrote a book.
We talked, we I talked aboutthat at the very beginning.
Your book is Facing Your Demons,Healing Beyond Narcissistic Fist
uh Family Relationships.
And when I first met you, youwere in the process of writing
your book.
Yes.
What what led you to write thebook in the first place?
(05:51):
What what and that's a veryvulnerable thing to do.
So what made you feel like Ineed to do this?
SPEAKER_01 (05:57):
I um really felt like there was a lot of people
that talked about whatnarcissism is and that, and and
it's a buzzword.
And a lot of people see it, youknow, they they use the term
very loosely.
And I the more I did the myresearch, the more I understood
what this was, what thispsychological disorder meant uh
(06:19):
for my mother and for me, Ireally wanted to clarify that
for myself.
And so, like every people saythe first draft that you write
is for yourself, right?
And so my first draft wasliterally so I could flesh out
like how do I feel about whatdoes this mean for me?
How do I what you know, how do Igo from what do I do from here?
(06:40):
And how do I live my life nowthat I'm not have somebody
manage micromanaging every timeevery part of my being?
And it really, you know, I gotmet more and more people that
just didn't really fullyunderstand what narciss what
narcissistic personalitydisorder really is.
And so I was able to flesh outthe difference between oh, I
(07:00):
wrote it down, narcissisticpersonality disorder versus
narcissistic tendencies.
SPEAKER_00 (07:08):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (07:08):
And so we we all have narcissistic tendencies,
all of us, you know, part of itis survival.
We need to survive, you know,we're gonna like push somebody
away while we're trying to notdrown.
It's just a natural thing,right?
But at the same time, somebodywith narcissistic personality
disorder has um so they'rethey're they're not they're not
(07:33):
born, they're created.
And in a sense, we create our ifwe're to become, let's say I
become a narcissist, I'm gonnacreate myself.
I'm going to protect my ego.
I'm gonna protect myself becausesomething bad happened and I
just need to protect it.
And we all do that, right?
That's just natural, human, weneed that.
And so we I make thisprotection, and then maybe
(07:55):
something else happens, I makeanother protection.
And then, but then a narcissist,somebody who has narcissistic
personality disorder, creates somany of those protections.
It literally builds and buildsand builds and builds and builds
on itself to the point wherethey can't even reach their own
ego anymore.
And we cannot make changes toour thinking, to our lives, to
(08:18):
our we cannot make those changeswithout being vulnerable.
Because to make to be in adifferent space than we're
familiar with, we have to bevulnerable and they can't do
that because they've that's whatthey've done is they've
protected themselves from beingvulnerable and they can't do
that.
So that's why it's that's whypeople say they can't change,
(08:38):
because they've they reallycan't, because they can't get to
their own ego to changethemselves.
And so I wanted to be able toclarify that in my book, and
that's why I think I did.
I had a number of people whohave read it, and a couple a
number of psychologists actuallyhave read it and said, Yeah,
that that you've you've prettymuch hit the nail on the head.
So I feel like I've done it.
SPEAKER_00 (08:59):
Yeah.
And I think that it's importantto to distinguish, like you
said, it's a buzzword.
It is, you know, I you hear onsocial media all the time, and
you hear it in in conversationwith people.
My boyfriend is a narcissist, ormy mother is a narcissist, or my
brother is a narcissist.
Like we hear people say that allthe time.
And I think that we it has ithas diluted the understanding of
(09:23):
what narcissism is because it'slike you said, we all have
narcissistic tendencies.
Narcissistic tendencies areself-preserved, self-centered,
self-yeah, well, andself-self-focused.
Like it's it's viewing the lensthrough how does this affect me,
and without without the capacityto view how it's affecting other
(09:46):
people, and without without theability to have empathy for
others, without, you know, andso it's I think that there are
varying degrees of narcissismwithin the population, right?
Because because I think thatthere are people who become, and
you know, I think that there'slots of reasons that it happens.
(10:06):
I think our society kind offosters narcissism in uh in
people.
We have social media tends to umkind of feed narcissism, you
know, when people are sofocused, we we become
disconnected from other peoplebecause we're not seeing that
the way that what we're sayingor doing is affecting others,
and we're not considering, youknow, we just are like want the
(10:27):
dopamine hits from you know,likes and clicks and you know,
and and so I think that we'vegot a lot of uh a lot of things
that kind of reward narcissisticbehavior, but that is a big,
there's a big difference betweenchoices and behaviors that are
narcissistic, like self-centeredand self-focused, and the the
(10:49):
extreme situation what you'retalking about, which is
narcissistic personalitydisorder.
And can you can you talk alittle bit more about, first of
all, it's very as as far as Iunderstand, it's very uncommon
for somebody who hasnarcissistic personality
disorder to actually bediagnosed, right?
Because they're notintrospective, they're not
somebody who thinks that there'sanything wrong with them.
SPEAKER_01 (11:10):
There's nothing wrong with me.
I'm good.
SPEAKER_00 (11:13):
So are you okay sharing like how this happened?
SPEAKER_01 (11:17):
Because this is kind of an unusual situation, right?
It is a big deal.
And and I've often said thatwhen I've mentioned that when
mom was actually diagnosed, andthat was because she had tried
to commit suicide for I don'tknow what time what time this
was, how many times, you know,it's been it was multiple times.
And it's and I understand thatit was a a need to be focused
(11:43):
on, and she wasn't feeling likeshe was being focused on enough,
but she was so at this pointtime she had put herself into a
coma and my stepfather, notknowing what else to do, had her
admitted into a hospital, andthey diagnosed her there while
she was there.
So that's how she got diagnosed.
So it wasn't even on her, um, onit, it wasn't even something
(12:07):
that she'd went in and asked forbecause my what I've been told
by people, multiple people, isthat a narcissist um will never
ask to be evaluated.
SPEAKER_00 (12:22):
They just won't.
Because that requiresvulnerability.
That's one of the things thatyeah.
Well, that's one of the thingsthat I've like the more
research, my own personalexperience and the more research
I've done with bipolar, youknow, is which is the whole
point of my podcast, is somebodywho's struggling with these
symptoms, we are there arepeople who are good with getting
(12:46):
the the diagnosis and then justsuffering for the rest of their
lives because they don't, youknow, and and often I think it
has it has to do with wounding,you know, they're so deeply
wounded that the re the level ofvulnerability that would be
required for them to go back andlook at their life and be
willing to face trauma and face,you know, unhealthy thought and
behavior patterns, and that isis too much for them.
(13:08):
And they don't, they're notwilling to go there.
And so I think that they're youknow, it's it's understandable
when somebody's been deeplyhurt, you know, it's it's kind
of like an animal who's beendeeply wounded, and they're
like, you go you keep trying togo to help them and they keep
like fighting you, right?
Yep.
Uh it's sensible.
SPEAKER_01 (13:25):
It's natural for us to fight back when we are afraid
of something.
That's just yeah, that's justlike ingrained in in our human
nature.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (13:34):
Yeah.
And so I one of the reasons whyI love your book is that you
talk about, because most peoplewill never be diagnosed, you
talk about what your experiencewas as a you know, as a child,
as a youth, you know, like youtalk about your experience, you
talk about what you experiencedfrom your mother.
And and there's a few thingsthat I want to actually talk
(13:55):
about with your early story,because you, as you mentioned,
when you are, when you're raisedas a child, especially when
you're little, you have no otherframe of reference.
Your life is is your life, andthat's what is normal to you.
That's what you think everybodyelse has.
It's only when we get out intothe world that we start noticing
(14:16):
differences and start toquestion, like, wait a minute,
why is you know, like you weresaying, like people talking
about how loving mothers are,and you're thinking, you know,
and and you, your tendency tolook back at yourself and think
there must be something wrongwith me that my mother doesn't
love me.
Like it's instead of looking atyour mom and saying there's
something wrong with my mother,like she's not a good mother,
(14:37):
she's not a kind mother, she'snot, you know, she doesn't, it's
always looking it back atyourself.
And I think it's super helpfulto people to understand the
psychology behind what happensto you as a as a person being
abused by somebody who hasnarcissistic personality
disorder.
So can you talk about like whenyou first started recognizing
(14:58):
that there was somethingdifferent or something wrong and
and what it felt like you withyou, because you talk a little
bit about like the dissonance itcreated within yourself.
SPEAKER_01 (15:07):
Yeah.
The first time I experiencedlike, wait, something's not
right.
What my mother's doing isabusive.
And I started questioning,right?
And I went to uh a schoolauthority, and because I kept
being told, well, it waspromoted, you know, if you're
being abused, tell somebody, youknow.
(15:28):
So I did.
And my experience was the the,you know, they they have to have
the police go.
So the police went, talked to mymother, but my mother, you know,
is beautiful.
She has very, very good withwords, and she she was able to
convince, and she's very, andthat's what narcissists, full-on
narcissists are.
They are very good atmanipulation.
And so she just explained tothem that I was this, that, or
(15:52):
the other thing.
And they came to me and told meto my face that I had been
getting my friends to beat me upto um so that I could get my
mother in trouble for all thebruises that I had.
And it was it was something thatat the time just proved to me
that there really is somethingwrong with me, not not wrong
with my mother.
(16:13):
Okay, so it's really not abuse,it's just me.
I'm just I'm just broken.
There's something wrong with me.
And um, but it it it was yearslater before I um just decided,
I don't know, somewhere alongthe line, I just decided to just
sort of live my life and and notworry about abuse.
Just, but when she was diagnosedand I started researching it,
(16:36):
that's when it really, reallykicked over.
So in my childhood, I hadquestions, but I I kept having
experiences that proved that Iwas wrong, you know, and and and
I think that's one of the thingsthat a full-on narcissist will
do is that they will convinceyou.
It's like, oh, you're you'rethey it's the whole gaslighting
(16:57):
thing, right?
This isn't really the truth.
This is and the hard thing forme was when I look back on it,
and I still look back on it, andit still hurts my heart to think
about how many people go throughthis.
It's like not only is yourparent gaslighting you, the
world is gaslighting you.
Oh, mothers always love theirchildren, they love their
(17:18):
children completely.
There's nothing, there's no wayyour mother would ever say what
you know what you're saying shesaid.
And so it's like, but I did hearit.
I did hear that.
And yet I'm being told my motherwould never say something like
that.
So I know I never did recordwhat she said.
SPEAKER_00 (17:35):
Right.
Well, and you gaslight yourself.
Like you start you have there'san inability to trust your own,
your yourself to, you know, youdon't feel like you can trust
your mind, you don't feel likeyou can trust your feelings.
Can you talk about what thatfelt like?
SPEAKER_01 (17:49):
And yeah, and then when you get authorities that
tell you, like the police thattell you to your face that
you're the one that's in thewrong, you know, I that's that's
the tough part was coming toterms with all of that.
And like the year that I wasstudying and researching what
narcissist narcissisticpersonality disorder actually
(18:11):
was, and what the DSM containsabout it, explains it.
That year I went through allsorts of grief, you know, and
all sorts of all the levels ofrecovery and that kind of
healing and stuff, because Ijust I had just put that on the
shelf, you know, from myexperience and from others that
(18:32):
I had prior and before andafter, that I just put that on
the shelf.
So um just spelling it out in mybook really helped a lot because
it gave me the confidence to beable to say, okay, this really
was my life.
And even, you know, though Ihave family members who didn't
(18:53):
have the same experience,because backing up a little bit,
where when I was born, I was anonly child for the first seven
years.
And from the time I was twountil I was five, my mom and I
were the only, you know, she wasa single parent and I was the
only child.
So I was the golden child andthe scapegoat, all rolled up in
(19:16):
one.
And so I could sometimes in thesame sentence, she would tell me
how wonderful and awesome I was,but I wasn't going to amount to
any, I wasn't going to amount toanything because she had, you
know, she she just she playedboth sides.
I was in both sides.
So I still to this day struggle.
If anything, anybody complimentsme, I like I back off.
(19:38):
If anybody tells me a criticism,I back off.
It's like I can't, I have toreally focus my mind on the
present moment and say, okay,where am I?
What is this?
What is happening right here?
You know, this is it's okay, youknow, and allow for either side
and just say, okay, how do Ireceive this?
(19:59):
And all of this happens within ahalf a second, you know, because
I've learned to be able toprocess a lot faster now.
But it was for for a minutethere, there it was like I had
to just sort of get out ofthere, whatever wherever I was.
It's like, don't compliment me,don't tell me I'm wrong,
nothing.
Just don't do any of that.
Just don't do anything.
(20:20):
I don't care if it's you know,positive criticism, just don't
give me anything.
Just don't talk to me.
Yeah.
It was really hard to figure outhow to balance that.
But that that was that firstyear of figuring out what all of
that meant.
And then fleshing out my bookwas just like the answer to my
prayers, because that was itwhere I was able to show, you
(20:43):
know, yes, these things reallyhappened.
Yes, I really feel this way.
And and I learned how to balanceboth the negative and the
positive.
And so the there's a lot of talkabout like we got to be
positive, which yes, we need tobe positive.
But if we completely ignore thenegative, then we are negating
(21:03):
to use the term, negating theexperience.
You know, you can't just look ata problem and say, this
happened, this bad thinghappened, so I'm gonna ignore
the bad part and I'm gonna justlook at the good side side.
And you can't do that and andand have a whole experience.
You know, we have to balanceboth sides so that we can have a
(21:24):
complete experience.
And sometimes the negative ismore than the positives, and you
have to just sort of look at itand decide for yourself whether
you want to accept what itreally was, or do you want to
just sort of throw that out andbe only positive?
And to me, for myself, that justtakes away from it.
(21:48):
I need I need to find I'm I'mliving in the negative.
I was born and and was taughtvery negative thinking.
And uh to to create the positivethinking, I had to say.
And okay, see the glass is halfempty, but the liquid is
disgusting and I'm halfway done.
So I had to like find my waytowards positive.
(22:09):
And I still do that sometimes.
Sometimes I'm like, okay, youknow what?
I can't see this as anything butnegative.
But you know, but maybesomething, something good is
coming.
You know, I have to, I have tobe able to balance both because
if I push away only the if Ipush away all the negative, then
I lose the the meat of theexperience.
SPEAKER_00 (22:29):
So can you talk about, I I think we need to
probably for our audience whohaven't read your book yet,
which everybody needs to readher book.
It's phenomenal.
Thank you.
Can you start with what yourgrowing up looked like?
So when we talk aboutnarcissistic narcissistic abuse,
what what did that look like foryou?
Okay.
So can you share with ouraudience what that what that was
(22:50):
like for you?
SPEAKER_01 (22:51):
Sure.
Um let me see how I can phrasethis.
When I was a child, I thoughtlike a child, but I I was a
normal child.
And when I was being what I wasbeing told was everything that I
was doing was one of the thingsshe liked to say was, I would
(23:13):
find the worst place to stickthe knife in and then twist it
and make it hurt the most forher.
And I kept wanting to like, no,no, I'm not, no, I'm not.
I'm trying to do, you know, I'mtrying to be.
It was hard to see things theway she explained them to me.
You know, when I was two, shetold me I was the adult in our
(23:36):
relationship.
And at two, I didn't know how toadult.
And so I all the every time Idid something wrong, I just felt
like I was wrong.
And there was something bad inme.
And sorry, the the name isescaping me, but there's a a
doctor that, and I have it in mybook.
He he said that as a child, weneed to see our parent as
(23:59):
godlike.
You know, they have we have tosee them as godlike.
So what we will do is we willtrans um transpose anything that
happens as it's all our fault,because then we can keep them in
the God role and we're thedevil.
That way they're not, you know,because we can't we can't
(24:20):
process the idea that we'reliving with the devil as our
leader, you know, as the personthat's having charge over us.
We have to see them as godlike.
And so we will always take thepoor side, like it's it's my
fault.
I did it wrong.
Somehow I'm the wrong.
And I look back and I no longeram angry for her about that.
(24:43):
I just just it just it breaks myheart that she couldn't see the
value in having a child and andand the beauty, because I've
loved my children, and I I justI just like my children aren't
like my world, you know, and Ijust can't imagine not
(25:04):
experiencing that beauty.
She missed that.
So as a as a child, I justthought I was wrong, but I look
back and I'm like, no, I wasn'twrong or bad or a mistake or a
problem.
But even though she saw myindependence as a fatalistic
(25:25):
flaw, I can still look at it asit is what got me through.
My independence got me throughall the abuse.
And now I can use it forsomething positive and something
good.
SPEAKER_00 (25:38):
Yeah.
Most people, when they gothrough that kind of dissonance,
develop symptoms of likeanxiety, depression.
Can you talk about what kind ofsymptoms developed around the
abuse and the like constantdissonance in your life where
you're, you know, you talk aboutthe need to feel connected with
your mother, and and you talkabout constantly working to try
(26:02):
and please her so that she wouldwant to connect with you?
And what is that?
I mean, that kind of thingcreates anxiety in people
because you never you're wantingto approach and you're wanting
to feel close and also afraid atthe same time because you never
know what you're gonna get fromthem.
So, what what kind of symptomsdeveloped around the life
experience that you had growingup that way?
SPEAKER_01 (26:24):
So, my my book is called Facing Your Demons, and
the demons that I talk about areour limiting beliefs.
So we are amazing as humans.
We have such capacity, our ourminds are so incredible, our
bodies have an amazing abilityto heal.
You know, we cut ourselves.
(26:44):
People can like, you can get cutourselves, and we know generally
we know, like, okay, well, it'sgonna heal, and there's gonna be
a time to process through that,but we don't understand, you
know, the internal are alleverything is connected, and all
the parts that need to heal aregoing to heal over time.
We just need to allow that andgive ourselves the space to do
(27:09):
that.
And I think I went off yourquestion.
What was your question again?
SPEAKER_00 (27:12):
Just like what kinds of symptoms developed around
like growing up with this likeconstant, like wanting to
approach and feel connected, butbeing afraid of what might come.
Like it's that creates likeconstant fight or flight.
You're constantly, you know.
So can you talk about like whatkind of symptoms developed
around that?
Thank you.
I was going there, I just hadforgotten where I was.
Yeah, yeah.
That I've done the same thing.
SPEAKER_01 (27:34):
I do have ADHD.
So that that has been an awesomediscovery because now I know why
I go off track.
Anyway, so when when I waslearning how to process what
happened, I was able to get movetowards allowing the disconnects
(27:57):
that I learned and movingtowards, I think I lost it
again.
I don't know why.
Moving towards the ability torecover.
I have lots of demons still leftover.
And I like to say I had 15mountains, now I only have like
two or three.
So I've gone through a lot.
(28:20):
And there are gonna be some thatprobably stay with me through to
the end of until my death.
And it's what I've come to isit's okay.
I can work with them.
I've learned now how to workwith them as they show up.
You know, I don't have to getrid of them.
It's like that, like I have torecognize the negative and the
(28:40):
positive and balance it, youknow, and figure out how to
balance because those negativesare with me.
Those demons are going to bewith me.
All the disconnects are stillgonna be with me.
I'm still gonna go intosomething new that I'm not
familiar with and question can Ido this?
(29:00):
You know, am I really capable ofthis?
Is this something that I canactually do anything about?
Or should I do anything about?
Maybe I should just let it be.
Sometimes things just processout through their themselves.
And sometimes our minds cancycle and sometimes we just need
a day off, you know, we justneed to take a day.
(29:21):
Sit with a hot mug or, you know,maybe read a book, maybe I don't
know, watch a movie, whateverwe're doing, you know, just just
sometimes we just need to backout and stop moving forward so
fast, especially.
And we talked about earlierabout, you know, in our world
where things are, it it creates,it's it's very good.
Our world is very good atcreating narcissists.
(29:42):
Yeah, but we don't have to beone.
Right.
We can choose to allow our needsto be met without harming other
people.
unknown (29:54):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (29:54):
Right.
So when I get to a moment whereI'm like, the demons are
overwhelming me.
I'm gonna lash out if I'm notcareful.
I will, I will literally find myway back to my home in my little
office where I'm safe.
I like plants, as you can see,and I just nature, nature, I
just need nature.
So I will just get around natureand and recenter.
(30:18):
Sometimes I only need 10minutes.
Sometimes I need a whole day.
But I just allow myself to bewherever I need to be, and I
just gotta keep tuning in andjust keep tuning in to where my
brain is at the moment.
SPEAKER_00 (30:37):
And you you talk about how you had your mom had
modeled this kind of parentingfor you your entire life.
And so when you became a parent,that's that's what you knew.
That's how you that's how you soyou but you recognized, you
started to recognize this isn'thealthy.
So can you talk about like howdo you how do you recognize this
(30:58):
isn't healthy?
And then how do you change?
Especially if you don't have anunderstanding of what was wrong
in the first place.
That's really important becausea lot of times we don't always
understand entirely where ourdysfunction or the unhealthy
thoughts and behaviors arecoming from, but that doesn't
mean that we can't do anythingabout it, right?
SPEAKER_01 (31:16):
Absolutely.
That is so true.
My personal circumstance was Icall it a personal Armageddon
because I literally bottomedout.
I had been, I use the wordobsequious to my mother and then
to my first husband, tobasically giving in to whatever
they wanted because that was myjob.
(31:37):
As the adult in therelationship, I had to um be,
you know, give in to whateverthey thought was best because I
couldn't do, I wasn't capable ofmaking the good choices.
So in my particular situation, Ihad a literal bottoming out.
And so um from that moment, Iwas, I was, um, I'll describe
(32:04):
it.
I was, I literally woke up and Iwas sitting on the floor and
rock with my knees to my chest,rocking back and forth and
sobbing convulsively.
And my daughter at the time, Ihad only one child at a time.
She was uh a year and a half orso.
She was standing over me,patting me on the back, saying,
(32:25):
it's okay, mommy, it's okay.
And I'm like, oh no, no, no.
That like woke me up.
I'm like, I am not going to havemy daughter raise me.
Like I was raised, I wassanctioned to raise my mother
because no.
So I had to figure out, but atthe time I didn't know how to be
an adult.
I I mean, I was still not ableto be an adult because I'd never
(32:47):
kind of moved on from giving mypower to everybody else because
everybody else knew better,right?
And so I still I didn't know howto do that.
So I had I had to start at thatmoment and move forward.
And it doesn't matter whetheryou have a personal Armageddon
or not, if you decide thatsomething needs to change, then
(33:08):
you're the one that needs todecide that needs to change.
And you can only, I love BeckyKennedy, Dr.
Becky Kennedy.
She talks about boundaries andthat boundaries are something
you tell somebody you will do,but it requires the other person
to do nothing.
So regardless of whether theymake changes or not, you have to
(33:31):
set your boundaries for you.
And if that per and you have todecide for yourself whether that
person crosses that boundary ornot, then you got to decide what
that means for you.
So do I leave?
Do I, you know, set a differentboundary?
I mean, like that's the thing isdon't don't change, set your
boundaries.
And yes, they need to adjustbecause life happens and you
(33:52):
grow and you change and youmature, but you got to set
certain boundaries and they haveto be solid.
And sometimes you need to set aboundary that as you grow,
you'll never have that boundaryagain.
You know, I chose some peoplewho will completely separate
themselves from theirnarcissistic parents,
(34:14):
narcissistic personalitydisorder parents.
And other people like me willset my boundaries.
And when my mom would call and Iwas not in a good place to be
taking her stuff, then Iwouldn't answer.
You know?
And and that's okay.
That was okay.
I had to give myself the graceto not answer, and I didn't have
(34:38):
to give her every aspect of mylife.
In fact, at that point, I hadmultiple children, and I wanted
to give my my energy to mychildren, you know, and and it
was still a bit disconnected,but I wanted to give what I had
to them, and I had no longer hadthat space to give to my mother
(35:01):
all the time.
I had, I chose to give some ofit to her, but I would have to
again check in and limit what Igave her and what I didn't.
I didn't have to tell hereverything.
I didn't have to give her mywhole life story at the moment,
whatever was happening in mylife.
(35:22):
You know, I could give I Ilearned, I got really good at
learning what I could say andwhat I didn't, what I couldn't
say, you know, because she wouldreact to certain things.
And I, but I already knew mostof that.
So there were times when Ithought I could share something,
as you were talking aboutearlier, and I wanted to
connect.
So I would say something, andshe wanted, she was like, I want
(35:44):
you to be able to tell meanything.
I was like, no, she did.
She wanted to be a meter to beable to tell her anything, but I
didn't want to be able to tellher anything because I knew that
she would use it against me.
So I had to learn what was safeand what was not safe, and just
allow it to be.
And if she found out something Ididn't tell her, it's like, why
didn't she tell me that?
(36:05):
I guess I, you know, I just hadI sometimes, yes, I lied.
Sometimes I would be like, Ijust forgot.
And that was, I mean, I likeliterally gave myself grace to
to be able to lie to my mother,which I would never have done as
a child.
unknown (36:20):
No.
SPEAKER_01 (36:21):
Ever.
SPEAKER_00 (36:21):
That was just not allowed.
So you had this kind of likeawakening experience.
Well, tell me what what thingslook like after that, because
you're not just trying to figurethis out for yourself because
your way of looking at the worldwasn't healthy at the time.
So, what things did you do totry to learn how to unwind this
dysfunction in yourself and theunhealthy thought and behavior
(36:44):
patterns and learn how to setboundaries?
Talk about what things look likeafter that point.
SPEAKER_01 (36:51):
That's a hard uh question to answer because I was
so disconnected from realitythat I had to literally create
my own reality, realize thatthat wasn't still quite reality.
So I had to change it again andagain and again and again and
again.
And it was more persistence thatgot me to the place where I
(37:15):
could finally see, okay, this isreality, you know, and I would
meet people, and the interestingthing is meeting people, and
they're very a lot of people arevery good at presenting.
And we talk about this on on theinternet and and um social
media, people will present thisperfect picture of how things
(37:38):
are, and they're not.
And so I had to learn,especially growing up in the
world, as as social media wasjust beginning to take off,
right?
And so I was learning as thiswas all coming into play how to
see things for what they wereand learn how to distinguish,
okay, that's somebody's perfectpicture, but I know them
(38:03):
personally, and that's not whattheir house looks like, or
that's not what they eat, orthat's not what they actually
say, you know, and I and it wasa good time for me to be
learning that because, like Isaid, social media was just
starting to take off, and it wassomething I could learn as
social media was beginning toblossom.
(38:24):
I could learn how to distinguishthe difference between right and
wrong for me and what I waswilling to present and what I
wasn't, and and see, and see thetruth in things.
But it took me a long time, andand that was where the grace I
kept giving, I had to givemyself grace to get it wrong
(38:46):
multiple times.
Wasn't I wasn't good at makingmistakes and allowing my
daughter to make mistakes wasreally hard because I just
wanted her to do it all rightand have everything right.
And it was like I was takingaway her childhood again, like I
had been, my child had beentaken away just because out of
okay, well, let me make sure youdid all right so that you can
(39:09):
have a good life.
And just like that's not a goodlife.
Experience, mistakes, fallingdown, scraping your knees, all
the things, all the negativesalong with the positives.
That's the balance, that's theimportant part of of living this
life and and becoming whole.
We can't become whole if we onlytake the positives.
SPEAKER_00 (39:30):
You know, we have to have negatives as well.
Did you have tools that youused?
Like, did you go to therapy?
Did you journal?
Like, did you use any tools thathelped you to unwind any of
this, or was this all justintuition and you just worked
through it yourself?
SPEAKER_01 (39:44):
I just it well, it took me years and years and like
you know, decades, and and Iworked through it myself.
I did go to therapy when Istarted having trouble in my
second marriage, and we went totherapy, and I then especially
after my mother was diagnosed, Idid a lot of research and
started seeing things thatthat's how it is.
(40:04):
That's that's that is thereality of the things.
And you know, I I had this, so Ihad to take this attitude.
Something can work for me,whether it's right or wrong, it
doesn't matter.
If it works for me, I canutilize it.
And then when it doesn't workfor me, I can adjust and change
and grow.
(40:25):
As long as I'm not harming otherpeople, that was just my
personal, you know, motto.
I don't like doing things thatare harming other people.
I wanted to adjust and changefor myself without hurting other
people.
So if I so I tried to give mychildren the space to be able to
(40:47):
make mistakes, but I just had avisit with my daughter this last
week, and she made it prettyclear there was once or twice
where I absolutely did not allowher to make mistakes because I'm
like, no, you can't do it thatway.
And it's interesting because Ican look back and I'm like,
yeah, I can give reasons andexcuses for why I did that.
(41:08):
But the truth is she had everyright to make mistakes, and I
had the responsibility and thestewardship to allow her to make
mistakes.
And I didn't in that moment.
But there were a lot of othertimes when I did.
I keep, you know, I can I canjust hope that she can look at
those someday too and see that Iwas, yeah, I made mistakes.
Yeah, I I made mistakes.
(41:30):
Don't we all?
We all I like to say a lot ofus, a lot of my friends and I
like to say, yes, we put ourkids through therapy because we
give our kids reasons to go totherapy as parents.
That's just that's just part ofparenting.
It's like we sign a contract orsomething.
Yes, I will make sure my kids gothrough therapy.
SPEAKER_00 (41:49):
I know my aunt and uncle used to joke that they
were already saving up for thetherapy their kids were gonna
need when they were done withthem.
Right.
All of us make mistakes asparents.
Like we're we're we're humansthat make mistakes that are that
were raised by humans that mademistakes.
Like it's just everybody isgonna struggle, right?
Um, but one of the things that Iwanted to talk a little bit
(42:09):
about is I think I think thatone of the trends that I see
with like describing everybodyas narcissists online and in in
social media and that isrelieving themselves of the any
kind of personal accountabilityor responsibility.
And I think that that's one ofthe dangers of some of these
(42:30):
diagnoses, most of thesediagnoses is the person who
receives the diagnosis, whetherit's a narcissistic personality
disorder or bipolar disorder oranxiety disorder, it ends
curiosity into what actually isgoing on.
You think, oh, I I'm just I justit's just the way I am, right?
And and so it creates it turnsthem into victims because they
(42:53):
don't feel like they can doanything about it.
And so they kind of give uptheir agency in the process.
They kind of surrender, I feellike we we, your agency is still
available to you, but peoplekind of surrendered, surrender
their agency.
I know that I, in some ways,feel like I surrendered my
agency a bit when I was, when Iwas diagnosed because I I would
believed what I was being told.
I believed that bipolar wasincurable lifelong.
(43:15):
I would have it for the rest ofmy life.
And so when I would experiencesymptoms that led to behaviors
that were unhealthy, you know, II didn't like it, but I didn't
feel like I had any control overit, you know.
Right.
And I had a I had a you know acrisis moment where I like all
of a sudden things shifted.
I started realizing I'm ruiningeverybody's lives.
I can't end my life because Iwill ruin my daughter's life if
(43:36):
I do.
Something's gotta change.
Nobody's coming to save me.
I gotta find a way to savemyself.
And that was a turning point forme in my life where I started
like I thought I was beingresponsible for by going to the
doctor and taking themedication.
And I didn't have any controlover the other stuff, right?
I think the other side of theWell, and I think the other side
(43:58):
of that is.
That we tend to give, makeexcuses for the people who've
been diagnosed.
Yes.
You know what I mean?
Like we, we well, they can'thelp it.
You know, they can't help it.
That's just the way they are.
They have this disease, theyhave this disorder, you know.
And so we surrender some of ouragency and we make ourselves
victims because we feel like,well, they can't help it.
(44:20):
And so I just have to makeallowances for it.
I have to, you know, and we endup with these super unhealthy
relationships.
It's very common for somebodywho's struggling with any kind
of disorder, any of the kind ofthese mental health disorders,
to end up in really unhealthyrelationships because they
don't, they're not takingresponsibility for themselves.
Yeah.
And the other person doesn'tfeel like they can take the
(44:42):
responsibility for themselves.
And so you end up withcodependency.
And so sorry, that's a long wayto say that I think that it's
unhealthy for us to go aroundlabeling people as narcissists
because why does that matter?
And what am I going to do aboutit?
Right.
Yeah.
(45:02):
And so can you talk about you'vetalked about boundaries.
Can you talk about what it, youknow, you were able to see your
mother through through a morecompassionate lens once you saw
what she was, that she had apsychological disorder.
But you then acceptedresponsibility for your own
healing.
unknown (45:19):
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 (45:20):
You made a choice to heal.
You you had already startedestablishing boundaries, even
though you may not have clearlyunderstood what you were doing
at the time.
Exactly.
So can you talk about what whyit's so important for us to take
responsibility for ourselves andbe accountable to ourselves and
make choices that are, you know,helping us to choose to be
healthy and not to be victims?
SPEAKER_01 (45:41):
Well, that's just it.
If, you know, one of the thingsum a a full-on narcissist will
do is blame everybody else.
It's not my fault.
I didn't mean to.
It's not, you know, that wasthat wasn't my intent.
It's like it doesn't matter whatyour intent is.
If if other people are harmed,then you can take responsibility
for that, apologize and and andmove on.
(46:02):
But they won't.
You know, they don't takeresponsibility for that.
So I had to realize that mymother was not going to take
responsibility for the thingsthat she did to me, you know,
because she couldn't only allshe could see is telling me at
two years old that I was theadult in the relationship was
that she was boosting my, youknow, my my self-esteem.
(46:26):
And that was the last thing thatthat did.
You know, parentifying a childis not helpful.
I don't care what age they are.
And she would not see that.
So, you know, we can only, youknow, live our own lives.
We live with other people.
So we have to decide forourselves what are we going to
(46:51):
do when that person does thesethings or that the other thing.
And we have to decide ifsomebody is going to cross our
boundaries or limit our needs.
Maybe we have a need forcompassion and we have a friend
who's compassionate, but forwhatever reason, they're in a
(47:11):
they're having a bad day andthey're not going to be
compassionate today.
You know?
So we can decide for ourselves,but only we can decide this.
We can decide, okay, she hatesme forever.
She's always hated me.
I can't believe that I've everbeen friends with her.
Or we can decide, she's having abad day.
Like I will go to a grocerystore, I will buy something, and
(47:32):
the cashier sometimes will belike, she's just having a bad
day.
And I can try to, you know, saysomething positive.
You know, I will, like I said, Iwill check in and I will like,
is this something I should sayanything about?
Or should I just sort of let itgo?
But I don't need to take itpersonally.
I can choose to take itpersonally.
(47:53):
Okay, she hates me.
No, it has nothing to do withme.
And sometimes somebody can lashout at you, and it's very
personal when they do this, butmaybe it's very personal that
when they do this particularlashing out, and and they're
just, you know, all over theplace about how bad you are at
this or that or the other thing.
And it's like you can listen towhat they have to say and decide
(48:20):
to take on that baggage or not.
That's all on you.
You have complete control overwhat you take from other people.
And if somebody is willing tohear you, maybe you can help
them through it.
Maybe they're not willing tohear it.
Maybe they just need thatmoment.
They didn't have a way to gohome and get away from people,
(48:43):
and they, you know, we're justmaybe their dog died.
I don't know.
I like to say maybe, maybesomething really in close to
them, right?
Somebody really important tothem died and they just don't
know how to handle it.
And so, you know, I'm me yellingback at them is not gonna help
their situation.
And it's not gonna make me feelbetter.
(49:04):
I'm just gonna, you know, lowermyself to their their current
thinking at the moment.
And it's like you choose, wechoose for ourselves where we
stand in relationships.
We can we can have arelationship for decades and you
know, best friend, and then forwhatever reason, they decide
(49:27):
that you're an enemy.
You know, maybe you don't evenknow why, but do you you don't
have to go the same route andstart hating them?
You can say, well, hopefully oneday we can work this out.
But it's hard because especiallywhen we're that attached to
something or someone, you know,to let go of those feelings that
(49:49):
we have for that person.
Had I went, like I said, I wentthrough that year of hating my
mother.
And I had to, I had to figureout where I wanted to land with
that.
But in the moment, but in thatmoment, I literally hated her.
I just like I wanted nothing todo with her.
I didn't even want to thinkabout her.
I didn't want to say her name,nothing.
(50:10):
I just didn't, I didn't evenwant to, I didn't want to talk
to her.
It was, it was a really toughtime because I felt like I was
wrong and I was bad.
And there was something wrongwith me for not giving her the
space to be where she was.
And yet I didn't even understandwhat that meant at that time in
my life.
So I have come to understandthat now.
(50:31):
And that's where I was able tofinally say, she's she is who
she is.
I will never have a relationshipwith my mother like everybody
talks about on Mother's Day.
I will never have that.
And I can decide to continue tohate her, or I can just finally
just say, you know what, I justwon't have that and learn to be
(50:53):
okay with that.
But I had to take, I had toprocess that.
That had that had that neededprocess time.
And I had to give myself thegrace to process through all
that pain and all that loss andthat grief and you know, all
those the five, the five stepsof grief or something that you
go through.
And I went through them multipletimes and I landed on, you know,
(51:15):
acceptance finally.
SPEAKER_00 (51:18):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (51:18):
But I chose to land on acceptance, and that's the
thing is we choose to land wherewe land.
And sometimes we can stay in aplace for a very long time.
Maybe we're angry for years andyears and maybe decades, but we
can choose to move on to thenext space.
And that's we can always choose.
We don't just because we've beenthere for 20 years doesn't mean
(51:40):
we have to stay there forever.
We can choose.
SPEAKER_00 (51:44):
And you talk about choice.
I love the language here becauseI want you to talk about why you
call them demons.
You change you, you named yourbook facing your facing your
demons, right?
Sorry, I just it just went outof my head all of a sudden,
facing your demons.
And and I want you to talk aboutwhy you call them demons and
what you what it means to you,what that meant to you, like
(52:06):
facing your demons, what doesthat look like?
And you talk about how you'veresolved, you know, some demons
and there's still some hangingout.
So can you talk about that thatlanguage and why you chose that
and what that what that actuallylooked like in your your healing
journey?
SPEAKER_01 (52:19):
Sure.
When I was younger, and Idescribe some of this in my
book, when we have a problem ora trauma or something bad, like
let's say something simple seemsnot simple when we're going
through it.
Say we fall off our tricycle,you know, we're three, we'd fall
off our tricycle, and that isthe end of the world, right?
(52:40):
You know, we just we're gonnadie.
My gosh, I I scamed my knee andyou know it hurts, and I'm gonna
die, and everything's awful.
And when you don't have somebodythat can acknowledge you where
you are, because at that moment,it really is the end of the
world for you.
You feel like it, right?
And so you need to allow time toprocess through those emotions
(53:00):
and get to the point where yourealize, okay, I didn't die.
I'm I'm alive.
And then you skin your knee thenext time.
If you are able to process, youskin your knee again, and you're
like, okay, well, I didn't dielast time, so I should be okay.
But man, it hurts.
And so you can cry about it.
And, you know, and you maybe younever stop crying.
And I'm like, if I fall, I stillcry.
Sometimes I'm like, okay, thathurt.
(53:22):
And there's, you know, a tearcoming down.
I'm 61 and I still sometimesallow myself the ability to just
have a moment, and it's okay toprocess through those things.
But when we have that trauma, ifwe're not able to process
through it, we have we create alittle picture around it and
(53:44):
what it looks like and what thatmeans to us.
And when we're not able to getthrough that process and see the
other side, oh, well, I didn'treally die, then, you know, if
we're not able to do that, thenwe have what I call the demons
that kind of show up and theythey start becoming real to us
because it's like, oh, well,you're fine.
(54:07):
The world is horrible, but butyou know, this is I will protect
you.
I've got your back.
It's good.
I've got you here.
And because you need somebody todo that for you.
And when you don't have anybodyto do that for you, you create
somebody to do that for you.
And and I call them our demons.
We create our limiting beliefs.
(54:27):
Well, you know, if if I ride atricycle, I'm gonna fall and I'm
gonna hurt, I'm gonna die.
So I can't, I can't ridetricycles anymore.
You know, I'm I'll never ride abike because I'm just I'm gonna
fall, I'm gonna die.
And so that's kind of an obviousone that as an as adults, we can
look back and think, yeah, okay,that probably wasn't, we weren't
(54:47):
gonna die.
But we didn't know that at thetime.
And when we're not able toprocess, we don't ever believe
that.
If we if we do grow and wechange and we have some a much
worse trauma and we create alimiting belief around it to
make sense of it, because we'retrying to make sense in our
(55:09):
thinking at the moment, whereverwe are at that moment, in our
three-year-old self, you know,that that thinking in the moment
is this is the world, this iswhat it is.
And so we make sense of it bycreating these beliefs.
And maybe they're limitingbeliefs, maybe they're real
beliefs.
I don't know.
But as we process through them,if we don't change the
(55:32):
perspective of how to view it,because we've got, let's say
we've got new information andwe've never accept the fact that
riding a tricycle and fallingoff doesn't mean you're gonna
die.
If we never accept that, thenthose, those, those limiting
beliefs become something sonefarious and and they just grow
(55:55):
in, you know.
So we then then we're like, oh,well, I can't walk on a sidewalk
because I'm gonna fall off, or Ican't walk, you know, I can't
climb a mountain because I mightfall.
You know, and and it just as weget older, we do harder things.
We can't do those things becausewe might fall, and then we'll
die.
You know, we can't do thisbecause we might die.
And and it literally startstaking over our lives.
(56:17):
And we have to choose.
At any point, we can choose.
We just gotta do the hard thing.
It literally is a hard thing,especially if we've had it since
three years old.
You know, we can look back andwe say, okay, as an adult, we
can look back and say, that'snot probably not gonna happen.
I'm pretty sure at this pointthat it's not gonna happen.
So we can get back on thattricycle.
(56:39):
Maybe we actually go back to atricycle, you know, maybe we
just get on a bicycle, maybe wejust climb a mountain, maybe we,
you know, have a friend hold ourhand while we do something
really hard that for us meanswe're gonna die.
But they can help us throughthat.
And that's where we we canchoose.
(57:00):
That's where we can choose tokeep our keep our limiting
beliefs, our demons close, or wecan let them go.
And sometimes we need to hold onto them.
Like, you know, I needed to holdon to the one for a while.
I needed to hold on to the onethat like I'm responsible for my
mother.
And I wasn't.
I never was.
(57:20):
I should never have beenresponsible for my mother.
But even when I saw thedifference, I had to like, okay,
I'm not ready to let that one gobecause I've got some others I
need to hold on to.
I mean, to let go of.
And then those letting go ofthose other ones gave me the
space to um to let go of thatone because that one was a big
one.
(57:40):
I was, I was responsible for mymother, you know?
And if, and that's ingrained inyour mind it too.
You hold on to that one becausethat is your life blood.
You know, if I if I don't takecare of my mother, I might lose
her, I might, and then I'll bethen then who's gonna take care
of me?
Then how am I gonna live?
You know, where am I gonna go?
I'm gonna sleep in the ditch oroh my god, who's gonna feed me?
(58:03):
I don't know.
It's gonna be awful.
So I can't do that.
So I I had to hold on to thatone for a very short time until
I could let go a few others thatwere um kind of carrying that
one.
And then once I let go of those,then I could let go of that one.
And it was so freeing.
SPEAKER_00 (58:20):
Yeah, and I think that's I think that's a really
important thing to understand isthat when we're trying to heal
long-held deep-seated emotional,mental beliefs that are
unhealthy and and ways ofexperiencing the world that are
unhealthy takes time.
(58:41):
The way that I described it onetime is like trying to pull the
weeds out without ripping outthe garden.
Like you're trying to, you'retrying to unwind the weeds from
the plants because you don'twant to rip the plants out.
Yeah, you don't want to rip theplants out, but they're all the
weeds are designed to destroylife, right?
They they go in and they spreadtheir roots and they wind around
and they choke out the goodplants.
(59:03):
And so when you get in there anddecide, like, this is a mess, I
gotta clean up my garden, youknow, your brain, you have to go
in and take the time to unwindso that you don't rip the good
things out with the bad things.
But it's really hard to tell thedifference a lot of times.
It's hard to see like what'swhat's healthy and what's
unhealthy.
And and so it's so important tobe intentional and patient with
(59:26):
healing because it's because ittakes time.
You're you're changing the waythat you interact with the
world.
I've talked before about howthere's two pieces to the
healing.
You have to heal the trauma, butyou also have to change the
habits.
You've got all these habits thatyou've lived with your entire
life that were designed toprotect you.
(59:47):
They're not doing a great job,but that's what they were doing.
They were trying to do it, youknow, even if they were doing it
in a poor way.
unknown (59:52):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (59:53):
You know, and so you can't do one without the other
and and expect to actually heal.
You can't, you can't just changethe habits because if the
underlying trauma is stillthere, your brain is going to
keep going back to the troughto, you know, try and you know
or going back to these habitsbecause that's what it knows.
It knows that this is hurt andthis is what how I protect.
(01:00:13):
But we also can't just heal thetrauma without changing the
habits because the trauma mightgo away, but we've got these
habits that have are deeplyingrained in us.
And if you don't actively changethe habits, you'll keep doing
that and you'll keep living withthe unhealthy thought and
behavior patterns and unhealthyway of interacting with the
world.
Absolutely.
(01:00:33):
So I first of all, thank you somuch for coming on today.
I love your book and I wanteverybody to read it.
So I I'm gonna have that linkedin the show notes.
Please go get a copy of it.
It is really phenomenal.
And I think you said thataudiobook is the audiobook out
yet or is it coming out?
SPEAKER_01 (01:00:47):
Audiobook is out.
Yes.
Yay.
So excited about that.
Yes.
I'm a big audiobook fan, so Ilisten.
Well, I had to get it on a wheelbecause that was how I listen to
books.
SPEAKER_00 (01:00:59):
Yes.
Yes.
Yep.
I I unfortunately don't have alot of time to sit and read
anymore.
And so I am a big fan ofaudiobooks because it's a great
way to be able to still read andlisten and gain new information
and knowledge and enjoyment.
Um, so please go get a copy ofher book, Facing Your Demons.
And can you give us one?
(01:01:20):
What is the one thing that youwould encourage the audience to
do today to help themselves movetowards taking responsibility
for their own healing?
What is a tip that you can givethat will help people to make a
choice today that will help themmove towards healing and taking
responsibility for themselves?
unknown (01:01:36):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (01:01:38):
I have a tool I call RAD.
It's recognize, recognize theproblem, the the issue, the
disconnect, acknowledge yourpart in it.
So, you know, it's like you haveresponsibility to make changes.
Nobody else has can changethings for you.
You change yourself.
So what you know, acknowledgeyour responsibility in it,
whatever that is, and then youdecide what you want to do with
(01:02:02):
that.
Maybe you want to just leave italone.
But, you know, once if yourecognize it and it's a problem,
then you you get you afteryou've acknowledged and you
decide what to do with it,that's where you decide.
Is this something that I'm like,okay, actually I'm okay with
that?
Or no, I really need this tochange, then you can decide how,
(01:02:22):
you know, take the steps to makethat change, but be okay with
the process of whatever thatmeans.
Because if it's big, you'regonna take time more time to
process than than you know, thanif it's a small thing.
SPEAKER_00 (01:02:36):
Yeah, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_01 (01:02:38):
That's my that's one of my favorite tools.
I call it RAD.
SPEAKER_00 (01:02:41):
I love it.
And that's I like acronyms too.
They always make it easy toremember things.
Lisa, thank you so much.
You're amazing.
And I'm so grateful for yourbook.
I'm grateful for yourvulnerability and your
willingness to share yourexperience to help others.
Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01 (01:02:55):
Thank you.
Thank you for having me on.
SPEAKER_00 (01:02:57):
Absolutely.
And you can get the link in thebio.
I have I have Lisa's informationlinked there, so make sure you
connect with her.
Where can they connect with you?
I'll have you share that onhere, and then I'll make sure
it's all linked in the bio.
SPEAKER_01 (01:03:08):
Sure.
Um, I have a website calledfacingyourdemonsbook.com.
And so and an email, uhfacingyourdemonsbook at
gmail.com.
So you can use either one.
I'm also on Instagram with myname and LinkedIn.
So I mean, I got a lot of, I'min a lot of different places.
Yeah.
But my website is a great placeto start because it's got a lot
(01:03:31):
of different I've got all theconnects there, and I'm still in
the process of changing mywebsite.
So it's a little small rightnow, but I'm I'm working on it.
SPEAKER_00 (01:03:40):
That's fantastic.
I'll make sure I'll make sureall of that's linked in the show
notes so you guys can go thereand and connect with her.
Thank you so much, Lisa.
I really appreciate your comingon today.
I'm so glad I have you as afriend.
Absolutely.
It's mutual.
All right, until next time,upsiders.
(01:04:00):
Thanks for joining me on theUpside of Bipolar.
Your journey to recoverymatters, and I'm grateful you're
here.
For more resources, visitwww.theupsideofbipolar.com.
If you're ready to dive deeper,grab my book, The Upside of
Bipolar, seven steps to healyour disorder.
If you're ready to heal yoursymptoms, join my monthly
membership, The Upsiders Tribe,to transform chaos into hope.
(01:04:24):
Until next time, Upsiders.
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