People Pleasing Is Lying: The Truth About Energetic Abuse, Boundaries & Your Voice w/ Melanie Singer

Most people look successful but feel dead inside.

They’ve lost their spark, their purpose, and their voice — and they’re stuck people pleasing, hiding the truth, and calling it “love.”

In this episode of Sex Afflictions and Porn Addictions, I sit down with Melanie Spring — brand muse, international keynote speaker, and creator of Speak With Confidence — to talk about what authenticity really means, why lying is abuse (yes, even “little” lies), and how people pleasing is actually manipulation that keeps everyone stuck.

If you’re a man struggling with sex or porn addiction — or a partner exhausted from carrying the weight of his secrets — this conversation is for you.

We talk about:
• What a brand muse actually does and why finding your voice is soul work
• How we lose our creative spark and identity as adults
• Why so many “successful” people are secretly miserable
• The impact of addiction on partners: energetic abuse, gaslighting, lost intuition
• Why lying is abuse even when he “doesn’t mean to hurt you”
• Boundaries as love and why love must be boundaried
• How Melanie set a hard boundary with her husband — and held it
• Why women need conscious community, not gossip circles
• How childhood betrayal loops repeat until we finally close them
• Why people pleasing is lying and manipulation
• What radical honesty and radical responsibility look like
• Personal style as an expression of your authentic self

If you’re tired of pretending and ready to stand fully in your truth, this episode will hit you in the best way.

We don’t promote other programs very often — but this one aligns perfectly with what we teach at The Mindful Habit.

Melanie Spring is incredible at helping people find and express their authentic voice, and I know some of you have been wanting to step into bigger stages, deeper truth, and more confident communication. If that’s you, you’ll get real value from this.

Here are the details:

Melanie’s SPEAK With Confidence program is on Black Friday sale right now — up to $1500 off through Tuesday at 8pm ET.
Use code PERRA for an extra 10% off + it gives me 10% of what you pay.

Program info: melaniespring.com/swc
Swipe copy for emails, texts, or social posts if you want to share it too: melaniespring.com/swc/affiliates
Code: PERRA

If you’ve been feeling called to speak more powerfully in 2025, this might be the perfect next step.

Connect with Melanie Spring
🔸 Website & retreats: https://www.melaniespring.com
🔸 Learn more about her Speak With Confidence program and upcoming women’s retreats on her site.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, what's up everybody? Craig here and you are listening
to Sex Afflictions and Porn Addictions, a podcast to help
you create healthy sexuality in a great life and stand
in your authentic truth. And we're going to talk about
that today. I have a very special guest who's joining me.
Her name is Melanie Spring, and she is a brand muse,

(00:22):
an international keynote speaker who supports bold visionaries through inner
work to find how the magic. She sits with her
clients as they remember like who you always are and
say what needs to be said out loud, and she
helps people find their voice. And I've seen it in
action and it's really really cool. And she does it
with unapologetic power, presence, and purpose. It isn't about building

(00:43):
a brand, It's about becoming one. Welcome to the show, Melanie,
thanks for having me. Can we start with what is
a brand muse? Because as I'm thinking about that and
I was preparing for her talk today, I realized, like
Melanie does soul work and helping people find what's inside,

(01:03):
and that means that when they come to you, there's
something missing. So tell us what a brand uses and
unpack that a little.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Sure, I'm a brand strategist by trade, so I went
to school for that. I built a branding agency, and
I know branding inside and out. But as I got
into my older years, is my career progressed. I realized
that most of the work that I do is really
sitting with people in whatever space they're in to help
them find who they really are and the embodiment of that.

(01:33):
So as I started thinking about titles, I've never been
good with titles. I used to be the chief inspiration
Officer at my company, and I've always had some funny titles.
But I didn't want to be a brand strategist and
I didn't want to call myself a speaker trainer. I
wanted to call myself something that felt like the thing
that I do no matter who I am, to whoever
whoever needs me. And mus came up as this idea

(01:54):
that I usually am the one to spark something with
someone and they're like, oh, well, I can follow that.
That's a great idea. So it's me being able to
be that fire starter for people and that creative energy
that we used to have with the you know, the
writers and the musicians who had a muse that would
keep them inspired and keep them creative and keep them
moving forward.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
And you talk about that spark, and it's hard to
imagine for some people, and some of my really successful
listeners listening right the people coming to that they've they've
lost it, they haven't found it. Tell me a little
bit more about what you see is missing and how
you build someone, help build someone to find that authentic voice,

(02:37):
because to me, there's nothing more powerful. And then to
align that business there's a whole another level, but maybe
we'll keep it on the personal side for a little bit.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Yeah, Well, what I know is that all of us
had the creative spark when we were kids. We had imagination,
we had creation. We wanted to do things that no
one else had thought of because we hadn't learned yet
we couldn't do and so we allowed our imaginations to
create whatever world we wanted to live in. And then
through education, trauma, sibling stuff, parents stuff, families stuff, whatever

(03:10):
happened to us, we became like we started following in line,
We started falling in line and going, Okay, this is
how we have to do things, and we became responsible adults.
And some of us are responsible, but we caused ourselves
to have to become who we are, and what that
is is just somebody like everybody else. We all started
kind of going, oh, well, I have to do this
because I need to be responsible, and I have bills,

(03:31):
and I have to do this work, and I've really
got to do this, But I really like to do
that other thing over there that'll be so much fun.
But I have a mortgage, but I have built like
whatever that is. And so over time I've realized that
when we can give people that spark back, it can
actually show them that there is life worth living. Because
most of us, most of us, most are the people
I meet, are usually dying well before they die. They're

(03:54):
not actually living life, they're just waiting to die. And
that goes along with retirement. I mean, we save up
all this money, we save up all this stuff for
us to be able to retire, to what to live. Well,
that's when most people get cancer or have a heart attack,
or end up dying or losing their best friend, their
spouse because they didn't really plan for that. They didn't

(04:15):
live the whole time. They just waited until a certain
moment to start living, and then what do they do
with themselves? So the idea of me being amused and
starting that fire for them because it's helping me take
off all the world from them and help them remember
who they really are, because it's not about becoming who
you are, it's about unbecoming everything that you aren't.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
I love that. And you talk about that loss of
identity right when you lose that title. When I lost
the title when I was no longer practicing law and
I went into another job that didn't have that fancy
title because it was a developmental opportunity for me. Yeah, WHOA,

(04:54):
that's heavy, and I see that for a lot of
my clients, Melanie. They've retired uber successful, like on the
outside look like they're thriving, but on the inside, they're
rotting from within. And part of that is because they've
lost that identity. Can you speak to that whole?

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, it's the identity and the purpose. It's that calling
because most people don't ever find the real reason why
they're here, which is so sad to me because I
know every single person is here for a reason. All
of us are here to create an impact, and some
people tend to be the people who go, well, I'm
doing this because I really want to do this from
an ego, like a lot of people build businesses around

(05:33):
their ego and all the beautiful knowledge that they have.
That's great, Yet most of us are here to support
other people. And then there's other people who are like, oh,
I'm really just a giver. I like to give, like
I don't want, I don't care about myself, I don't
care about what I'm doing. I just want to give.
And so we have this fight between the ego and
the overgive, when in reality, the calling is in between those.
It's that space in between where we're like, what am

(05:54):
I really here to do? And how can I support
others by fully being the full expression of myself. So
it's not about not being ourselves and just giving to others,
but it's also not just about us. It's about that
in between space of like, I am fully who I
am so that others can be fully themselves.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
And so obviously that reflects something that you're passionate about
in your personal journey. Was there a point in your
life where you felt you didn't have your voice and
found it and why you're so passionate about giving it
to others.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, I ran a branding agency when I was starting
when I was about twenty eight, I lost my job.
My boss asked me, what would you do if I
couldn't pay you anymore, and I said I'd work for myself.
He goes, great, you have thirty days. So I basically
started an agency helping other people find their voice, but
I didn't have mine. I had massive, crushing anxiety until

(06:47):
I was about forty, and for those first eleven or
twelve years, I basically did everything scared. I was terrified
most of the time, but I was still doing it,
which actually I give myself big credit for that, because
the amount of anxiety that my body held on to
all the time was just obscene, but it was still
pushing through, which is why I think that approachable badass

(07:08):
brand that I've had my whole life is true, because
it is that, like, I'm scared, but I'm also just
going to kick ass and take names and make things happen.
When I finally cleared that and found my voice and
understood that I didn't need people to like me, my
people pleasing stopped. I stopped trying to get people to
like me or want to be around me or need me,
and I started coming from a space of I'm only

(07:29):
doing this because, and this phrase comes to me often,
I care so much about other people that I don't
care what they think about me, because if I don't
say what I need to say and someone doesn't get
what they need, I'm doing them a disservice because I
want them to like me. So I'm going to say
something nice instead of saying what's true. Hmm.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
That was a lot of the women listening Melanie have
lost their way right, Their husbands have been keeping these
secrets for many, many years, giving given given of themselves,
and what they find is that if they want to
get through this, they have to find their voice. What
do you say to those women to help them break

(08:10):
free from that place where they're worried about what he's
going to say, what family's going to say. I want
to model strong, powerful women on this program and your
one and I know, yeah, what do you say to
those women who are so afraid? Hmmm.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
I think there's a really big stigma around addiction, regardless
of the addiction. I think it's that a lot of
people think, well, I'm the only one who's struggling with this,
and when it comes to the other side, which I'm
going to tell you just very honestly, my husband has
struggled with addiction of his own. It's not sex and
porn addiction, but it's addiction regardless of what it is,
and he's struggled with that, and it's affected me in

(08:46):
such a big way that it caused me to stop
believing my own intuition because there was lying, and there
was hiding and gaslighting that I didn't believe was possible
from like the kindest human being that I knew. But
for him to be able to find the root of
that problem and pull it all the way out and
show me while I'm standing with him, it also caused
me so much distress that I didn't realize I was

(09:07):
feeling at the time. And so what I would say
if I could go back in time, even a few years,
I would say to myself that it does not matter
what happens with him. It's his decision to continue this
addiction or not. But in order for me to stop
feeling the way that I feel, I have to set
clear and solid boundaries for myself and also know that

(09:30):
if the thing is that I'm worried to lose him,
then I have to be unattached from the outcome that
I would lose him. But a lot of the work
that I end up doing outside of this addiction piece
is I believe that all people should have enough sovereignty
and access to money so that they can make the
decisions that they need to, because that's a lot of
the problem, especially with women these days. I've got friends

(09:52):
of mine too, but there are so many women who
rely on their husbands. Like I have a friend who's like, oh,
I don't want to talk about money. I'm like, okay,
but if you're your spouse dies, or if you leave
him or he leaves you, or if something happens and
you have to pay your mortgage, how are you going
to do that? What's going to happen if you want
to leave. There are so many people in abusive relationships
who can't leave because they don't have access to money,

(10:14):
or they don't have a way to be able to
take care of themselves, and their fear is that they'll
be homeless, or their children will be homeless, or something
will happen, and that safety is really important. So regardless
of the situation, I still feel all humans should be
able to have sovereignty, and that's probably why I focus
on having a voice and being willing to share that
voice and use the voice, but also to stand in

(10:35):
yourself and not be run by fear.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, and so on one hand, finances are really important,
and I'll never it drives me crazy when people shame
a woman for staying, and it drives me nuts because
it's just so ignorant to ignore the economic realities. But
you made a great point of being able to stand
on your own two feet. Reminds me of one of

(10:59):
the first things Michelle did at my low point fifteen
years ago was open a checking account, like, no more
cole mingling money. This is mine, here's my safety net
in What happened is that when she started setting those
boundaries and I wasn't able to walk all over her

(11:21):
things change, I had either I had to change or
I'd have to find some other place to live, right.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
And I think that's probably the hardest thing I've had
to do, is set the boundary. And I'm super confident.
I mean, I have a course called Speak with Confidence
because I'm super confident in this. But when you love
someone who is dealing with addiction, you don't understand the
effect that it has on you until you get to
a certain point, and when I finally set a boundary
with my own husband and I said, you have to go.

(11:48):
I'm not available for that. You do this one more time,
you have to leave. And it wasn't about the addiction.
It was about the hiding or the lying or the
gas lighting. It wasn't about the addiction itself. It was
actually the not knowing. And so the effect on my
own intuition and my own safety and my own self
was so huge that I didn't see the truth of
it until I finally set the boundary and said, if

(12:08):
you do this again, you have to leave. And I
had to hold that that was the key. That was
like the only thing that was going to happen, because
if I kept getting mad about it, he was just
going to keep doing it. If I kept getting angry
about it, if I were reacted to it, he was
just going to keep doing it. But me being able
to be confident enough to do that, And I'll tell
you this, when I did that, I closed my eyes
and I cried through the whole thing. Like I wasn't

(12:29):
confident of me to say that, but I had to
say it in order for this to stop.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
So, meaning when you're setting the boundary, tears are coming
out of your eyes for a fear of loss of
all of.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
It, so many things, because it was just it had
been so hard for so long for me to go
there's something wrong and I can't put my finger on it,
and maybe it's me. And I've dealt with this in
my own family with my own parents, where I didn't
ever know what was really going on. And for me,
it was a loop that I had started as a
kid where I was like, there's something off and I

(13:02):
don't understand what this is. Maybe it's me, Maybe I'm
the problem. And then I saw it again later with
my own husband, because we tend to have these loops
continue until we close them. I had this happen with
my own husband, who's over this by the way, this
is something that we've really worked through, but it's something
that like I saw again and I was like, this
feels really familiar. What is this? And else started coming together.

(13:22):
Right when it came together, I was like, oh, it's
the boundary, which I had to do with my own mother.
I had to set a boundary and say we can't
do this anymore. And so being able to set that
boundary and go very clear on it, but I had
to hold it, which is probably the hardest thing I've
ever had to do. Is like I can set the boundary,
but I had to hold it. Like, hmm, you did
it again. We already talked about this. No, you were
the one who crossed the boundary. I'm not the bad

(13:43):
guy for setting it. You're the one who crossed it.
And so being able to be in myself. It was
also like I had to learn how to cook steak
while he was gone. I had to learn how to
start doing things that he was the one who did.
I was like, how many meat while he's gone? Like
those kinds of things that I used to be independent for.
I started becoming hyper cod in certain ways because of
the fact that this had just become a cycle again.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
Love the lens you introduced, Melanie, of what you would
tell your prior self if you could go back. Where
did you find the strength to set that boundary? What
was it about you that was different on the day
of the boundary versus the day before the boundary.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
I will tell you that women friends were the only
reason I did it, because I called a friend of
mine and she's and I only told the people who
could really hold this. Who weren't going to say, screw
that guy, he's a terrible person, you should just leave
that kind of thing. I really wanted to be careful
that I only shared this with someone who's conscious and
aware that I love him and I want the best
for him. But what I realized was when she reflected

(14:49):
back to me what I told her. I told her
exactly what happened, and she said, but would Melanie really
say there's wiggle room? Would she? Would she say that
to anybody else? And I was like, so having someone
else show the mirror to me of like, yeah, but
you wouldn't normally do that. Why are you doing this
with him? And you've done this for so long? And
then another friend of mine on the same day said

(15:10):
I hid my husband's addiction for so long that I
got cancer four times before I finally left. She's like,
you can't keep hiding this. You can't keep keeping this
to yourself. You have to be willing to share this.
And what's crazy is at the other end of it,
my husband finally told his parents, something I never thought
he would do, and that was like the most powerful
thing for me. After he cleared this and after he

(15:31):
got through it. He even told his parents about it,
and so being able to really go this isn't about
like his addiction. It's about the willingness to be authentic
and honest and fully responsible for his own actions which
were against his own alignment. It's against his own self,
not me. But I was just you know, I was

(15:52):
the extra person who's going, Okay, well I'm affected by this,
so I need to do something. But I loved him
enough to set the boundary. And that's what love is.
It's not like, do anything you want to me anytime
you want to be. That's not what love is. Love
is boundaried, healthy, boundaried.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, tell me more about that. I love how you've
taken a word that's really scary for a lot of
people and is you know, defensive, But it feels like
you've claimed it in a way that actually incorporates the
definition of love. And that fascinates me. Mm. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Well, when I started working on this, I'm really boundaried
in other ways. And I would say when I started
my deep, deep work about six years ago, I learned
that I wasn't I was just letting anybody in. I
was just letting anything happen. I would let oh, I
can handle it because I'm strong. I'm really sorry, I'm
a big shoulder. The whole worldgins it on it. But
when I realized that I was people pleasing because it
was how I grew up. I actually learned how to

(16:49):
people please by noting what's going on all the time
and just assessing the damage that could happen, and going, ooh,
just make them feel better, make them happy, make them
just say whatever, We'll make everyone happy so there isn't
a blow up. I realized it was a defense mechanism
for me as a kid to just shield myself, like,
whatever we can do to make everything happy, I'll do that.
But in reality, all that does is it hurts me.

(17:10):
And at the end of the day, I was really
wounded and I had no idea. And so when this
started coming up again, I realized I'm really good with clients,
like boundaries with clients. I'm really good with that, Like
if someone reaches out to me and I don't have
a moment, I'll send them a message and say, hey,
i'll get back to you tomorrow. But I realized with
the people who love me the most and who I love,
I'm not boundaried and That was the thing I really

(17:31):
needed to start working on, was how can I set
boundaries that are like, I'm not going to do something
just to make someone feel good. I'm going to do
something because I want to because it feels good for
me and it also supports them. And so when I
started thinking about this idea of love and unconditional love,
unconditional love is just it's rhetorical. Obviously, you know, it's
just like that's a oxymoron, isn't it, Like it's just

(17:53):
love is just unconditional. Otherwise it's affection, right, Conditional love
is affection. And so if you think about this idea
of love, that means that you have to love yourself first,
like you have to choose yourself first, which means you
can't people please people because you have to say I
love this person because I love me. And so that's
the boundary. It's I love myself so much that I

(18:16):
do not care what they think about me, and if
they don't love me, that's okay, that has to be okay.
I have to release myself from the attachment of that outcome.
Can I just love me enough to know that I
can love them and not need them to love me back.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Can we unpack that brilliant formula of the authenticity like,
because what you're describing is, and I'll translate it, is
when I'm in my authentic self, I'm not hiding.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
No, I'm in my not lying to yourself. You're not hiding,
you're not pretending, you're not piecing things together to make
other people happy.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
I love you so much I'm willing to be my
authentic self. Is that that I capture the essence of what.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
You said totally, and I love myself so much and
I choose me that I don't care if you do
love me.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
Hm, preach raise the roof. Okay, okay, So one thing
we can't I don't want to gloss over you said
is so important. I want to reinforce it. And for
the men who are listening, your wives need community, they
need friends. And the thing about the sex and porn,
Melanie is you know this is one of those addictions

(19:29):
where you know, you say at church you struggle with alcohol,
everyone gets up and says, yes, you did it. You
get up in church and say, hey, Johnny over here
is doing great with this sex addiction. We're so proud
of him. People bring their kids closer, you know, like
like like Wutch the kids closer, sitting next to and
so many of these women feel so alone. And yeah,

(19:50):
I just like, you couldn't have done it without community.
I just wanted to highlight that point how important your
friends were to you in supporting you on this journey.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
But it's the conscious friend And so that's the thing
that I will say is the most important part of
the friendships. Is a lot of women get together and
gossip about their husbands. Yes, which we all know, like
I've done it, I've previously done it. I used to
do that. But your husband, if you're married to a man,
if a woman is married to a man, he needs
to be your best friend. And if he's not your

(20:20):
best friend, then wire you together because if you wouldn't
share every single thing with him, then what's the point
of being together. There's nothing my husband doesn't know about me.
And at the same time, he cannot be your everything.
Because women cannot have their husbands be their everything. They
can be their best friends, they can be their lovers,
but they can't be their everything. And that's the big
problem that I see with a lot of marriages is

(20:40):
they're like, well, he needs to be the person that
I gossip to and the person that I share everything with,
and I have to be able to tell him literally everything.
Men don't want to hear everything. It's cute, but like
men don't want to hear everything. The field report is
made for other women when you want to share every
single detail of something. My husband and I actually talk
about this all the time. He would leave the room.
It's a whole bunch of women in my house. He

(21:01):
would leave the room for literally thirty seconds to sixty
seconds to go to the bathroom and come back, and
it would take us like ten minutes to catch him
up on what happened when he was gone, because that's
what we do. Isn't that true?

Speaker 1 (21:12):
Though?

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yes, Like if a man insert himself in a conversation,
he's like, what what just that? How did you just
do five different conversations at the same time, And we're
all like, why did you not up? Keep up? What's
wrong with you? But it's because women are able to
speak at a frequency that men can't get and we
need other women to do this. But not from a
place of gossip, not from a place of tattling on

(21:34):
your husband. If you're telling your girlfriend something you can't
tell your husband. That's something to work on, because women
need other women to be able to heal each other,
to be able to help each other see the truth.
And these conscious women were not sitting there going, well,
screw that guy, I can't believe we would do that
to you. They were saying, Melanie, how are you feeling
about this? What's really coming up for you? What can
we do to help you and support you? And how

(21:56):
can we see you through this so that things can
work themselves out the way they're supposed to. And also
just sitting with me in a space of love and
tenderness but also truth. And so it wasn't about me
going I can't believe you did this to me. It
was about me going what the heck is going on?
And they're like, well, I mean you have been like
letting him do this for this long, so do you
want to change that? And I'm like, mayor, you can't

(22:18):
do that to me. But they did on purpose because
that's what they're there for, and so helping women helping
other women heal. The crazy part is I've realized even
this weekend, I had a women's healing retreat at my
house where there was eleven of us, and I was like,
when was the last time you were around ten other
women where nobody had a fight, no one complained about anything,
no one's gossiping with each other, everyone was supporting each other.

(22:38):
It's so rare these days. But that's because the media society,
the way we've been taught and the way we've been raised,
is to teach us to compete and compare each other,
which separates us. I mean, if we go back to
the witch trials, that's what it was. It was about,
compared separating ourselves from people. And whether you whatever you
believe about all of that doesn't matter about the fact

(23:00):
that there's been a divide between women, because when women
come together, it's the most powerful healing they can have.
It's the same with men. When men come together and
actually share their truth, Holy shit, don't there's no stopping them.
But it's being able to say, I need my women
friends to sit with me and show me the truth.
But it has to be conscious, it has to be aware.

(23:21):
It can't just be a gossip chain for the sake
of doing that.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
Okay, I got a good one. I got a good one,
so I gotta go on. So many of the men
listening to this podcast have partners that say, I don't
need help, this is your problem, deal with it, while
while they are suffering tremendously literally PTSD like you know,

(23:46):
PTSD like symptoms. Yet in that space where hey, you
deal with this, this is your problem, you need help.
And I wonder what we can say to those women
to help inspire them to begin to step into their
power to reclaim their journey. And it's not about like

(24:06):
what he did. I tell me, what's inspiring you right now?

Speaker 2 (24:10):
I think with what you we just asked, it's the
idea that women need to sit with other women to
heal this. And I've even been thinking lately about wanting
to go to like an Eleanon meeting or something to
be able to talk to other people who've dealt with
similar things with people who have addiction, whatever the addiction is.
Like I said, my husband isn't a sex or porn addict,
but he has had lots of flavors of different kinds
of addiction because of who he is, and I actually

(24:32):
love that about him. He has an addictive personality and
he's addicted to me, which is great, but also with
the addiction that he has had the flavors of it
have come up so often where just a little tiny
thing can trigger the shit out of me, and I
couldn't understand what it was. I was like, why is
Why am I miserable? Like what is going on with me?
But it was because I was never really knowing. I
couldn't put the two and two together to make it

(24:53):
make sense. And so when I started healing it and
I started really working at which I'm not all the
way through it yet, that's not something I'm just like, oh, also,
I'm good. But what I realized was it's really PTSD.
It's trauma, and it's not trauma that says that like
he hit me. He didn't physically abuse me, but he
was energetically abusing me by hiding from me and telling
me that I wasn't right When I was like, you're

(25:13):
doing something that you shouldn't be doing and he's like, no,
I'm not. I'm like, yes, you are, and I know it.
But then I doubted myself and so I've been rebuilding.
I've been rebuilding my intuition basically, and that relationship with
my intuition. I've been rebuilding my relationship with all my
feelings and my cycle and my hormones and all the
other pieces that go along with it, because I kept going,
there's something wrong with me, what's happening? And so when

(25:36):
if I was to just blame him for it, then
of course he would have to do the work on that.
But then what would happen to me if I blew
up about something, Well, that's a reaction to something that
I haven't dealt with yet. And so a lot of
this work that we've both had to do together is
really look at what is the real truth behind it?
Why am I feeling the way that I'm feeling? Can
I because being the wife of an addict is not

(25:59):
a little thing. That energetic abuse is really there, and
it's there in a way that you might not know
it's there. And so having someone else sit with you
and really be able to work through it with you,
to look at the truth of it and what you're
holding on too. I realized at the end of the day,
I was just really angry at myself for letting this
get as far as it did, because they didn't set
a boundary early enough, because they didn't see the truth.

(26:21):
And in reality, I also had to forgive myself for
not knowing, for not understanding that, and for not taking
that action because I was so scared, and so being
able to have someone who's been through what you've been
through sit with you or a group of people and
having space to be able to talk about it honestly
and not just hide it or brush it on the
rug or say, oh, it's his fault, it's all his fault. Yeah,

(26:42):
well get divorced then if it's all his fault, then
don't stay. But I've noticed, like I said, this was
a loop that started a long time ago that happened
to come up again. And if I don't close it,
even if I get into another relationship, is still going
to happen again until I close it, because that relationship
is with me at the end of the day, not
with him. Did do it to hurt me. It hurt me,

(27:02):
but he didn't do it to hurt me. So if
I can come to terms with that and really work
through that, then I can heal.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
That's so powerful And I want to like underline bullet
point highlight two things. You said lying is abuse and
you talked about something called energetic abuse. Can you explain
that a little more, please?

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, so I'm a highly sensitive individual. So I'm one
of those HSPs is what they call them HSPs is
like a highly sensitive person, and I have high intuition,
so I know when things are happening, which is funny
because my husband's like, so I know that you can
tell if I'm lying, but I don't want to believe it. Okay,
that's nice. I'm glad that you figured it out. But

(27:49):
he also was like, how the hell do you How
do you know that I'm doing this? And I'm like,
because I know, I can see it, like it's on
your face, like I can tell, and so.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
In their body right, like you fact that energy, there's
an energetic you know, and women listening right you know?
You know.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yeah, it's like when your husband cheats on you, or
when your husband goes behind your back and does something.
You know this before you know it. And a lot
of times we doubt ourselves because of our own trauma.
And so what I've learned about energetic abuse is that
it's the same as emotional abuse, verbal abuse, or physical
abuse when it comes to I told him it felt
like he was just punching me in the gut energetically,

(28:28):
saying he was sorry, and then I would tell him
do it again because I wasn't stopping it because I
wasn't really sure because I hadn't seen someone be energetically
abused before. And he was like, I'm not this person, though,
and I'm like, I understand, you're not doing it to me,
but this is still happening to me. You're still in
that space of like hurting me without trying to hurt me.

(28:49):
It's like men who explode and they get drunk and
they forget that they beat their wife. They still did it.
It's not like they didn't do it, but it's the
same kind of thing. It's just in an energetic space.
And so for people like me who were highly sensitive
to even like I would have a day where it
was super quiet in our house and I could finally
just feel the energy because I wasn't busy, I wasn't

(29:10):
on calls all day, and I could tell that something
was wrong. And then I was like, why am I
getting upset? Like what is this and where is this
coming from? And then he's like, oh, well, you just
keep getting angry about things. And I was like, now
I look back and I'm like, screw you, dude, Like
are you kidding me. You knew this was you the
whole time, And I felt like I felt like a
crazy person because it wasn't what I saw as abuse

(29:31):
in the.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
And the lying is you talked about it like that
was the worst. The lying was worse than the behavior,
And I guess, I totally yeah, I guess I just
want to acknowledge. I totally understand that, right, Which is
why I think it's so important for you guys listening.
One encourage your partners to get in community with other women,

(29:55):
right and and and there's a growing IMpower power betrayal
trauma community, Melanie. But there's also holes that that some
women you know, fall in when they when they they wait,
I've been abused because of the lying, I've been betrayed.
I have betrayed trauma. And so those labels are so
empowering in the beginning, but they're also a place where

(30:17):
people can get stuck. How did you step out of
those labels and then not, you know, see yourself from
that lens as an abuse victim or how did you
own that well?

Speaker 2 (30:29):
I realized that I had to own my part in
it and take and I have two core values that
I just stand behind full out radical honesty and radical responsibility,
and that didn't mean that he had to be radically
honest with me or radically responsible for his action. I
also had to too, And I believe marriage is one
hundred to hundred. I don't believe it's fifty to fifty.
I don't believe we kind of like weave in and

(30:49):
out of it. I believe he has to take one
hundred percent responsibility, and I also have to take one
hundred percent responsibility, which means I had to take responsibility
for the anger that I felt about it, and then
it couldn't really control it because I didn't know where
it was coming from. But if I was able to
sit down long enough and understand it, I would have
set a boundary a much longer time ago because I
didn't realize what was happening. And so he also had

(31:09):
to take his responsibility for the parts that he was doing,
the lying and the addiction. But when I looked at it,
I was like, I'm actually not upset about the addiction.
I'm worried that I'm gonna lose him, that he's just
gonna float off into the ether and or he's gonna die,
or something's gonna happen, or he's going to you know,
like his brain's not gonna work anymore. That's what I
was worried about. But I couldn't see that because I
had just this red anger over me for so long

(31:31):
that I was just like, ah, like, why can't this
just stop? But I had to learn if I'm being
radically honest with myself. I was pushing him toward that
because he couldn't be honest with me because if he
was honest, I would get angry, and that cycle happened.
So it was like chicken egg kind of situation where
it's like, if he didn't do that, I wouldn't be angry,
but if I wasn't angry, he wouldn't do it. So

(31:52):
it's like m so being able to fully take my
responsibility of that because I was abusive with my words
because of it, and that was really terrible for me
to do because I was like, I can't believe you
would do this. This is not who you are. Literally will
call him names, whatever, because I was just so fed
up with it. But at the same time, for me
to take the radical responsibility and be honest with myself,

(32:14):
I was one hundred percent responsible for myself and he
had to take responsibility for himself. And that's why we're
still together. That's why we're still working on this because
it's about safety with each other, not just him being
safe for me being safe. It's about the both of
us being safe for each other.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
I love that. I love that because yeah, no, just
just so many, so many, so many different reasons. So
so let's let's I'll I edit out these these pauses.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
That's good.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
You mentioned earlier the women retreats, and a lot of
my women listeners have not been on a women empowerment retreat.
I think there are some listening who are working hard
of themselves in these betrayal trauma community. What happens at
these retreats? And I know that's a broad question, but
to an audience who they might be new to this, Melani,

(33:06):
because we're you know, we're new to this too, right,
So you know you've heard our story. I'm Michelle and
I coming in are coming out to the world party
starting in May, our first retreat that we went on.
What happens at these retreats? And you mentioned you had
one recently, maybe you can tell us a little bit
about that.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yeah, well, this last weekend, I had eight women at
my house and I had this interesting download in about
June this year where I realized that I needed to
take what I did for one or two or four
people and split it between ten and I had I
have up to ten spaces for people to be able
to stay at my house, and I call it a
women's adult women's healing slumber party. So it's a way

(33:42):
for women to be able to get together because, as
I said before, we've been told to compare and contrast
against each other, but when in reality, when women come together,
we're able to heal traumas that we could never find
on our own. And I don't believe healing happens by ourselves.
Healing doesn't happen in solo space. It so bringing a
group of people together and letting the universe choose who

(34:03):
comes together. I see the reflection of each person's trauma
and each other. So some have dealt with like childhood
sexual trauma where someone will share something and then someone
also go WHOA. Wait a second, I remember whoa whoa?

Speaker 1 (34:16):
Whoa?

Speaker 2 (34:16):
Hold on a second. Now, I'm seeing that your older
sister and my younger sister are the same. In this
and I need to go apologize to my sister because
I thought I was protecting her and in reality she
was just Like all this stuff comes up. It's just
amazing how it works that there's so much that happens
to us that's unknown trauma. We're left in a cryp
to cry too long on our kid, or we don't
get picked up when we need to, or we don't

(34:37):
get the comfort that we need, or we get neglected
in some way, even just little tiny things doesn't have
to be huge. But then there's other things that are
trapped in our bodies. Like I have a friend who
can't remember before the age of fifteen. She's like, I
know something happened to me, but I can't remember. And
she started remembering recently after two years of working on it.
She started picking up little memories of when she was
a kid, and she's getting to the bottom of it.

(34:58):
But our systems are built to keep us safe. So
if we've remembered everything that's ever happened to us, we
might explode. And so these retreats are called the remembering,
and it's a way for women to be able to
sit with each other and heal together. And so we
use we use different kinds of ancient medicines along with
ancient techniques like breathwork and meditation and soundbathealing, but we
use ways for people to be able to really sit

(35:19):
still and see the truth and follow the lines to
what's the intention. And it's all sacred spaces for people
to be able to sit together, whether they do medicine
work or not. There's people who come and stay sober
the entire weekend and just enjoy the like being with
other women to go deep. But there's other people who
are like, I want to find the truth, and I
want to find it now. I don't want to keep waiting,

(35:41):
I don't want to keep hoping that I can find it,
and they're willing to finally share. Like so almost everyone
who walks in and is like, I'm kind of somebody
who doesn't like to share. I'm not bigun snuggling. I
really don't like touching people that kind of thing. They're
the ones in the middle of the snuggle pilot at
the end, sharing literally their entire life story and so
being able to be able to open this and go
I can trust other women, I can trust myself, and

(36:02):
I can trust that the healing will come as it
needs to. So powerful, so.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
Powerful, so powerful. Well, I hope people listening were inspired
by that because I and I'm going to have all
the Melanie's information in the show notes, and anybody can
reach out to me personally and I can put you
in touch. I want to talk about how people pleasing
is a barrier to authenticity because on one hand, those
people pleasing skills are helpful. They've helped us navigate. It

(36:29):
makes us care about other people us it is, but
we all both you know, you and I know how
that people pleasing results in you showing up in a
false way to the world. What do you think about that?

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Well, I was told by my own mentor when I
first told her that I was a people pleaser, and
I was very happy about it. I was really good
at getting people to do what I wanted by helping them,
you know see that they were fine.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
It was Melanie, It's very wonderful. It is part out
of your gifts. Yes, yes, and right.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
But what she told me was she said people pleasing
is lying, and she said people pleasing is manipulation. And
I was like, I don't manipulate people. She goes, yes,
or do? I was like, that's not nice. You shouldn't
say things like that, and she's like, if people pleasing
is not manipulation, then what is it? And I finally
started looking at the truth of it, and I was like,
it's because I'm trying to force myself into some other

(37:27):
character to make someone else happy, which means I'm making
myself unhappy to make someone else happy. That's manipulation. And
so once I finally started doing sales from a space
of I'm not going to manipulate them into doing something
that they don't want to because I'm good at that,
because I have charisma, because I grew up with charisma.
I have a salesperson as a mother, like I know charisma.

(37:49):
Yet when I started being my authentic self, I started
becoming a magnet and I started attracting certain people and
repelling other people because I was trying to make everyone
like me, when in reality people don't. Not everybody likes me.
I don't even like everybody, so why would I want
everyone to like me? And so it's this idea of
how can we stop people pleasing and forcing ourselves into
these little tiny boxes to make everyone else happy, and

(38:09):
how can we fully self express and go. I don't
care if you like me. I just want to tell
you the truth. It's a little different when you look
at it that way, right.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
People pleasing is manipulation and life.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
I mean, if it's not, then what is it?

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yeah? I love like people who are driving listening, get
the sit in that now. I want you to think
about that. Think about that, think about how how that lands.
And if you are outright rejecting it and rebelling against it,
there's a great sign that you're onto something.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
I'm melanie mm hmm, yep, exactly. I mean I did.
And that's the thing is, like I used to be
an incredible people pleaser, but I realized it was a
trauma response to trying to figure out where everyone was
and what was going on. And now I don't have
to do that anymore. I can just be my full
self and if someone doesn't like it, that's okay. But
that is the go back to. I care so much

(39:00):
about people that I will only tell them the truth.
Not to get them to like me, but I will
tell them the truth.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
I care so much about people I only tell them
the truth. Is brilliant because it taps into that identity
of actually caring for people.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
That is a truth, right, Yeah, because a lot of people,
especially when my branding agency, people will be like, I'm like,
what's the differentiator between you and everyone else? They're like,
I care? And I was like, rapper, that's nice. Yeah,
tell me something that's more true than that, because everybody
says that they care. But at the end of the day,
if I really put you in a position, would you
actually or are you doing it to make me feel better?

Speaker 1 (39:40):
So you heard it here. Lying is abuse. There's such
a thing as energetic abuse. Men and women, all of us,
love us listening all of it, and people pleasing is
manipulation and lying. Thank you, good night everybody. No, No,
I want to close on something that might be a
little like, but I think it's important from an identity perspective,

(40:02):
is how important is personal style? Melanie to that.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
One of the most important. I think it's one of
the most important. I mean, I'll tell you this. Years ago,
I went to my aunt. I think it was thirty two.
I'd been in business for four years at that point,
and I went to my aunt and I said, she's
a hairstylist. I said, I keep getting asked if I
was doing a paper for college at networking events and
she's like, I'll tell you why that is, because you

(40:27):
don't care how you look. And I was like, yes
I do. And she's like, no, you don't. You dressed
like a college kid. You have like flared jeans and
a Wonder Woman T shirt, and your hair is long
and straight. You don't actually wear any makeup, like you
just don't care. I was like, what is that supposed
to mean? Like I was really offended by it, and
I'm like, I'm an approachable badass. What are you talking about.
She goes, yeah, you don't look like it. So what

(40:48):
I realized was I was on the inside feeling a
certain way, but on the outside I wasn't looking that way.
And so once I started cutting she cut my hair off,
she kind of did a little bob, like a little
a line bob for me just to get it was
halfway down my back at the time. And over time,
I just started getting shorter and shorter and shorter, and
I started dressing more like myself instead of the way
that you know, my mom wanted me to dress like

(41:09):
little pink cardigans and stuff like that, and can you
imagine that to me in a pink cardigan. But it's
the idea that when we have this inner understanding of
who we are, the outer expression of it shows up.
We can see this in people like Iris Apfel, who
was probably one of the coolest women who ever lived.
She lived till she was about one hundred and something,

(41:29):
and she had the most personal style of anyone on
the planet. And so being able to look at that
and go, I want my version of that. That's what
I hope most people do is look at me and go,
she's different. I don't have to be her kind of different,
but I can be my kind of different. And it's
not about for me standing out and being different. I'm
not trying to get attention. That's not the idea. Like

(41:49):
you see goth kids in high school are just trying
to get attention. You're like, are you hurt? Is there
something going on?

Speaker 1 (41:54):
Is it like?

Speaker 2 (41:55):
And not all of them are, but a lot of
it is an attention thing. For me, it's going I
don't want to literally blend in with every other person
just to feel like I'm on trend or in the
style like I'm not going to botox my forehead to
death because I won't be able to see anymore. Because
it's that's how this works. Because if you look at Hollywood,
almost all of the actresses and actors who keep getting

(42:15):
their faces done, they all started looking the same recently.
They have the same locks, they have the same style,
they have the same like there's really not a lot
of different differentiators between people. But humans are all different
for a reason, and it's about expressing yourself the way
that you know feels the most authentic to you. And
if that means, I'll tell you. For so many years,
I would meet so many guys who looked exactly the same,

(42:38):
same haircut, same blue button up shirts, same blue jacket,
same shoes, and they put on jeans to be different.
And I'm like, really, that's all we have. Women literally
could wear eight billion different kinds of things, and this
is all we're doing for men. What if you stood
out just a little bit. I have a friend who
wears really funky patterned jackets and funky shoes, and it's

(42:58):
he's totally that style. But he also has like kind
of a mop on his head and he doesn't care
what his hair looks like. He did somebody say you
kind of look like a mess. He goes, Yeah, that's
the point. I don't care.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
This is me.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
I'm fully myself and it doesn't have to fit into
whatever your standard is, because who made the standard? What's
the average? Most people are average? And so what if
we were able to fully express ourselves on the outside
like we feel on the inside and people can see
us the truth of who we are.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
I love how you I think people anticipating the answer
might have been, oh, it's you know, it's important, you know,
for style, for branding. But there's an authenticity piece that
I think you really really, really hit hard and it
is part of finding who you are and not being
constrained by what mommy told you to do and what

(43:47):
daddy told you to do and how you were supposed
to dress. So listen, go to a thrift shop. You
do not have to have a lot of money to
get creative around fashion, So pay attention. Don't let your
genes be differentiator in a room.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Great?

Speaker 1 (44:02):
Amen, Amen, Amen, Okay, I'm going to put all of
this in the notes, Melanie, but just so people driving,
how can people find you on the web And if
there's anything you want to promote, I'd love to hear
about it.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
Yeah, So they can find me at Melanie Spring or
Melanie Spring dot com. I'm easy to find that way.
And I'm in the middle of a promotion for the
course that I built eight years ago called Speak with Confidence.
I recently rewrote the entire thing and have launched it
so that people can build and practice and market and
book talks in two months.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Yeah, wow, awesome, awesome, and I'm going to have that
link for everybody down below. Woof man, we covered a
lot today we did.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Thank you for this. This was really fun.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
We've got some good highlight reels. I'm excited to share
some of these clips. This is awesome. Well, thank you, Melanie.
I'm so blessed again. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
Thank you for having me all.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
Right, everybody, thank you for listening. Make it great. See
you in the next day episode. Thanks for listening. Bite