June 2, 2026 • 27 mins
Are you accepting crumbs in your relationship? What does it mean to be crumbed? The beginning of a relationship can start in a very different way: lots of attention, love bombing, and admiration and then things change. Eventually the massive amount of attention begins to come to an end and you begin to get less and less. You don’t realize but the little attention you are receiving begins to be put on a pedestal by you and you aren’t realizing you are now cherishing the crumbs. Learn about crumbing and what it means in a relationship. Listen to the whole podcast to get advice and direction you can use to clearly move forward in a healthy and informed direction.
#narcissism #narcissistic #borderline #BPD #crumbs #manipulation #lovebombing #pedestal #podcast
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#narcissism #narcissistic #borderline #BPD #crumbs #manipulation #lovebombing #pedestal #podcast
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're in a good place now you are listening to
perspectives with Ashley Burgets. Let's talk today about confusing relationships,
Why they're so confusing, and what's the reason for it.
Many of us are in confusing relationships where there's anxiety,
there's stress, but yet it almost feels like addictive. And
(00:24):
why is it addictive? Why can we not leave? Why
is it that we're kind of stuck in this relationship
even though there's a lot of not so good parts,
but there seems to be a component that keeps bringing
us back in, keeps us there on a constant basis.
I want to talk about crumbs today versus validation and
(00:45):
when we need to put the brakes on. You've heard
the word crumbs. What does crumbs mean? What does it mean?
What does it mean to be crumbed? You know, if
you have a loaf of bread, and you have that
loaf of bread you bite at the store. It's a
full loaf of bread. It's a whole loaf of bread, right,
it's a whole loaf. But what if you went into
that store and instead of buying that loaf of bread,
(01:06):
you know, in that bag or that sack, instead of
that there's just crumbs. There's just a few little pieces
of crumbs. There maybe one piece of bread left in
the bag. How would you feel about that, Well, most
of us aren't going to the store and buying a
bag of crumbs, but many of us are in relationships
that that is exactly what we're experiencing. In the beginning,
(01:27):
we got the whole loaf of bread. In the beginning,
it was like going to the store every day, having
a whole loaf of bread and never having to worry
about it. But eventually it became small little crumbs. Now,
the interesting part is over time, when you start getting crumbs,
not the loaf, not even the pieces of bread, you
(01:49):
begin to higher value those crumbs because that's all you're getting,
so you put them on a pedestal, even though before
that wouldn't have been the case. Before you would have
said this is crazy, especially beginning in the relationship. Why
am I just getting these little nuggets of interaction or attention?
And see, that's one of the problem lies with the
(02:10):
confusing relationship is in the beginning, we got the full
loaf of bread aka love bombing, and then over a
period of time that stopped. It stopped almost immediately after
a few months for some of you, a few weeks
for some of you, even a year. You got to
do a whole year of love bombing. But that's very
few and far between. So eventually you start getting these
(02:33):
little crumbs, these little nuggets of attention, and they become
slower and slower, and they're kind of like dulled out
to you, you know, little chump change here, little chump
change there. And at first it's annoying or discombobulating, but
eventually you begin to hold onto those crumbs for dear life.
(02:53):
You begin to hold onto those crumbs and see those
crumbs as value. Now, the problem is because we got
the loaf of bread, the whole loaf, for so long,
and we got so used to that we kind of
attached our validation and our self worth to that loaf
of bread that that other person was giving us. The
(03:16):
other person went to the store providing us this bread. Okay,
this is a euphonism, this is a concept. You know,
provided the bread aka attention, and you started strapping and
connecting your value, your personal value who you are, and
you started like tethering yourself to this loaf of bread
(03:38):
and this person and then eventually the bread goes away,
and now you're just getting that little cellphone bag, the
cellophane sorry, the cellophane bag of just these little crumbs,
and you're holding on to them like their gold. And
then eventually you don't get some of those. So there's
sometimes in the relationship where they literally maybe go quiet,
(04:00):
maybe they're not communicating with you. Maybe they're actually mean
or angry with you, making fun of you, putting you down,
even sometimes ghost seeing you. Maybe you have something planned
and you're looking forward to it. You get to the restaurant,
there's nobody there. You try to call them, they don't respond.
Perhaps you text them and you see that they've read
(04:22):
received they've read it, but they're not communicating with you.
And then you go days wondering what happened? What did
I do? Because your value is so wrapped up with
that person that now you're concerned because you can't see
the forest through the trees. You're going through the motions
of your life in the shower, thinking about them, in bed,
(04:44):
can't sleep. Some of you are overeating, some of you
aren't eating at all. When is the next time I'm
going to get a crumb? And the interesting part of
it is. You don't realize it's a crumb. You're just
waiting for that call, just that lifeline text message. Oh
god God, Well they just text me. Maybe they'll text
me today, maybe they'll call me. And so you sit
(05:07):
there and wait, shutting out the rest of the world.
If you're going to work, you're having to go to work,
you're frustrated. All you can do is wonder where are they,
where did they go, what happened to them? And then
eventually they pop up, And usually they pop up when
you've already made plans to do something because you were
so overwhelmed with grief and fear, and you've been beaten
(05:28):
down mentally and emotionally, and you feel as though you
have no self value, no self worth, And so you
reach out to a friend or a lifeline and you
make a time to get coffee or to meet up
for lunch, and right when you're heading that way, this
person texts you, Hey, can I see you right now?
And so you start canceling out everybody in your group
because you rush to meet that person to get that
(05:51):
crumb of validation. So this is interesting. I want to
discuss the crumbing and what does it feel like, and
how do we deal with this type of situation and
how do we overcome being strapped of these crumbs looking
(06:13):
for personal validation and acceptance, Because what's happened is these
crumbs have been our personal validation and acceptance. They have
turned into our entire value. We have lost our value.
And I don't know if we ever had it, If
we could strap ourselves to and tether ourselves to someone
else's crumbs, maybe we never had personal value of our
(06:35):
own ever, I don't know. And this is something that
we need to think about. And so when we look
at this concept, we need to figure that out. So
how do we disconnect from that? And how do we
first see it as crumbs? And I want you to
analyze your relationship accurately to understand it, to see what
(06:57):
is crumbs and what is real honest love versus what
is real honest attention. And I think you'll see that
it's very different. I think in the beginning many of
you will say, well, I just wish we could go
back to the way it was before, because we actually
feel like the person was different. It's just the person
never changed. They just went back to being who they are.
(07:19):
Their reality is them now, not who they were before.
And that's why it's so strange. That's why it's so
mind boggling, because you got so inundated in the beginning
of this relationship thinking that this is the way it was,
this is the way it is, this is all this
(07:40):
good stuff, and this is the way the relationship will be.
But that's just not true. That is the version of
them that they entered the relationship with you, That is
the version of them that they were selling you to
have a relationship with you. That's all it was. And
I need you to get that through your head, because
(08:00):
that's one of the hardest things to get through your
head because you're constantly trying to get back to the beginning.
And the beginning was not real. The beginning was false.
The beginning was fake. The beginning was a version of
them to get you to feel a certain way, to
get you to drop your guard, to move very quickly
(08:21):
into a relationship, and to be able to go through
that process. And that's kind of the situation that we
have here, is that when you go through that process,
you don't realize that you think that this person is
that version of them is reality, that version that you
met is amazing. There's all this love bombing, all this attention.
(08:43):
Many of you talk about having great sex, this great relationship,
all this stuff, and everything's good for whatever time that is.
And then things start changing and dwindling, and through the
process you begin to not only feel bad and wonder
when it's going to come back, but you lose your
identity in the process because you're thinking, what did I
(09:04):
do wrong to get this person to treat me like this?
What did I do wrong to get this person to
not continue to be how they are with me? What
did I do wrong to lose this attention? And so
you begin to morph and change into somebody that you're not.
And see this becomes really radically a big problem. It's
(09:25):
like going into a place and not being yourself. It
doesn't make any sense because there's gonna be people that
like you for being you, people that don't like you
for not being you. Every every construct is possible, So
just go in being yourself in any relationship and if
they don't like you for who you are, hey, they
don't like you for who you are. You know, if
they don't want you in the club, great, get out
of the club. And it's hard to recognize those things
(09:47):
because you see clubs or organizations or friend groups very
differently than you see a romantic relationship. They don't love
you for you, then they don't love you for you
move on. But that is very very very hard to see,
very hard to see. And so how do you process that?
How do you deal with that? And these are the
(10:10):
things that I want you to begin to think about.
These are the concepts that I want you to think about.
Because the beginning was not true. The love bombing was
a manipulative tactic. Now the chromes are to see how
little will you take and continue in the relationship, How
little will you take and continue to be in this relationship?
(10:32):
That is key. And the problem is many of us
don't think that way, so we don't know that that's
the other side of the coin. Here. We're just saying, Oh,
I just want that person around, and I really like them,
and I think about them all the time, and I
just want to spend time with them, even if it's
for an hour, whatever I can get. I just want some.
I want some so bad. And it's a very addictive quality, right,
(10:53):
It's like it's like a line of cocaine or some heroin.
Or something like that. It's very addictive. You'll take whatever
you can get, you know, whatever the dealer has. You know,
oh you only have that. Okay, well I'll just get
that for right now and you just let me know
when you get more in Okay. It's not like, Wow,
that kind of sucks, Like that's all I'm getting here,
and this is it. I mean, I'm giving you all
this and you're giving me that. Now. It's different if
(11:16):
you're also crumbing this person back. But I'm saying many
of you that are listening to my podcast, that follow
the YouTube channel Life Coach Astity Burgess, that have followed
the blogs and the videos and everything for years, you're
not coming from that camp. You're coming from the camp of, Hey,
I'm a good person. I'm wanting to meet, you know,
somebody that I can be with in my life and
(11:37):
I treat them very well and I treat them with respect,
and I kind of I would like the same thing back.
And at first I was getting all this attention, I
was like, Wow, you know, love is possible, and now
I'm not. And now I'm not, And so I need
you to see the difference. So from the love bombing,
it wasn't reality. I needs you to recognize that the
(11:58):
beginning was not them. I need you to see how
the current situation, if they're being mean and combative and
argumentative or avoidant, that is truly who they are, and
accept that reality. So you're finally in the relationship with
the real person now, not the representative. Okay. First off, Second,
(12:20):
you had the loaf of bread and you were making
toast every day. We were having a blast. You're making toast.
You know. Heck, I don't know. Maybe it was pet
of bread, you know, who knows. Whatever you were having.
You know, whatever it was, you were having a good time,
and you were really happy about that bread. Now we
don't have that bread anymore. We have tiny little crumbs
of one piece a little bread, and we get it
(12:42):
a little bit here and there. And I want you
to realize how you take that little piece of bread
and you put it up on that pedestal and you go, oh, look,
I got this little little piece. Yeah, I'm gonna hold
that up. I'm not gonna eat it. I'm just gonna
look at it because it's so great, it's so amazing.
And I want you to realize how often in other
relationships you've been mistreated or haven't gotten attention, and you
(13:04):
walked away from those relationships, and this relationship is not
any better. It's actually probably a lot worse. But it's
become addictive because see, at first they gave you the
whole loaf. It's like the drug dealer, right, Yo. The
first time is free, even the second and third time
is free. But now I'm gonna have to give you half.
Now I'm gonna give you a third. Now i'm gonna
(13:24):
give you a half of a half of a half.
Now i'm gonna give you one fifteenth of it. Now
I'm not gonna give you anything. Now I'm gonna not
give you anything. I'm gonna also cut you off for
a period of time and then I'm gonna come back.
Or I might just distance myself for a while, or
I might ghost you. And I know that some people
have gone through ghosting for periods of time that were
(13:44):
longer than several months, and then somebody shows back up
and they're like, oh, hey, just everything's fine. And I
know that the extreme some of you don't say anything
because you're just happy to hear from this person. Oh god,
they've they've resurrected, they've come back. You know, maybe we
can have this relationship. We've always want it. But I
want you to realize every time we take them back,
(14:05):
you're losing a part of yourself because what you've done
is you've attached your value and your self worth onto
the entire breadcrumbing attention that they are or not giving you.
So when they're not giving you attention, you have no value.
When they are giving you attention, you have value. Do
(14:26):
you see how this is working against you? This is
not a good thing. This is working completely against you,
tearing you down. And so I need you to begin
to see the truth here, and I need you to
also see the cycle pattern of how they do things.
Some of them, I believe, know exactly what they're doing,
(14:46):
some of them know half of what they're doing, and
some of them are just all over the map and
really don't care. And some of them might be in
relationships with other people who are doing this to them
as well, and you just don't know about the other person.
It's very interesting because there's a lot of interesting webs
that people have weaved, and so they might be if
(15:08):
they're ghosting you, maybe with somebody else and I'll tell
you one thing. If somebody is a true narcissistic person,
that probably is very true, or if they're a fear
of abandonment or fear of being alone, for sure, But
how do you pull back? And I know that some
of you say, well, I'm in this relationship and when
I call the personality or I say something, they get
very defensive or angry or turn it around on me.
(15:30):
And that's true. They have to because remember, they want
to remain the victim. They don't want to take responsibility
for their actions because if they do, then they would
have to change it. You know. It's kind of like
the concept of somebody that's insane. You know, if they're insane,
they can't really be prosecuted at the same level because
(15:50):
I didn't know what they were doing, right, you complete insanity,
But a lot of times some people do. But a
lot of times people just manipulate in gas light to
a degree to make you feel like you're losing it,
to change the narrative of what's really happening. And so
I need you to step back because I believe that
many of your relationships, if you're listening to this podcast,
(16:11):
whether it's a past relationship or a current relationship. Somebody
is changing the narrative. Somebody has changed the narrative, and
many times we go along with that narrative because we
forget things, We forget how things happen. We want to
believe a different reality, we want to believe a different truth,
(16:35):
and so begin to see these realities in these patterns,
and then I need to see I need you to
recognize more often, how are you? And when are you upset?
When are you sad? Many of you are sad more
than happy. You're sad more than happy. It's beginning to
(16:57):
really affect you manually and emotionally throughout your life. It's
affecting every aspect of your life. And honestly, this relationship
that you're holding onto is actually pulling you down. And
you are underwater and you're drowning, and it's time to
come up to the surface of the water, to see
the situation as it is and to begin to accurately
(17:20):
understand how are you going to move forward with it?
And the only way to move forward out of these
relationships is to look at the truth. If you're not
looking at the truth, you don't have options. If you're
not looking at the truth. You're believing the game. If
you're not looking at the truth, we all have a
problem because you are gaming yourself into a situation that
(17:41):
holds no value for you. And if anything is causing
you pain and suffering and so forget. I need you
to remember there is a vision of this person. Usually
the beginning of the relationship. This person looked amazing, They
were great on paper, they said everything, they did everything.
You had a version of them that you put on
(18:02):
the pedestal, whether it was this fairy tale that you
were going to live together forever, or you were gonna
have all these kids, or you were gonna be this
power couple, or whatever the version is for you. And
I need you to realize that you played a part
in this narrative as well, because you created this reality
based on this attention and then lost yourself in the shuffle.
(18:25):
And so you have to begin to find your own value.
You know, you have to begin to find your own
value separate from this relationship, because remember when we find
value in other people, the problem with that is if
the other person goes away, then what happens to our value? Bingo,
(18:45):
that's it. I mean, we have to find value within
ourselves separate from every relationship because remember, relationships are exterior
type things. We can love people and care about them,
live with them, marry them, have kids with them. It's
all great, it's all fun, great, wonderful, but there's a
limitation to how much you want to give of your
(19:06):
value to that person because we have to have boundaries,
and in these relationships we have no boundaries. If you're
accepting crumbs, you have no boundaries. You've gotten to the
point of begging to some degree for this person to
see you. And the more that we beg and I'm
(19:26):
not saying you're physically begging, oh please, please, no, but
not saying, hey, where were you for three days? Or hey,
this isn't working for me. You know, this isn't working
for me. Your attitude when I come home and the
passive aggressive behavior and the silent treatment, or you abusing
the credit cards and then getting angry with me, this
isn't working for me anymore. I don't need to be
(19:47):
married at this expence, or I don't need to be
in this relationship at this expence. It's time for me
to find myself and I advocate. You know, this is
the work that you want to do is the longer
you stay in these toxic relationships, this toxicity because remember
you're fueling it too. This person wouldn't be able to
(20:09):
do this if you weren't accepting the behavior. Now they
might not change. It's not like, okay, if you stopped
accepting the behavior. And maybe that's the case. You put
down some boundaries, you tell them you're not taking this,
you move out, you do whatever, say you need to
go to therapy or whatever, and we'll figure it out,
and if not, we're moving on. I'm tired of this.
That could be the answer, or it could be a
(20:30):
wake up call to move on in your life. But remember,
we have to learn the value within ourselves or this
is going to continue to happen. If we don't learn
our value, we're just going to go into another relationship
similar to this relationship, and it could be worse. I've
worked with clients where we begin to work and they go, oh,
I got past this, and now I'm in this relationship
(20:51):
and I wanted to have a session with you and
start working with you. And we begin to find over
time that we've just found someone else with the same
type of cluster be or the same dynamic, the self selfishness,
or the same victim reality. But it's even worse than
it was before because we didn't do the work we
needed to do now. And so if you're in this
situation and you're sitting there, you're waking up at night
this person's not calling you, or you're waking up at
(21:12):
night because you can't communicate with this person, or you're
walking around aimlessly. I mean, I had a client the
other day said that they walked into a screen door
because they were so busy in thought about how upset
they were about this relationship that they weren't even paying
attention to where they were walking. I've had a client
run into the back of a car before because they
weren't paying attention. Because we're up in our mind thinking
(21:33):
about this problematic situation that is not bettering our life,
and the only way to better our life is to
accurately see it. Go to the beginning, See what happened,
Think about it, Think about the love bombing, Think about
the narrative that you created about your life with this person.
(21:53):
Look at the loaf of bread. Remember when you were
getting loaves. Now look at the loaf. Now there is
no now see the part that you're playing in the
dynamic step back and look from you know, not all emotions. Remember,
emotions can't solve our issues. We can get emotionally right
when we actually act on our best and highest self.
(22:16):
And this is where I want us to be at.
And this is what I help clients do every single
day of my life. I help clients see this, understand it,
get right with it, either augment the relationship where it
works for them, or move on completely and then getting
right with themselves. So there's not any you know, one
(22:38):
size fits all. There's some differences here, but again, we're
sitting in reality when we're dealing this, We're sitting in reality.
We're working with reality. We're overcoming our mental non necessary needs.
And we're also gaining the value within ourselves because when
we have value in ourselves, when people do this this crumbling,
(22:59):
we don't fall for it. When we have value in ourselves,
when people try to love bombus, we see it, we
don't love it and eat it up. We go Ah,
this seems a little odd here. There's a little too
much attention. You're like a me like white on rice.
This is a lot going on here. And if we're
if we're looking for attention and that makes us feel good,
we're gonna fall trap into the situation and prolong our
(23:22):
pain throughout another relationship. And so if you're falling into
this trap, I need you to think about this. This
is something that we have to change. We have to
turn back the hands of time, turn the ship around.
We have to work through these situations. We have to
see it for what it is like, really really see
(23:43):
it and know it, not just see it, but know it,
and then we need to make real action. Okay, this
behavior is not acceptable if I'm being ghosted, calling it out,
even if I might not hear from this person, if
I don't like the attitude having conversation, if they're not
going to communicate properly, continue to have this conversation if
(24:04):
they don't, then removing myself from the situation and creating
real change, because again, remember ultimatums really don't work, because
what's happened is if you are going down the ultimatums
and you're not following up with it and you're not
actually doing it, they know that this is just talk.
And again, the more we just talk with no real plan,
the more this person doesn't respect us at all anyway,
(24:25):
and so there's no respect, and so when somebody doesn't
respect you, they'll do whatever they want to do with you.
And my theory is, I'd rather be respected than coddled.
I would rather be feared and respected than acting like
I'm in love with somebody and being abused, because you
don't have to be physically abused. But remember, it's like
(24:47):
the crumbing is kind of abused, because it's like I'm
dumbing down to the least common denominated the situation. I'm
literally holding you on a hook. I'm out fishing. I've
hooked you, and I'm too busy over here at the
each barbecue, and I've got you on this hook in
the sand for the last you know how many hours, days, weeks, months, years,
(25:08):
and I'm doing something else right now. It's more important
to me, or I don't really care that much about
the relationship. And now I've hooked you up. I've hooked
you and you can't get out of it because you're
still in your mind about the concept. Because if you
really saw the truth versus your mind's thought, it's a
totally different thing. Like I have clients, this is what
I want to leave you with today in this podcast.
I've got clients that send me pictures. I think they're
(25:29):
with the most gorgeous man or most gorgeous woman, and
I look at these photos, I'm like, who the heck
is this? But in their mind they've created this reality.
It's not true. I can see the truth because I'm
not in the relationship, and so it's about putting together
the pieces and realizing, hey, my narrative is not true.
The thoughts that I had about the relationship are not true.
(25:50):
And now let me see it for truth. And before
you jump out of it, I want you to see
it for true for at least several weeks, if not
a month, and maybe even a couple of months. Get
in it deep, see it, See it for what is sea,
what they're doing to you. See the feelings, experience the situation.
Get into it and really see what you're dealing with
so that you feel happy or not even happy is
(26:11):
not a good word, you feel resolved by making the
changes you need to make. If you haven't already, please
subscribe to my YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube put
in Life Coach Ashley Burgess. We're almost at two hundred
thousand subscribers. If you haven't already subscribed, please do and
also comment if you have some thoughts on some of
those videos. If you'd like to reach out to me,
(26:32):
or you want to connect with me or ask me
a question, go to Ashleyburgess dot com click on that
contact page and you can get a hold of me.
And if you would like to set up a coaching session,
you can do that by going to the website as well,
Ashleyburgess dot com clicking on coaching section, the coaching section page,
coaching page, and you can set up something right there immediately.
(26:54):
Please share this with their friends and family, anybody that
needs to hear this message, and if it's you that
needs to hear this message, listening to this podcast several
times while you're working out, or driving or just walking
or just sitting will be helpful, but it's something to
listen to multiple multiple times to really engage your mind
and your heart into what needs to be done. Hey,
(27:16):
thanks for listening all the way. And by the way,
if you have listened all the way through one little nugget,
you're very smart. You're very intelligent, but the way that
you were raised is what has gotten you into this
type of relationship. It's not because you're stupid, it's because
you're raised in a dynamic that this is very similar
to Okay, Live your true life. I will see you
(27:38):
soon and looking forward to seeing you here in the
next podcast. Much love,
You're in a good place now you are listening to
perspectives with Ashley Burgets. Let's talk today about confusing relationships,
Why they're so confusing, and what's the reason for it.
Many of us are in confusing relationships where there's anxiety,
there's stress, but yet it almost feels like addictive. And
(00:24):
why is it addictive? Why can we not leave? Why
is it that we're kind of stuck in this relationship
even though there's a lot of not so good parts,
but there seems to be a component that keeps bringing
us back in, keeps us there on a constant basis.
I want to talk about crumbs today versus validation and
(00:45):
when we need to put the brakes on. You've heard
the word crumbs. What does crumbs mean? What does it mean?
What does it mean to be crumbed? You know, if
you have a loaf of bread, and you have that
loaf of bread you bite at the store. It's a
full loaf of bread. It's a whole loaf of bread, right,
it's a whole loaf. But what if you went into
that store and instead of buying that loaf of bread,
(01:06):
you know, in that bag or that sack, instead of
that there's just crumbs. There's just a few little pieces
of crumbs. There maybe one piece of bread left in
the bag. How would you feel about that, Well, most
of us aren't going to the store and buying a
bag of crumbs, but many of us are in relationships
that that is exactly what we're experiencing. In the beginning,
(01:27):
we got the whole loaf of bread. In the beginning,
it was like going to the store every day, having
a whole loaf of bread and never having to worry
about it. But eventually it became small little crumbs. Now,
the interesting part is over time, when you start getting crumbs,
not the loaf, not even the pieces of bread, you
(01:49):
begin to higher value those crumbs because that's all you're getting,
so you put them on a pedestal, even though before
that wouldn't have been the case. Before you would have
said this is crazy, especially beginning in the relationship. Why
am I just getting these little nuggets of interaction or attention?
And see, that's one of the problem lies with the
(02:10):
confusing relationship is in the beginning, we got the full
loaf of bread aka love bombing, and then over a
period of time that stopped. It stopped almost immediately after
a few months for some of you, a few weeks
for some of you, even a year. You got to
do a whole year of love bombing. But that's very
few and far between. So eventually you start getting these
(02:33):
little crumbs, these little nuggets of attention, and they become
slower and slower, and they're kind of like dulled out
to you, you know, little chump change here, little chump
change there. And at first it's annoying or discombobulating, but
eventually you begin to hold onto those crumbs for dear life.
(02:53):
You begin to hold onto those crumbs and see those
crumbs as value. Now, the problem is because we got
the loaf of bread, the whole loaf, for so long,
and we got so used to that we kind of
attached our validation and our self worth to that loaf
of bread that that other person was giving us. The
(03:16):
other person went to the store providing us this bread. Okay,
this is a euphonism, this is a concept. You know,
provided the bread aka attention, and you started strapping and
connecting your value, your personal value who you are, and
you started like tethering yourself to this loaf of bread
(03:38):
and this person and then eventually the bread goes away,
and now you're just getting that little cellphone bag, the
cellophane sorry, the cellophane bag of just these little crumbs,
and you're holding on to them like their gold. And
then eventually you don't get some of those. So there's
sometimes in the relationship where they literally maybe go quiet,
(04:00):
maybe they're not communicating with you. Maybe they're actually mean
or angry with you, making fun of you, putting you down,
even sometimes ghost seeing you. Maybe you have something planned
and you're looking forward to it. You get to the restaurant,
there's nobody there. You try to call them, they don't respond.
Perhaps you text them and you see that they've read
(04:22):
received they've read it, but they're not communicating with you.
And then you go days wondering what happened? What did
I do? Because your value is so wrapped up with
that person that now you're concerned because you can't see
the forest through the trees. You're going through the motions
of your life in the shower, thinking about them, in bed,
(04:44):
can't sleep. Some of you are overeating, some of you
aren't eating at all. When is the next time I'm
going to get a crumb? And the interesting part of
it is. You don't realize it's a crumb. You're just
waiting for that call, just that lifeline text message. Oh
god God, Well they just text me. Maybe they'll text
me today, maybe they'll call me. And so you sit
(05:07):
there and wait, shutting out the rest of the world.
If you're going to work, you're having to go to work,
you're frustrated. All you can do is wonder where are they,
where did they go, what happened to them? And then
eventually they pop up, And usually they pop up when
you've already made plans to do something because you were
so overwhelmed with grief and fear, and you've been beaten
(05:28):
down mentally and emotionally, and you feel as though you
have no self value, no self worth, And so you
reach out to a friend or a lifeline and you
make a time to get coffee or to meet up
for lunch, and right when you're heading that way, this
person texts you, Hey, can I see you right now?
And so you start canceling out everybody in your group
because you rush to meet that person to get that
(05:51):
crumb of validation. So this is interesting. I want to
discuss the crumbing and what does it feel like, and
how do we deal with this type of situation and
how do we overcome being strapped of these crumbs looking
(06:13):
for personal validation and acceptance, Because what's happened is these
crumbs have been our personal validation and acceptance. They have
turned into our entire value. We have lost our value.
And I don't know if we ever had it, If
we could strap ourselves to and tether ourselves to someone
else's crumbs, maybe we never had personal value of our
(06:35):
own ever, I don't know. And this is something that
we need to think about. And so when we look
at this concept, we need to figure that out. So
how do we disconnect from that? And how do we
first see it as crumbs? And I want you to
analyze your relationship accurately to understand it, to see what
(06:57):
is crumbs and what is real honest love versus what
is real honest attention. And I think you'll see that
it's very different. I think in the beginning many of
you will say, well, I just wish we could go
back to the way it was before, because we actually
feel like the person was different. It's just the person
never changed. They just went back to being who they are.
(07:19):
Their reality is them now, not who they were before.
And that's why it's so strange. That's why it's so
mind boggling, because you got so inundated in the beginning
of this relationship thinking that this is the way it was,
this is the way it is, this is all this
(07:40):
good stuff, and this is the way the relationship will be.
But that's just not true. That is the version of
them that they entered the relationship with you, That is
the version of them that they were selling you to
have a relationship with you. That's all it was. And
I need you to get that through your head, because
(08:00):
that's one of the hardest things to get through your
head because you're constantly trying to get back to the beginning.
And the beginning was not real. The beginning was false.
The beginning was fake. The beginning was a version of
them to get you to feel a certain way, to
get you to drop your guard, to move very quickly
(08:21):
into a relationship, and to be able to go through
that process. And that's kind of the situation that we
have here, is that when you go through that process,
you don't realize that you think that this person is
that version of them is reality, that version that you
met is amazing. There's all this love bombing, all this attention.
(08:43):
Many of you talk about having great sex, this great relationship,
all this stuff, and everything's good for whatever time that is.
And then things start changing and dwindling, and through the
process you begin to not only feel bad and wonder
when it's going to come back, but you lose your
identity in the process because you're thinking, what did I
(09:04):
do wrong to get this person to treat me like this?
What did I do wrong to get this person to
not continue to be how they are with me? What
did I do wrong to lose this attention? And so
you begin to morph and change into somebody that you're not.
And see this becomes really radically a big problem. It's
(09:25):
like going into a place and not being yourself. It
doesn't make any sense because there's gonna be people that
like you for being you, people that don't like you
for not being you. Every every construct is possible, So
just go in being yourself in any relationship and if
they don't like you for who you are, hey, they
don't like you for who you are. You know, if
they don't want you in the club, great, get out
of the club. And it's hard to recognize those things
(09:47):
because you see clubs or organizations or friend groups very
differently than you see a romantic relationship. They don't love
you for you, then they don't love you for you
move on. But that is very very very hard to see,
very hard to see. And so how do you process that?
How do you deal with that? And these are the
(10:10):
things that I want you to begin to think about.
These are the concepts that I want you to think about.
Because the beginning was not true. The love bombing was
a manipulative tactic. Now the chromes are to see how
little will you take and continue in the relationship, How
little will you take and continue to be in this relationship?
(10:32):
That is key. And the problem is many of us
don't think that way, so we don't know that that's
the other side of the coin. Here. We're just saying, Oh,
I just want that person around, and I really like them,
and I think about them all the time, and I
just want to spend time with them, even if it's
for an hour, whatever I can get. I just want some.
I want some so bad. And it's a very addictive quality, right,
(10:53):
It's like it's like a line of cocaine or some heroin.
Or something like that. It's very addictive. You'll take whatever
you can get, you know, whatever the dealer has. You know,
oh you only have that. Okay, well I'll just get
that for right now and you just let me know
when you get more in Okay. It's not like, Wow,
that kind of sucks, Like that's all I'm getting here,
and this is it. I mean, I'm giving you all
this and you're giving me that. Now. It's different if
(11:16):
you're also crumbing this person back. But I'm saying many
of you that are listening to my podcast, that follow
the YouTube channel Life Coach Astity Burgess, that have followed
the blogs and the videos and everything for years, you're
not coming from that camp. You're coming from the camp of, Hey,
I'm a good person. I'm wanting to meet, you know,
somebody that I can be with in my life and
(11:37):
I treat them very well and I treat them with respect,
and I kind of I would like the same thing back.
And at first I was getting all this attention, I
was like, Wow, you know, love is possible, and now
I'm not. And now I'm not, And so I need
you to see the difference. So from the love bombing,
it wasn't reality. I needs you to recognize that the
(11:58):
beginning was not them. I need you to see how
the current situation, if they're being mean and combative and
argumentative or avoidant, that is truly who they are, and
accept that reality. So you're finally in the relationship with
the real person now, not the representative. Okay. First off, Second,
(12:20):
you had the loaf of bread and you were making
toast every day. We were having a blast. You're making toast.
You know. Heck, I don't know. Maybe it was pet
of bread, you know, who knows. Whatever you were having.
You know, whatever it was, you were having a good time,
and you were really happy about that bread. Now we
don't have that bread anymore. We have tiny little crumbs
of one piece a little bread, and we get it
(12:42):
a little bit here and there. And I want you
to realize how you take that little piece of bread
and you put it up on that pedestal and you go, oh, look,
I got this little little piece. Yeah, I'm gonna hold
that up. I'm not gonna eat it. I'm just gonna
look at it because it's so great, it's so amazing.
And I want you to realize how often in other
relationships you've been mistreated or haven't gotten attention, and you
(13:04):
walked away from those relationships, and this relationship is not
any better. It's actually probably a lot worse. But it's
become addictive because see, at first they gave you the
whole loaf. It's like the drug dealer, right, Yo. The
first time is free, even the second and third time
is free. But now I'm gonna have to give you half.
Now I'm gonna give you a third. Now i'm gonna
(13:24):
give you a half of a half of a half.
Now i'm gonna give you one fifteenth of it. Now
I'm not gonna give you anything. Now I'm gonna not
give you anything. I'm gonna also cut you off for
a period of time and then I'm gonna come back.
Or I might just distance myself for a while, or
I might ghost you. And I know that some people
have gone through ghosting for periods of time that were
(13:44):
longer than several months, and then somebody shows back up
and they're like, oh, hey, just everything's fine. And I
know that the extreme some of you don't say anything
because you're just happy to hear from this person. Oh god,
they've they've resurrected, they've come back. You know, maybe we
can have this relationship. We've always want it. But I
want you to realize every time we take them back,
(14:05):
you're losing a part of yourself because what you've done
is you've attached your value and your self worth onto
the entire breadcrumbing attention that they are or not giving you.
So when they're not giving you attention, you have no value.
When they are giving you attention, you have value. Do
(14:26):
you see how this is working against you? This is
not a good thing. This is working completely against you,
tearing you down. And so I need you to begin
to see the truth here, and I need you to
also see the cycle pattern of how they do things.
Some of them, I believe, know exactly what they're doing,
(14:46):
some of them know half of what they're doing, and
some of them are just all over the map and
really don't care. And some of them might be in
relationships with other people who are doing this to them
as well, and you just don't know about the other person.
It's very interesting because there's a lot of interesting webs
that people have weaved, and so they might be if
(15:08):
they're ghosting you, maybe with somebody else and I'll tell
you one thing. If somebody is a true narcissistic person,
that probably is very true, or if they're a fear
of abandonment or fear of being alone, for sure, But
how do you pull back? And I know that some
of you say, well, I'm in this relationship and when
I call the personality or I say something, they get
very defensive or angry or turn it around on me.
(15:30):
And that's true. They have to because remember, they want
to remain the victim. They don't want to take responsibility
for their actions because if they do, then they would
have to change it. You know. It's kind of like
the concept of somebody that's insane. You know, if they're insane,
they can't really be prosecuted at the same level because
(15:50):
I didn't know what they were doing, right, you complete insanity,
But a lot of times some people do. But a
lot of times people just manipulate in gas light to
a degree to make you feel like you're losing it,
to change the narrative of what's really happening. And so
I need you to step back because I believe that
many of your relationships, if you're listening to this podcast,
(16:11):
whether it's a past relationship or a current relationship. Somebody
is changing the narrative. Somebody has changed the narrative, and
many times we go along with that narrative because we
forget things, We forget how things happen. We want to
believe a different reality, we want to believe a different truth,
(16:35):
and so begin to see these realities in these patterns,
and then I need to see I need you to
recognize more often, how are you? And when are you upset?
When are you sad? Many of you are sad more
than happy. You're sad more than happy. It's beginning to
(16:57):
really affect you manually and emotionally throughout your life. It's
affecting every aspect of your life. And honestly, this relationship
that you're holding onto is actually pulling you down. And
you are underwater and you're drowning, and it's time to
come up to the surface of the water, to see
the situation as it is and to begin to accurately
(17:20):
understand how are you going to move forward with it?
And the only way to move forward out of these
relationships is to look at the truth. If you're not
looking at the truth, you don't have options. If you're
not looking at the truth. You're believing the game. If
you're not looking at the truth, we all have a
problem because you are gaming yourself into a situation that
(17:41):
holds no value for you. And if anything is causing
you pain and suffering and so forget. I need you
to remember there is a vision of this person. Usually
the beginning of the relationship. This person looked amazing, They
were great on paper, they said everything, they did everything.
You had a version of them that you put on
(18:02):
the pedestal, whether it was this fairy tale that you
were going to live together forever, or you were gonna
have all these kids, or you were gonna be this
power couple, or whatever the version is for you. And
I need you to realize that you played a part
in this narrative as well, because you created this reality
based on this attention and then lost yourself in the shuffle.
(18:25):
And so you have to begin to find your own value.
You know, you have to begin to find your own
value separate from this relationship, because remember when we find
value in other people, the problem with that is if
the other person goes away, then what happens to our value? Bingo,
(18:45):
that's it. I mean, we have to find value within
ourselves separate from every relationship because remember, relationships are exterior
type things. We can love people and care about them,
live with them, marry them, have kids with them. It's
all great, it's all fun, great, wonderful, but there's a
limitation to how much you want to give of your
(19:06):
value to that person because we have to have boundaries,
and in these relationships we have no boundaries. If you're
accepting crumbs, you have no boundaries. You've gotten to the
point of begging to some degree for this person to
see you. And the more that we beg and I'm
(19:26):
not saying you're physically begging, oh please, please, no, but
not saying, hey, where were you for three days? Or hey,
this isn't working for me. You know, this isn't working
for me. Your attitude when I come home and the
passive aggressive behavior and the silent treatment, or you abusing
the credit cards and then getting angry with me, this
isn't working for me anymore. I don't need to be
(19:47):
married at this expence, or I don't need to be
in this relationship at this expence. It's time for me
to find myself and I advocate. You know, this is
the work that you want to do is the longer
you stay in these toxic relationships, this toxicity because remember
you're fueling it too. This person wouldn't be able to
(20:09):
do this if you weren't accepting the behavior. Now they
might not change. It's not like, okay, if you stopped
accepting the behavior. And maybe that's the case. You put
down some boundaries, you tell them you're not taking this,
you move out, you do whatever, say you need to
go to therapy or whatever, and we'll figure it out,
and if not, we're moving on. I'm tired of this.
That could be the answer, or it could be a
(20:30):
wake up call to move on in your life. But remember,
we have to learn the value within ourselves or this
is going to continue to happen. If we don't learn
our value, we're just going to go into another relationship
similar to this relationship, and it could be worse. I've
worked with clients where we begin to work and they go, oh,
I got past this, and now I'm in this relationship
(20:51):
and I wanted to have a session with you and
start working with you. And we begin to find over
time that we've just found someone else with the same
type of cluster be or the same dynamic, the self selfishness,
or the same victim reality. But it's even worse than
it was before because we didn't do the work we
needed to do now. And so if you're in this
situation and you're sitting there, you're waking up at night
this person's not calling you, or you're waking up at
(21:12):
night because you can't communicate with this person, or you're
walking around aimlessly. I mean, I had a client the
other day said that they walked into a screen door
because they were so busy in thought about how upset
they were about this relationship that they weren't even paying
attention to where they were walking. I've had a client
run into the back of a car before because they
weren't paying attention. Because we're up in our mind thinking
(21:33):
about this problematic situation that is not bettering our life,
and the only way to better our life is to
accurately see it. Go to the beginning, See what happened,
Think about it, Think about the love bombing, Think about
the narrative that you created about your life with this person.
(21:53):
Look at the loaf of bread. Remember when you were
getting loaves. Now look at the loaf. Now there is
no now see the part that you're playing in the
dynamic step back and look from you know, not all emotions. Remember,
emotions can't solve our issues. We can get emotionally right
when we actually act on our best and highest self.
(22:16):
And this is where I want us to be at.
And this is what I help clients do every single
day of my life. I help clients see this, understand it,
get right with it, either augment the relationship where it
works for them, or move on completely and then getting
right with themselves. So there's not any you know, one
(22:38):
size fits all. There's some differences here, but again, we're
sitting in reality when we're dealing this, We're sitting in reality.
We're working with reality. We're overcoming our mental non necessary needs.
And we're also gaining the value within ourselves because when
we have value in ourselves, when people do this this crumbling,
(22:59):
we don't fall for it. When we have value in ourselves,
when people try to love bombus, we see it, we
don't love it and eat it up. We go Ah,
this seems a little odd here. There's a little too
much attention. You're like a me like white on rice.
This is a lot going on here. And if we're
if we're looking for attention and that makes us feel good,
we're gonna fall trap into the situation and prolong our
(23:22):
pain throughout another relationship. And so if you're falling into
this trap, I need you to think about this. This
is something that we have to change. We have to
turn back the hands of time, turn the ship around.
We have to work through these situations. We have to
see it for what it is like, really really see
(23:43):
it and know it, not just see it, but know it,
and then we need to make real action. Okay, this
behavior is not acceptable if I'm being ghosted, calling it out,
even if I might not hear from this person, if
I don't like the attitude having conversation, if they're not
going to communicate properly, continue to have this conversation if
(24:04):
they don't, then removing myself from the situation and creating
real change, because again, remember ultimatums really don't work, because
what's happened is if you are going down the ultimatums
and you're not following up with it and you're not
actually doing it, they know that this is just talk.
And again, the more we just talk with no real plan,
the more this person doesn't respect us at all anyway,
(24:25):
and so there's no respect, and so when somebody doesn't
respect you, they'll do whatever they want to do with you.
And my theory is, I'd rather be respected than coddled.
I would rather be feared and respected than acting like
I'm in love with somebody and being abused, because you
don't have to be physically abused. But remember, it's like
(24:47):
the crumbing is kind of abused, because it's like I'm
dumbing down to the least common denominated the situation. I'm
literally holding you on a hook. I'm out fishing. I've
hooked you, and I'm too busy over here at the
each barbecue, and I've got you on this hook in
the sand for the last you know how many hours, days, weeks, months, years,
(25:08):
and I'm doing something else right now. It's more important
to me, or I don't really care that much about
the relationship. And now I've hooked you up. I've hooked
you and you can't get out of it because you're
still in your mind about the concept. Because if you
really saw the truth versus your mind's thought, it's a
totally different thing. Like I have clients, this is what
I want to leave you with today in this podcast.
I've got clients that send me pictures. I think they're
(25:29):
with the most gorgeous man or most gorgeous woman, and
I look at these photos, I'm like, who the heck
is this? But in their mind they've created this reality.
It's not true. I can see the truth because I'm
not in the relationship, and so it's about putting together
the pieces and realizing, hey, my narrative is not true.
The thoughts that I had about the relationship are not true.
(25:50):
And now let me see it for truth. And before
you jump out of it, I want you to see
it for true for at least several weeks, if not
a month, and maybe even a couple of months. Get
in it deep, see it, See it for what is sea,
what they're doing to you. See the feelings, experience the situation.
Get into it and really see what you're dealing with
so that you feel happy or not even happy is
(26:11):
not a good word, you feel resolved by making the
changes you need to make. If you haven't already, please
subscribe to my YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube put
in Life Coach Ashley Burgess. We're almost at two hundred
thousand subscribers. If you haven't already subscribed, please do and
also comment if you have some thoughts on some of
those videos. If you'd like to reach out to me,
(26:32):
or you want to connect with me or ask me
a question, go to Ashleyburgess dot com click on that
contact page and you can get a hold of me.
And if you would like to set up a coaching session,
you can do that by going to the website as well,
Ashleyburgess dot com clicking on coaching section, the coaching section page,
coaching page, and you can set up something right there immediately.
(26:54):
Please share this with their friends and family, anybody that
needs to hear this message, and if it's you that
needs to hear this message, listening to this podcast several
times while you're working out, or driving or just walking
or just sitting will be helpful, but it's something to
listen to multiple multiple times to really engage your mind
and your heart into what needs to be done. Hey,
(27:16):
thanks for listening all the way. And by the way,
if you have listened all the way through one little nugget,
you're very smart. You're very intelligent, but the way that
you were raised is what has gotten you into this
type of relationship. It's not because you're stupid, it's because
you're raised in a dynamic that this is very similar
to Okay, Live your true life. I will see you
(27:38):
soon and looking forward to seeing you here in the
next podcast. Much love,
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