These are my personal opinions.
Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well-being.
Welcome to the last episode of 2025, and if you're listening to this after 2025, that comment doesn't matter.
This is an on-demand show podcast and uh, I'm going to try my best to answer a bunch of questions in sort of a rapid fire method.
And one of the things I want to do first.
Before I do that, because I'm not really capable of answering things rapid fire
Usually I'm too verbose.
I will do my best.
I'll do my best this episode.
But before I begin, I want you to remember these words, probably the most important words for your well-being, for your mental health, to start the new year off right.
Remember the words.
That doesn't work for me.
When something happens in your life that doesn't work for you, say that either out loud or to yourself yeah, that doesn't work for me.
You can use this in so many places.
It's a boundary.
What you're doing is expressing a boundary.
Somebody yells at you at work.
Yeah, that's not going to work for me.
Yeah, you play with the iterations here, but that's not going to work for me.
Say it in your mind.
You can say it out loud.
Yeah, you yelling at me, it's not going to work for me.
That might not go well if somebody's yelling at you, but what you're doing is you are taking a boundary that you have inside of you.
Something that is either spoken or not is either known or not.
Because sometimes we don't know our boundaries until something happens and you realize oh, that's a boundary.
And so that's not going to work for me.
You are snorting coke on our wedding day.
That's not going to work for me.
Probably a terrible example.
You understand what I'm saying.
You have boundaries that you don't even know are there sometimes.
And sometimes you do know they are there and you don't say anything.
You might not say that's not going to work for me or something similar.
And instead you might say, I wish things were different, which is a lot different than a boundary.
That's not going to work for me is a boundary.
I wish things were different is a wish, hope, or dream or prayer or whatever.
That's not going to work for me is action.
And I hope or wish things were different is inaction, stagnation.
It's kicking the can down the road.
I hear my wife say that every now and then.
These politicians, they're kicking the can down the road.
They keep kicking the can.
Yes, this is what happens.
It's a delay tactic that we impose on ourselves.
I am going to kick the can down the road by saying, I wish things were different.
That doesn't apply in every situation, but let's just say you're in a toxic relationship and you wish things were different.
Instead of saying, yeah, that's not going to work for me.
Because what happens to your approach or your next step when you say yeah, that's not going to work for me?
Inside me I think okay, that's not going to work for me, which means I'm going to do something about it.
But if I say, oh, I wish things were different.
I wish she wouldn't talk to me like that.
I wish he wasn't such a jerk all the time.
All these events that occur in our life where we might say, I wish things were different.
Instead of saying, yeah, that's not going to work for me.
You can hear it in my inflection.
It's a totally different direction that you're taking.
You're either going inward and hoping and wishing and praying, or you're going outward and you are about to take the next step, to do something.
And I know this is not easy.
Sometimes doing something is not easy, but the seed of this isn't going to work for me is now planted.
So if you're in a relationship, a bad job, a bad situation, and you're done, you want to be done, it's better to say, in my opinion, it's better to say yeah, that's not going to work for me.
Or however you want to say it.
Instead of saying, I wish things were different.
Or I hope things change.
I wish things would change.
I hope they see the light and stop doing that to me or saying that to me.
Because that's a lot different than saying, yeah, that's not going to work for me.
There's a command in there.
It's an implied command.
Yeah, that's not going to work.
For me is a command to my subconscious mind to start making plans or having a conversation with another person or with yourself, that you are going to take steps to make changes.
And your changes might be, Hey, that's not going to work for me.
So this is what I would like to happen.
This is what I want to happen next.
And that's your starting point.
Again, it doesn't have to be immediate action, but that seed gets planted.
And I Normally stay away from affirmations, but that's sort of an affirmation, but it is an action affirmation.
It is something that you're saying that puts it out there that you are going to make a change because that's not going to work for you.
It's like saying, yeah, lighting my hand on fire doesn't work for me.
That means you're not going to do it again or put your hand near fire, which hopefully you'll never do and you'll never want to do.
But the point is you are declaring.
So there's a command to your subconscious mind that you are declaring that that doesn't work for me.
So what do you do?
You're going to make sure it doesn't happen again.
It may not be something that you can implement right away, it may not be something that you can put into action right away, but again, the seed gets planted and then it grows, and whatever it grows into, it's better to grow.
It's better to blossom from the seed of.
That's not going to work for me, as opposed to from the seed of.
I wish things were different.
So I'm going to start off the episode like that and read you some messages that I get or have gotten over the last, I don't know, several months a year, and try to answer them in rapid fire format.
With that premise in mind, what I've primed you to think about before I address these questions.
First question is I just want to start off by saying my wife and I have been married for several years and lately I've noticed she doesn't want to spend very much time with me.
I'll ask her to accompany me to just get out of the house on my days off.
And I work at an overnight shift.
And so I'm trying to make time for her.
And then she comes up with a list of reasons or excuses as to why she wouldn't be able to, or be able to, spend some time with me.
All of a sudden, she has these pre-scheduled errands and she never mentioned them to me before.
And when she does leave, she's gone for hours, sometimes even a whole day, spending time with her friends from work.
By the time she gets home, there's no, quote, us time because I'm asleep or at work.
I brought this conversation up with her, but get no straight answers.
It's like it doesn't phase her that we don't spend time together.
What do you recommend?
How can I fix things or make things better?
I ask her the same questions, but get no answer.
Let's start with our statement.
Yeah, that's not going to work for me.
If I am in this person's situation and my wife is gone most of the time on my free time, on the time that I want to have some quality time together yeah, that's not going to work for me.
Okay, so what do we do with that?
That's not going to work for me.
So something needs to change.
That's my next step out of that or from that comment.
Something needs to change.
And so this person said okay, I'm going to ask my wife some questions and say things like why aren't you home?
Let's spend time together.
I miss you.
Whatever they're saying.
And my rapid fire response to this is stop asking questions.
That's the first part.
Stop asking questions and start sharing what's missing in your life that you would like her to be a part of.
And so if this doesn't work for you, cause it wouldn't work for me.
If I had this free time and I had to work all these weird hours overnight and stuff.
And when I finally have the free time, my wife goes out and spends that time with her friends.
That's when I would share, look, um, I miss you.
I want time together.
I'm sad because I want to have a relationship with you.
And you're spending your time with your friends, which I absolutely support.
But I never see you.
And it makes me sad.
And I don't want our relationship to continue like this.
You don't necessarily say hey, this doesn't work for me, but that's the seed that you planted in your brain because you need something to change.
And if nothing changes, what's going to happen?
You're not going to be happy.
You're going to be in this relationship that isn't a relationship at all.
It's two people that barely see each other and have a piece of paper that says we're married.
And that's about it.
And so sharing what you miss, sharing what you feel is my approach.
That's how I would approach it.
Instead of saying, why are you out all the time?
That's accusatory.
Puts somebody on the defensive.
And so we don't want to put anybody on the defensive.
We just want to share what's going on inside of us, because the whole point is, You want to share what's going on with you, to find out where she is inside of her.
And if you say I'm sad and I miss us, I would like some quality time together, and we don't have it because I never see you.
That is an opportunity for her to share why she's not home, to share the same quality time that you hope that she has.
So there's a little bit of hope in there.
Yeah, I hope that she wants to spend quality time with me, but what's happening isn't going to work for me.
And so my answer to this is sharing all of these thoughts and feelings that you have that are about you, and then give her the opportunity to make a choice to spend time with her friends, or time doing errands, or time all this other time doing other things.
Give her the choice to make, because if her choice after that is or feels like I don't care, I still want to spend more time with my friends, then there's something wrong or there's something broken in the relationship.
And I would ask you to figure out when this started.
Did it start a couple of years ago?
Did it start six months ago?
Did it start 10 years ago?
You know, however long the relationship went.
And when you figure out when it started or about the time, what was happening around that time or before that time that might have led up to the point where she just wanted to spend more time outside of the house and away from you.
And so...
This isn't going to work for you.
And in order to change things, I'm recommending that you share how you feel about things.
And if she doesn't feel the same way, you're going to hear it.
You're going to feel it.
And then you might have a tough conversation about it.
Because let's just say that it was happening in my relationship with my wife.
And I shared, you know, I never see you.
You're always out with so-and-so and I really miss us.
I really want some quality time together.
I want to do things with you and our work schedules are crazy.
And I would love to see you during these times.
I miss you.
I'm sad.
You're my wife.
I want to spend time with you.
So I'm not trying to guilt trip her.
I'm just sharing how sad and lonely I am in the relationship.
So let's just say I said that and she said well, I want a free time to myself and I want to spend time with friends.
And she really isn't acknowledging the us time or the we time.
If she wasn't acknowledging that, and she didn't seem to care about it, then I would start asking questions.
Well, do you want more us time?
That kind of question, not the kind of question that makes her defensive.
I don't want her to be defensive.
I just, want to know where she stands.
So I'm not asking her, well, why are you going out with your friends all the time?
Because that might not come across well.
And it's really not the point.
The point you want to get to is the deeper level concern about her feelings about you and the relationship.
Or in this case, the example I'm using, me and the relationship.
How do you feel about us?
Do you feel like we're getting enough time together?
That might be a great question.
It's going to get to the heart of the matter.
So you start with, this is how I feel.
This is what I'm going through.
And this is why I'm sad.
And this is what I want.
And I would love to share more time with you because I miss you and all that stuff.
And then if she says that she's not interested in spending any more time with you in so many words, that's when you have a deeper conversation.
And what you'll find out in the deeper conversation, hopefully, is how she really feels.
Because maybe it's something that you said or did or didn't do, or didn't say for a long time, or aren't doing now or aren't saying now.
Maybe it's something that she doesn't want to talk about, because maybe every time you talk about it you get into an argument or whatever.
But it needs to be talked about because a relationship cannot survive where, when you're home, she's not.
When she's home, you're not, and i mean it can survive.
But if there's no love and connection and there's purposeful time away from you, like she's purposely taking time away from you, then something needs to be done because that ain't going to work for you.
Good luck with that.
Thanks for writing.
Let me read the next message.
It says, Thank you so much for being.
Thank you.
You can't know how much you help people make sense of the insanity that became our lives.
I'm breaking free from a 25-year relationship with an emotionally immature narcissist.
I'm codependent and empathetic.
You taught me that.
I'm not just stupid or lucky that he was with me.
I was a good catch.
People liked me.
And then I met him.
And then I met you.
And then you saved me from so much misery.
I wish I found you 20 years ago.
Thank you infinitely.
You're a super grateful friend, not small and stupid.
And then some of my ideas don't suck.
That's the message.
And thank you so much for writing that.
You're giving me way too much credit because this didn't work for you anymore.
And this is what I'm talking about.
You decided to say, this isn't working for me.
I need to change something.
So yes, you probably heard me talk about something at one point and you said, you know what?
I need to apply that to my life.
That's what I'm hoping this episode does for anyone listening.
I need to apply this to my life.
This doesn't work for me.
So this person says they're breaking free from a 25 year relationship and they put a relationship in quotes with an emotionally immature narcissist.
I'm codependent and empathetic.
And so when they met this person, felt good about themselves and and after all this time it took a long time to start feeling good about themselves again and so sure, something i said probably sprung that person into action and i'm so grateful that happened.
They said they're grateful for me.
I'm so grateful that they figured it out.
I'm so glad that you wrote that and i just wanted to share that as an example That even in a long-term relationship with somebody who mistreats you and doesn't treat you what you're worth because anyone that mistreats you makes you feel bad, makes you feel guilty, makes you feel responsible for all the problems in the relationship that is not loving.
That is not connection.
That is not somebody that you want to share your life with.
And so when you have exhausted all the conversations and they're not going to change, that's when you might have to make a different choice for yourself.
And that's what this person did.
And I want to thank this person for writing and sharing that.
It was a while back, but I've had this in the hopper for a while to read on the air at one point.
And I do hope that you are in a better space today.
Thank you for sharing that.
I'm glad that you took a stand for yourself and decided to change your life for the better, even though, I'm willing to bet, it was probably one of the hardest steps that you've had to take.
Thanks again.
This next message is about a relationship.
Usually they are.
I get a lot of those.
I was with a multi-year relationship with an emotionally abusive person, not recognizing it as abuse until I was out.
It hurt to hear repeated comments like you make excuses for yourself and you don't take responsibility for your actions.
However, because I loved and trusted my partner, I found myself wondering is what they're saying about me true?
The abuse grew over time.
I was repeatedly called a liar selfish, lacking integrity, and I faced the silent treatment for small errors.
When I asked why, I was told I can't talk to you because you will deny you have done anything wrong.
I was always apologizing to make things right.
I'm not a liar.
I'm accountable.
So I finally sought therapy to help my relationship."
I told my partner that being accused hurt.
And they told me, I'm sure it does.
And in order to move forward together, I had to admit that I was a liar.
So I left.
Therapy is helping, but I'm feeling devastated.
Your podcast has helped, especially hearing about the covert abuse.
Thank you.
I'm so sorry you feel devastated.
Thank you for sharing that.
That is a very tough, another tough relationship challenge that a lot of people go through.
They're with somebody and they're just being treated awfully.
And so what did this person do or say or imply inside their own mind?
This isn't working for me.
This doesn't work for me.
I won't be able to handle this any longer.
So I need to do something about it.
And so they did.
In fact, they continued to work on themselves, work on the relationship, while the other person continued to emotionally abuse them.
Make them feel bad.
Make them feel worthless.
Make them feel unlovable.
Disconnect from them using the silent treatment.
There's a couple types of silent treatment.
One is emotionally abusive.
The emotionally abusive silent treatment is when you withdraw love and connection so that the other person believes they did something wrong or you're trying to make them feel like they're unlovable, because when you disconnect and withdraw love it makes the other person feel unlovable, unlovable and unworthy of even being acknowledged, because the person is silent.
And so that can feel quite lonely and it's just awful to go through.
So I'm so sorry this person went through that and they went to therapy, but they're still feeling devastated.
And I get it.
You know you invest your time and your energy and all of your emotions into, into a relationship that you want to work.
And it probably started off great because a lot of these do, most of them do.
All abusive relationships usually start off with some sort of amazing honeymoon period.
And then after the honeymoon period, they show their true colors.
And so that's when you get lured in to a relationship like that.
And you are building trust and love and connection with somebody who then turns it around and uses it against you.
And from that point on, you're blaming yourself, trying to make things better, trying to show up as a better person, even though there was nothing wrong with you in the first place.
So, aside from this isn't going to work for me.
The next thought I want you to have in a relationship or any type of situation like this, where somebody is putting you down and making you feel bad when they're supposed to be loving and supporting you and making you feel good and lifting your spirits and making you feel like the most important person in the world you need to catch it as it starts.
It might be too late to catch it in this situation, of course, but when you start a relationship with anyone and they start putting you down, something's wrong.
If they start blaming you for things, something's wrong.
If I started blaming my wife for things right now, she would know something is wrong.
What is going on with you?
She would look at me and say yeah, this isn't going to work, which is what we're talking about here.
This isn't going to work.
So what's going on with you?
Why are you suddenly like this?
Why are you suddenly blaming me?
Why are you suddenly just so mean?
Why are you trying to tell me what to do with my time?
Why are you trying to tell me who to spend time with?
All of that would be a mystery.
But she's been through abusive relationships.
She knows what to look for and it's hard when you're not or when you don't have that kind of experience and you go through an abusive relationship, usually for the first time.
You do not get the experience and then you start experiencing these awful behaviors from another person.
But remember a romantic relationship someone's supposed to love and support you and lift you up, lift your spirits, make you feel better and you should feel good with the person that you're with, not constantly feeling bad.
And the next step I would take in a relationship like this is when you get past the yeah, this isn't going to work for me part.
The next step is to ask yourself why would somebody who blames me for everything, doesn't support me, doesn't lift my spirits, want to be with me?
And I know when I say that, it sounds like I'm asking you to denigrate or be self-denigrating, which it means criticizing yourself or implying that you're not worthy of being loved.
That's not what I'm saying at all.
I'm saying that why would somebody who complains so much want to be around that which they complain about so much?
One doesn't throw a bunch of rubber tires into a campfire.
So it creates all this toxic smoke and stand there and breathe it and go man, this toxic smoke is awful.
It feels like I'm dying and not move.
Nobody does that because they don't want to breathe in that toxic smoke.
So if somebody looks at that fire with black smoke coming out and they breathe it in and realize oh, this is really terrible.
I don't want to be near it.
It's the same idea.
Why would somebody want to be near another person they find worthless and unlovable or just a liar, like all these things that this person said?
All of it is untrue, but what they're doing is using it to keep control or power over the other person.
That's what the emotionally abusive dynamic is laid out as.
There's power over you.
So if somebody has control or power over you, then they get their way.
So whatever they want, they get.
And if they feel like they're losing control of you, they make you feel less than you are.
They make you feel worthless.
They make you feel unlovable.
They make you feel like you are something they scrape off the bottom of their shoe.
But that's not because it's true.
They just want you to feel all of those things so that you'll reach out to them to feel better about yourself.
I mean that is kind of the tactic that a lot of manipulative and emotionally abusive people use.
If they make you feel bad enough about yourself, you will reach back out to them in some way to feel more loved and connected and worthy of love and feeling important to them so that they give it to you, which it creates a trauma bond, which is something i talk about my love and abuse podcast.
It just creates a dynamic that when they put you down, They are the person that you believe will bring you back up again.
And then you start to rely on that.
And that's a very similar to how a trauma bond is formed.
But, um, coming back to what this person said, therapy is helping, but I'm feeling devastated.
I promise you after some time, that devastating feeling does ease.
I'm not saying it goes away, but it eases because what happens is the fog starts to lift.
The fog is that dependency that you have on an abusive person that makes you think that that's where you get love as well.
And that is a very foggy, confusing, a very awful place to be.
It's a dark place to be.
Because relying on an abusive person for love and connection, it confuses the mind, it confuses the heart and you don't deserve that.
But it takes a while for that to break, for that to disintegrate that bond that is.
It's an unhealthy, toxic trauma bond that has to break in order for you to free yourself of that type of thinking where you believe that all your love and connection comes from A person that is incapable of doing that and in fact is highly capable of doing the opposite.
And so it takes a while for that to heal.
Two to four months typically, for the fog to start to lift, but then many more months, sometimes up to a year, sometimes longer, for you to start feeling like yourself again, for you to know that you are worthy and lovable and important, and all the good stuff that you felt about yourself, probably most likely before you met that person.
So to this person who wrote this, You're going to make it through this.
I know it.
You are already taking all the right steps.
It's just so hard to go through.
And I definitely don't envy your position, because stepping out of that kind of relationship is a huge step into the abyss.
You just don't know what to expect.
But in every case where somebody has written to me and said, I left this relationship, I
In the first few months, it was dark, it was scary, and there were all kinds of thoughts.
Should I go back?
At least I'm in a relationship.
There were all kinds of thoughts that come through.
But after that fog lifting period two four, maybe six months, typically again, I'm not trying to make that a hard fact that always plays out that way.
But typically after the fog lifts, your thoughts change automatically.
You don't have to think about it, but your thoughts do change.
I'll never forget my mom.
She was in a 40 year relationship with an abusive alcoholic.
And within about two months after he left jokingly, i asked so if he came back, would you get back together with him?
I was totally joking.
I knew she hated his gut.
She said it over and over again and her her answer was it was crazy to me at the time, but she said well, i might consider it.
I thought what my mind was blown, But the fog had to lift for her.
She had to get through that period because she came back to me.
I don't know, it was like two or three weeks later.
And she said, do you remember when I said that I would probably take him back?
I don't know what the F I was thinking.
She used the real word.
She was just like, she was blown away by her own thoughts about it.
She goes, I can't believe I ever said that.
I would never take him back.
No way.
Never.
I would never, ever take him back in a million years.
And now it started to make sense to me.
Oh, she was in the fog.
She was in that space and she needed to heal through it and start finding her own thoughts again.
Not the thoughts that were planted inside of her by an abusive man that didn't give her the love and connection and support that she deserved.
She was just so conditioned to believe that she wasn't worthy of love and happiness.
And so she believed that even after he left.
And so when she said, I would never take him back.
I don't know what I was thinking.
I was grateful and I reinforced exactly what I'm talking about here.
That's what happens.
If you're ever in an abusive relationship and you have to leave, expect that.
Expect that your thoughts at first won't necessarily be real, especially if you have any thought of wanting to feel love and connection from that person again.
I mean, maybe something is there, but normally what happens after two to six months?
Typically you'll find that the fog lifts and you have different thoughts and it happens automatically.
So I want to thank this person for writing and I'm so glad that you are getting help and you are working your way through that.
Stay strong.
And now let's get to the very last message that I received.
I've been with my guy for over a decade.
He is OCD and caused a lot of resentment.
I haven't been intimate with him for the last many years.
He takes every opportunity to make me feel bad.
If I forget, for example, to clean something, he gets irritated.
He will talk under his breath.
He just got a job for the first time in our relationship, but I've taken care of him for all these years.
Now he wants to track every dime since it's his money.
If I forget something like cleaning the spoon that I use for cat food, he'll tell me.
He knows I usually do it, but if I forget one time, I hear about it.
It goes for anything.
I don't love him anymore because I have to walk on eggshells.
He will say, oh, I can't say anything or share my feelings because you get upset.
Well, I do get upset.
I don't need to be told why a spoon needs to be rinsed.
I forgot I'm human, but he never misses a chance to lecture me.
I don't know what to do.
I feel like everything is me.
Thanks for writing that and I'm so sorry you're dealing with that.
First thing, let's just plant that seed.
This isn't working for me.
This is not working for me and it won't work for me from this point on.
I remember my first girlfriend, my first long-term girlfriend.
She might actually be listening.
I'm going to put words in her mouth.
But the first 11 years of our relationship we're Up and down.
I thought it was great, but I had a lot of healing to do.
I was doing emotionally abusive behaviors myself, and I was not my real self.
I was showing her the side of me that I wanted her to see, or I believed that it was best for both of us to show her the nice guy in me instead of the multifaceted emotional being that I truly was.
I just wanted her to see the good part of me so that she would never think badly about me.
That is the worst thing you could possibly do, because I mean, it's not the worst, but one of the worst things that you could possibly do is show somebody what you believe they want to see.
Never do that.
I mean, unless it's dangerous not to, I mean, that's why I did it though, because in my childhood I showed my stepfather who I believed he wanted to see so that he wouldn't hurt me.
And so I just took that behavior into my adult relationships and I started acting that way.
And my first longterm girlfriend, wonderful person, wonderful relationship.
And I thought it was going to last indefinitely.
After 11 years she said I'm not in love with you anymore.
And I am going to say that she said in her mind, this isn't working for me.
And moving forward, this won't work for me.
And she decided to leave the relationship.
And that was the best thing she could have done for both of us.
Because her leaving the relationship.
It was one of the first breakups that I had that made me realize that something might need to change.
I didn't really take responsibility for it then, because I got into another relationship and that failed.
But after that next relationship, which turned out to be my marriage, I realized something needs to change, because I keep losing important people in my life.
And that's when I finally focused on myself.
And I told myself something needs to change.
Something needs to happen in order for me to start having a successful relationship.
I didn't say, I hope my next relationship is better.
I just said, something needs to change.
I need to work on myself.
I need to take steps to make sure that I am no longer the common denominator of all my relationship failures, because that's exactly what's happening.
My first girlfriend, my second girlfriend, then that long-term relationship and then my marriage.
They kept leaving me.
I must be the problem.
I finally said that.
And that's that seed I planted.
This isn't going to work for me.
I can't keep going on like this.
And I took action.
I took action by staying single and trying to figure myself out.
I needed to know who I was without somebody else in my life.
Because I always believed that we're supposed to be with somebody and that was it.
We're supposed to be with another person.
So every time my relationship would end, I would get another relationship.
And I never found out who I was without another person.
So something needed to change and I changed it.
I decided to stay single and that's when I started healing.
And that's when I started learning about all my past terrible behaviors, realizing that's what led to this, what led to that, what led to a breakup, what led to this.
And so I'm coming back to my first long-term girlfriend that we were together for.
Actually, we were together for about 13 years, but about 11 years into it the love and connection stopped.
But after 13 years she said and I'm again putting words in her mouth, this isn't going to work for me.
And so in her mind and in her heart, the relationship ended.
It was over.
And for me, I didn't know what was going on.
We didn't communicate.
We just kind of existed together until I finally put her on the spot because the way things are going isn't going to work for me, because the way things were going were total disconnect, no emotional connection at all.
That's not going to work for me, and so i took action and asked her the hard question do you still love me and are you still in love with me?
And the answer is hurt like hell.
But that's what it took for forward progress, even though at that point, like the next day, it was over, it was, it was done and we moved apart.
And that was it and our lives changed.
Her life changed, my life changed.
But that's what was required for somebody to put their foot down in their own mind first and say this isn't working for me, so I have to do something about it.
You don't even have to say that second part.
This isn't working for me.
And whatever happens from that point on is going to be a step forward.
And it might feel like a huge step back, but it's usually a step forward.
So coming back to this person who wrote This is clearly not working for you and I want you to know the difference between I hope this changes and this isn't working for me, because what you have explained cannot possibly sustain itself.
After you realize this doesn't work for you and something needs to be done.
And that usually means when somebody else refuses to change, you have to.
And I know that puts a huge burden on you.
But when you're with somebody who is toxic or hurtful or abusive?
If they never change after all, this time you have to.
And that might mean you put your foot down and you finally say, I've had enough.
I can't take this anymore.
I don't want to be treated this way.
And I'm leaving.
They might say, what?
You can't leave.
I love you.
And then you'll wonder, you love me.
What are you talking about?
You can't love me after treating me this way.
That's not love.
You hurt me every day.
So that might be a conversation you have.
Or if the person is dangerous or you feel like they might be violent or aggressive, you don't have that conversation and you protect yourself.
You know, I'm not going to tell you to have this kind of conversation with somebody who is going to hurt you.
The disclaimer is pick your battles wisely, but this isn't working for me starts inside you.
This isn't working for me.
Something needs to change or something needs to give, but the way things are is not working and I cannot sit here and hope and wish and pray something changes.
So what's my next step?
That's the hard, scary part is asking yourself that question.
What's my next step?
Because that might mean we have to pack up and leave or we have to plan our escape or have that conversation that we don't want to have.
But we can't let things be the way they are, because when you're in that kind of environment and you're facing that kind of abusive behavior, it is slowly wearing you down, it is slowly disintegrating who you are, it is tearing apart your heart, it is tearing apart your love for yourself, for life.
It is oppressing and depressing and it's pushing you down.
This kind of thing doesn't work for anyone.
So to that person who wrote, it was a while back, I don't know what's going on in your life now.
The only thing I can tell you is that if it hasn't changed, it won't.
And because of that, you need to take care of yourself.
If your partner won't change, you need to change.
And that doesn't mean you need to adapt and become more resilient to his abusive behavior.
It means if you want something more out of life and you want to find love and connection and self-worth and come back to who you maybe started as, or maybe you have to rebuild yourself, it's time to take those steps so that it doesn't continue bringing you down.
This relationship doesn't continue bringing you down because You are worthy.
You are lovable.
You are important.
And you don't deserve to be treated like that.
So plant the seed of this isn't working for me or this isn't working for me anymore.
Not that it ever was, but you need to put your foot down inside of yourself first.
This isn't going to work for me from this point on.
What do I need to do next?
I wish you so much strength and healing through that.
Thank you again for writing.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the show today.
I appreciate you sharing your struggles and you sharing what's going on in your life.
There are a lot of complex situations out there.
Not all of them have a fix.
Not all of them.
You can say well, if I just did this, then the other person would be great, because that's not how it works sometimes.
And it's difficult.
It's an acceptance that sometimes we just have to say, this is who they are.
And I have to accept that this is who they'll always be, which means if something is going to change, I need to take steps to make a change.
I can't change them.
I can only change myself.
Thanks for listening to another episode of The Overwhelmed Brain.
I want to thank this week's patrons, Cheyenne, Crystal, and Angel.
Thank you for your support every month.
I am grateful to you.
If you value the show like these patrons do and you want to give back, head over to moretobcom, and there are ways to do that over there.
And for our show on how to navigate the difficult relationship between you heard me say it earlier i have another podcast called love and abuse over at loveandabuse.com and if you know you're the difficult one in the relationship join the program that is helping a lot of people heal and change over at healedbeing.com and with that always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions be firm in your decisions and actions so that you take steps to grow and evolve you are powerful beyond measure and above all and this is something I absolutely know to be true about you you are amazing
