Does it feel like you will never stop thinking about your ex? Trey De La Torre joins me to dive into rumination, analyze the motives behind narcissistic behaviors, and discuss the signs indicating a narcissist playing the victim. His insightful humor, personal story, and strategies reveal an inspiring transformational journey.
We cover understanding and overcoming rumination, sharing practical advice on breaking the cycle of excessive thinking. Together, we aim to provide a comprehensive guide to self-care and maintaining personal integrity, even in the face of adversity.
You can learn more about Trey's work here: https://treydelatorre.podia.com/
Website: Emotional Abuse Coach
Instagram: @emotionalabusecoach
Email: jessica@jessicaknightcoaching.com
{Course} Identify Signs of Abuse and Begin to Heal
{Free Resource} Canned Responses for Engaging with an Abusive Partner
Does it feel like you will never stop thinking about your ex? Trey De La Torre joins me to dive into rumination, analyze the motives behind narcissistic behaviors, and discuss the signs indicating a narcissist playing the victim. His insightful humor, personal story, and strategies reveal an inspiring transformational journey.
We cover understanding and overcoming rumination, sharing practical advice on breaking the cycle of excessive thinking. Together, we aim to provide a comprehensive guide to self-care and maintaining personal integrity, even in the face of adversity.
You can learn more about Trey's work here: https://treydelatorre.podia.com/
Website: Emotional Abuse Coach
Instagram: @emotionalabusecoach
Email: jessica@jessicaknightcoaching.com
{Course} Identify Signs of Abuse and Begin to Heal
{Free Resource} Canned Responses for Engaging with an Abusive Partner
Welcome to the Relationship Recovery Podcast hosted by Jessica Knight, a certified life coach who specializes in narcissistic and emotional abuse. This podcast is intended to help you identify manipulative and abusive behavior, set boundaries with yourself and others, and heal the relationship with yourself so you can learn to love in a healthy way.
Speaker 2:Hello and thank you for being here. Today. I speak with Trey. Trey is a survivor of narcissism and is absolutely hilarious on Instagram and TikTok showing what it's like to be in a relationship with a narcissist, and although his content is definitely meant to bring awareness to a lot of the intricacies of being in a narcissistic, abusive relationship, he brings a light and welcoming aura to a lot of his work. I really enjoy talking to Trey. We have so many similarities in our stories and I just appreciate the way that he candidly talks about how he views the world and how he views healing from a narcissistic relationship, and in this episode he talks a lot about how he saw his own mind and had to make peace with it.
Speaker 2:This episode is about rumination. It is very important to understand that our brain is going to go on and on and on and on, and working with somebody like Trey or somebody like me, it can help calm down that cycle so you actually can begin to think for yourself, something that a lot of us don't feel like we can do in a narcissistic relationship or when healing from one. This is a jam packed episode. I really hope you enjoy it and, as always, you can find me on Instagram at Emotional Abuse Coach, my website Emotional Abuse Coachcom, and you can always email me, jessica, at JessicaNightCoachingcom. Thank you, hi Trey. Thank you so much for joining me again.
Speaker 3:Hey, thanks for having me back. I'm excited to be here Of course.
Speaker 2:Can you tell us about you, your platform and what you do, just to give us an intro into who you are?
Speaker 3:Yes, so to those of you guys who don't know me, my name is Trey, I'm a narcissistic abuse survivor and I'm also a doctoral candidate in occupational therapy, and I essentially kind of stumbled into this whole world by accident, was never planned or never thought I would do anything like this.
Speaker 2:I want to survive narcissistic abuse, yeah.
Speaker 3:And then talk about it online. Yeah, so yeah, none of this was on the plan at all, but I got into a narcissistic romantic relationship that lasted 18 months and I mean I don't really have to go into everything that I went through. If you look into narcissistic abuse at all, let's just say I have the whole gamut of it, with the exception of physical abuse and cheating, isolation, gaslighting, manipulation, blind duck, all the things. And it just what I recently started saying, because I finally was able to put it into words, is that it was a catalyst that put me on a journey that I wasn't prepared for and that was the healing journey for me. I didn't have any tools. Yes, I was in therapy. I was very blessed to see acknowledged what narcissistic abuse was, which is kind of rare.
Speaker 3:But even with that, I just didn't know what to do on a day-to-day basis to reclaim my life and start to reclaim my own thought pattern. And how do I understand why I miss this person? That's so terrible that I know I don't want back in my life. But on the other side of the coin, I know I miss them and it was probably about, I would say, a five to six months' journey for me, and then, a couple of months after that, I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I didn't know what to do. I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but have you ever listened to a song, and a song that maybe you've known for forever, but because of recent life experiences, you interpreted it a completely different way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally that song rise up. I was so annoyed by when it would come on the radio and stuff and then after I was going through this I was like, oh my God, I love this song.
Speaker 3:I love it, it was my anthem. Yeah, I had a similar thing with Katy Perry's song called Dark Horse. I've always liked that song, but I just liked it for the beat and all of that. And I was listening to it and I just heard the lyrics, I guess in such a different way, and I was like, oh my gosh, this completely describes what I went through. And so it started off where I was lip-syncing to songs on TikTok, kind of how TikTok used to be two or three years ago, and then one day I just posted this skit that was kind of inspired by the movie Inside Out, where it was like all the different things going on in the mind of an narcissist, and it kind of blew up and never stopped from there. So I've been coaching for about a year and a half now and I've got courses, I've course out, I've got a couple of books out, have a coaching community and it's just turned into this huge passion that aligns completely with what I'm going to grad school for.
Speaker 2:And now here we are, yeah, and you went over a lot of your story in the ins and outs of what you went through on the last podcast that we did. That I'll link in the show notes here. So if anybody's curious about the Trey's background, that's definitely a great episode to listen to. And so today I wanted to talk about how we can begin to break those thought patterns because, as you said, you didn't necessarily choose to be here, but you found yourself here and then you were like, okay, well now how do I get out of it? And why can't I stop thinking and longing for somebody that was treating me so terrible which I think a lot of us say without knowing that we're trauma bonded, without knowing what's actually happening and without really being able to make sense of it? Because I know in my experience people would be like why can't you just stop and be like I can't?
Speaker 3:I can't. Did you have a?
Speaker 2:similar experience? Well, I'm sure you did, but, like, can you tell me a little bit about your experience when you were healing from you know, like you said that five to six month period of having to work through all of this, it must have been excruciating. But do you remember how you thought about your own thought patterns? Like, were you like, oh my God, this is ridiculous. Why do I think this? Like, I'm sure it started with some self judgment, oh, 100%.
Speaker 3:Because I've always been an overthinker, like I'm a perfectionist by nature and I like to know the ins and outs of things, which I think it's not surprising that I'm going into the field that I'm going into because I've always loved science and I like knowing how things work. And I just couldn't wrap my head around why he did what he did. I couldn't wrap my head around like how did I even accept all of this? How did I get here? Why did I stay for so long and what could I have done different that could have made him make better decisions? And it was all really just back on me and I just said but the basis of it was I just couldn't understand it. And what was frustrating was I felt very out of control of my own thought pattern, like he was just as much as I didn't want him to be. He was the first person I thought about when I woke up. He was the last person I thought about when I went to bed and often on all day in between, and I just was repeating certain aspects of the relationship over and over again in my mind. I was trying to find answers and at the same time, because I didn't know anything about these behavior patterns.
Speaker 3:At the time he was trying really hard to maintain a friendship with me and I completely fell for it, like 100% fell for it, because even it's like, even for me I knew I couldn't have it back romantically because of everything that had happened. Like it just it was not even a legit like, it wasn't even a legitimate option for me as far as like my family dynamic and my relationship with my kid's mom and all that I knew I couldn't Like I. So that was kind of the saving grace for me because I was kind of held accountable by an outside source of I can't invite him back into my life romantically but I still I couldn't imagine my life without him at the same time. So for me friendship was like the best that it could go, even though there was a part of me that knew he wasn't a healthy person to be around and I didn't know if I wanted to be friends with him. And I started to find out because I didn't find out about the cheating till after the breakup.
Speaker 3:So you know I'm like he cheated, he did this, he was lying about this and all of a sudden like I don't even know if I want to be friends with him, but at the same time I can't imagine him not being in my life. So like, even as I'm trying to explain it, I'm sure it's a little bit hard to follow. Well, that's what was going on in my brain. Like it was hard to follow my own thought pattern. Nothing was making sense. I fell out of control. I hated him at one point, but I still missed him. It was just, it was all over the place and it was exhausting, like physically, mentally, spiritually, it was just exhausting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I want to touch on something that you pointed out. I know it might be a little off topic, but I think it's important is that you said he wanted to stay in your life as a friend. And I think that happens a lot, where they're like I don't like, I don't want to be with you, or you're like no, I can't be with you, or I think it's usually the other way, like they don't want to be with us, and then it's is I like, but let's stay friends. And I remember me thinking like, first of all, you're an awful friend to all the people that you're friends with, but at the same time, like I was in the same place, like I can't imagine not being in this person's life, but I and I think it was like I also can't imagine not knowing what they're doing.
Speaker 2:There was something about like that control thing that I noticed that which isn't me, it isn't inherently me that I was like I need to know these things that kept coming up. And I'm curious for you, like, when he said, like I want to stay friends, I wonder are you in touch with what he was wanting from you? Was he just wanting to have you in his life Because he wasn't a good person in your life. So what do you think was his motive there?
Speaker 3:I think there was a couple of reasons. Number one I think he was very good at playing the victim in every situation. So, like anything, whether it was work related, whether it came to his mom, whether it came to his friends, his exes he was always the victim. Everybody's always screwed him over, everybody's always in this and always in that, which that, by the way, is a huge red flag.
Speaker 3:Like I'm not saying that, people don't run into crappy people and their life's going to be a victim in literally every single story and they can't say like I know, I didn't do this, well, you know, or whatever.
Speaker 3:Then there's only one common denominator there. So that was a huge red flag that I sort of missed but mostly overlooked. So I think one of it was that helped play into his victim story. Because I think he was smart enough to know that I wasn't going to put up with it for very long, like I think he was smart enough to know I eventually was going to cut the ties. But if he could set the stage of he tried to be friends with me and I cut off that friendship, then he still remains a victim because he can be like we'll see. Like he could show off the repeats, like, see, I texted him, like I told him he's the best friend that I ever had and you know this is I made all this effort and he still just blocked me. Like you see, like he used the problem. So I think that was a big motive.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I think there was another motive as well, and this was just started to be revealed the longer that I was in contact with him and he was competing with me and it was like it was like stupid stuff, like I remember I'm not really big on Snapchat at all.
Speaker 3:Like I have it, but I really use it and I ended up this is kind of a sidetrack, but I know contact journey was kind of a progression so I blocked him in social media at first, but I was still texting and calling or whatever, and so at one point I had him block on every social media with the exception of Snapchat, and it was kind of the same thing for you. Like it was like a way to still keep tabs in a partially for safety. Yeah, because it was also like you said, like for some reason, if I could know what was going on with him, maybe it could explain what happened and it's, you know, logically I know that doesn't make sense, but that's what was going on in my head Like if I could figure out what's going on with him and what he's doing now, who's he hanging out with and blah, blah, blah, then maybe it can kind of help give you some answers on anything. And never did.
Speaker 3:But that was the motive for me. So, but I started to notice like if I posted something on Snapchat on my stories, and all of a sudden he was post something on his story and then, like I had lost some weight after the break up, so it was very uncharacteristic of people I would. You know I was trying to like I don't know, I guess, like put myself out there and just like explore, you try to find this new sense of confidence. So I would like post a shirtless picture of me and then all of a sudden, he would go and have the photos you've done and there's a picture with him and if I'm on a date, all of a sudden he's texting me about this date that he went on. So it was like everything was like tip for tap.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I couldn't be doing better than he was doing post break up, and I even tested this one day because I noticed he hadn't posted anything on his Snapchat story in like three days or something. And so it's like okay, let me just try this. So I posted a selfie in the Snapchat story. No lie, within 30 minutes he posted a selfie on his so I'm like this dude will be, like he is, he's watching and he's competing.
Speaker 3:So I think there was a big motive of that too, because one of the things that he would say in the relationship to kind of lay this future guilt over me if I ever left was that essentially, like his life would be terrible if I ever left him. Like if I have the dude who leaves me, like I'll never be the same in my life, I'll just like fall apart, or I won't take care of myself, or I won't do this or I won't back. So I think he wanted to also prove himself wrong of like no, I'm doing just fine. In fact, I'm thriving without you. So I think there was a big motive for that too.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think that there's also like that also creates so many more thoughts for you too, around, like now. Now, not only are you like still stuck on this person, you know your trauma bond, it's you're like this person is awful for me, but I still want to talk to him and I think about him all the time, and you're like figuring these things out, which I think just it like almost like starts the rumination process or like doubles up on it in some way, because now you're picking up on the pattern, you're annoyed by the pattern, but you also can't figure it out Because, especially if you're trying not to contact, you're not going to ask. You're not going to ask those things, but it's like wait, what is this person doing? Yeah, I think in my world I ended up getting to this point of like that I realized how ridiculous they were and I wasn't going to figure them out, but that took months.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, because there's a big difference between understanding something and accepting something. And it's hard to reach acceptance when we're stuck trying to understand when it comes to narcissistic relationships, because we're never fully going to understand it. And, just like you said, you know when you do start to figure things out, like yes, you may answer one more, one question, but that answer leads you to six more questions. So it's like it's just never ending cycle At that. At some point I just had to be like I just I can't, I can't understand it, I'm exhausted from trying to understand it, and just and I don't want to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't even want to.
Speaker 3:I don't want to exactly.
Speaker 2:And so that really does bring us into rumination, and I was on your website this week and I saw that you called rumination an emotional prison, and I thought that that was such a good description of what it feels like, especially when we are stuck like so stuck in it. And you just gave us a really great example of what it looks like when you're ruminating, like you said, like all of these thoughts just sort of coming in at once and then they lead to these other thoughts and they're all happening at one time. And so was there a point that you realized that you were stuck in rumination, that that was like almost like problem number one I can't stop ruminating or was there another pattern that you realized was happening for you first, when you started to identify something was happening?
Speaker 3:You know, I never even had the word rumination at the time because, again, like I, I wasn't on any of the platforms. At the time, it wasn't as much of a buzzword as it is now. Now it's almost like getting overfetched. It's like everybody's talking about it, whether they know about it or not. But even at the time nobody was really talking about it. It's an exception of a handful, a few creators, but I wasn't even in that realm. So what was a life-old moment for me was, let me remember what I was looking up. But I was looking at something.
Speaker 3:At this point I did have at least the term narcissistic relationship attached to it. I still didn't necessarily have narcissistic abuse, but I knew that he was narcissistic. So I think I was looking at something about what happens to people who are with a narcissist, or it's a basic Google search of that, One of the things that I read. But to actually like this description better, they called it the Excessive Thinking Cycle. That's what it was to me, because it was an obsession. It felt like an addiction. It felt because, if you think about just even in terms of addiction, you're addicted to something because you feel like you can't stop it and you're powerless to it. That's what it felt like. I actually prefer the term Excessive Thinking Cycle. It's the same thing as rumination, but I just think that term describes it a lot better.
Speaker 3:When I read that, it was like, okay, I'm not crazy, because they're saying right here, this is normal and it's part of the phase of leaving it. It was very comforting to me because, again, this whole Excessive Thinking pattern like, yes, I've been a chronic overthinker, but when it came to a relationship or break-up or anything like that, I never experienced this kind of missile chaos Like I was experiencing in this one. So it just helped me. It helped bring some peace to that aspect of like okay, not only am I not crazy, but this is expected and this is normal after what I went through. Then, of course, the next question was okay, now, what do I do about it? Yeah, Again, I think a lot of this out of my own was I was just finding ways to try to take control back of my thoughts, like through whether it was affirmation or whether it was prayer or whether it was just being things that I enjoyed.
Speaker 3:I was like I'm just going to try anything and just see what works, see what makes me feel better, see what makes me not think about this quite so much. It was really just the whole element of trial in here for sure.
Speaker 2:What are some of the things that you tried? I know you just mentioned like prayer journaling, but can you give us a little bit of that laundry list?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the thing that actually means the most difference.
Speaker 3:My therapist had talked to me about this concept, very well-known in psychology and actually, ironically, we even just talked about this in my class a couple weeks ago and concept is just a tool called the wellness wheel. Now, the traditional psychology wellness wheel is more about like a balanced life. So it's like what's your quality of life? How well balanced are you? In my field we call it occupational balance. So are you lighter, physical health, looking like? What is your relationship with your family? Social, all of that?
Speaker 3:And for some reason, when my therapist was talking to me about this, I was just opening it in a form of self-care, but not like how society sees self-care more, just like doing things that you enjoy, that you know if you've heard the phrase fill your cup so and doing it in a way that's balanced and where you're doing it from multiple different avenues. And so I literally created this little spreadsheet on my computer where it was like the days of the week, my categories, and I had like physical health, I had new figures to life, I had quality time with friends, quality time with family. I was kind of starting to get back into the dating scene. So I think I had dating as a category and then which? By the way, it was way too soon for me to do that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it was. Another podcast is dating juice.
Speaker 3:That's another conversation. I should write a course on that. But, and then I think another one was like, I put as like my mental health, and so what I would do is, every day I would sit down and I would ask myself how did I take care of myself today? And even if, like, the only thing I did in my physical health category was I did my nighttime skincare routine, I would put that it's the only thing I did for my spiritual life, as I listened to worship songs on the way to work. I would put that so I gave myself as much credit as I could, and what I would do is, in a nonjudgmental way, at the end of the week, I would sit down and evaluate OK, how am I taking care of myself this week?
Speaker 3:Are there areas that I neglected? What worked really well for me, what maybe didn't? How did I feel after spending time with my friends? How did I feel after? You know, I had a hard time coming up with an example, but I would just go through everything, like how did I feel? Did it make an impact, did it not? And so it helped me shift my focus and I had to make this deal with myself where I had to do all of that before I did anything else, because, even though I was no contact and hadn't blocked on social media, one of the things that was very different for me was unblocking and checking. Yeah, we're trying to find them on the dating app or whatever.
Speaker 2:Google, you've a person story and then putting in there yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3:So I tried to approach it in a way of I didn't feel like I could stop it necessarily, so I was like, okay, if I can't feel like I can stop, then I can at least make myself be productive and Take care of myself first before I participate or engage in this. That I know is unhealthy for me. And by doing that, after I did all this check in and I did all this stuff, sometimes I still did go in and unblock on the Instagram or find it on the app or whatever. But a lot of but the more and more I was doing this and all I was putting this into practice. So less than what I wanted to.
Speaker 3:So I think what worked for me was just meeting myself when I was at, because I didn't set an unrealistic expectation of how I'm going to stop doing all of this tomorrow. That seemed impossible for me. So why would I set that as a goal? I'm just setting myself up to get disappointed and to feel like I fail and self-defeated and all of that. So I I just I was realistic with myself Okay, I can't stop it, but I am gonna do off first and I'm gonna journal before I do that. I am gonna make sure that I took care of myself today and then, if I still want to, I'm giving myself permission to.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna slowly started to dissipate after that.
Speaker 2:I love what you said about like the way that you framed it, filling up your cup, and the spreadsheet you created reminded me so much of what I do, but it's also what I help people with and I call it is the pillars of your own personal integrity, and how can you show up for you and like for you it's these buckets, and for me the buckets might have been different, but the point is, is that like putting that attention back on ourselves?
Speaker 2:You know, for me it was like, am I getting my nails done, something that, like, I do enjoy, that I is like the first thing to go when I'm stressed Cuz I'm like I don't have time for this, but like it's an act of self-care or I need to get outside every day, like there's like these, we have them, and I love what you said about also asking yourself how it felt, because I think that is such an important piece that comes out of what we went through. Is that, friends, that we may have hung out before if we're May not, it might not feel good anymore to now that we're like working on ourselves and we're there for ourselves. We might be doing things that we think we should?
Speaker 2:be, doing that just don't feel good anymore and having the ability to ask yourself that, because I think that Also breaks the rumination as well, because now you're like asking yourself about you and not just asking about yourself in relationships to this other person.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know, bring up a good point when it comes to like friends and people and all of that. You know, there were people that I had to distance myself from, not because I didn't. Well, there were some people I distance myself from because I just, straight up, didn't trust him. But there was one friend in particular who I knew I could, but she was married to his boss and I knew that I didn't trust myself in it. To like Not ask her for updates, I'm like how's he doing at work? You know how's he doing it? Blah, blah, blah. And I didn't trust myself to not do that. And the other thing that I didn't trust was that, you know, he wouldn't come up casually on conversation.
Speaker 3:You know, just because that was how our relationship was founded on and so I did, I had to distance myself from her as much as I didn't want to, but I knew it was a good thing for me and I knew that if our friendship was like Was what I thought that it was, that I knew that when I was ready that it would rekindle and it did. And you know, I told her at one point I was just like I'm really sorry, like I'm sorry, I just like. This was what was going on with me at the time and if I could go back and redo it, I would say all this to her up front. That was a mistake that I made, but you know, I just told her this is what was going on. This is why I pull a lot and she was so gracious about it, you know.
Speaker 3:So I mean sometimes, like that distance that you have, it doesn't always have to be permanent and may just be temporary. This I would learn from my mistake, and especially those that you hope that can come back. Just tell them upfront so that way they know it's not anything personal. They may not like it still, but if they support you and they support your healing, then they're gonna be okay with it and you'll come back around and when it's time. So that was definitely something that I had to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah and I'll I. Good, and that's also a way to really show up for yourself and what you you need, like that bucket that, when we're in a relationship is in a narcissistic relationship, starts to be filling their bucket all the time. We have to really learn and lean into how to fill up hours.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah, because they haven't been allowed to for a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I know that from our last podcast that a lot of like writing and journaling was also part of Breaking the rumination process. Can you talk a little bit about the role of journaling or the role of like that you know writing, or the questions that you asked yourself in terms of breaking rumination?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I can't talk about journaling a lot Because everybody always says like, yeah, no, no, no, that's right. And I'm like you know, I didn't either Like half the time I did.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I had no system when it came to journaling. What I looked at journaling as was a way for me to dump all of the mental chatter that was going on in my head onto a piece of paper. It was like symbolic that I was dumping it out of my head and putting it on a piece of paper so that way I could close the book, and that's how I viewed it. So there was no questions that I could. There were really no questions I asked myself. I didn't have a prompted journal, had an old fashioned composition book that I still used to this day and I was doing it every single day. Sometimes I was doing it multiple times a day, and I did that for six weeks straight. I still do it now.
Speaker 3:It's more of an as needed thing, but again, I learned this because of my wellness practice. I noticed that when I journaled, versus when I didn't journal, I slept better than it was nice Because I got it all out of my head. And so now if I am struggling with insomnia or something like that, I evaluate what's going on. I'm probably pretty stressed out with everything going into the pool and my business and my kids and all that, and so I'm like, okay, I'm journaling, so I do it more as an as needed thing now, but at the time I needed to do it every day and I'll be honest, there was a day I'll never forget this. There was a day I was, I sat down to journal. Like I said, it was after about six weeks.
Speaker 3:I just got back from a run and I sat down to do it and I was just like, and I was, I'm okay, I don't think I want to do this. Today and I even text my best friend. I was like I had the thought of the bad, like did I still do it? And we say, you know that it's like, we'll just try it and just see. She's like that might be a sign that you're growing and you're healing. And so I was like, okay, we'll just roll it. And you know that it just.
Speaker 3:I literally just had a day where I was like I think I'm okay, I don't think I'm gonna do this Like I think I'm good and I don't remember how many more days it was before I needed to do again, but then I would just do it when I needed it. But it gather really wasn't any any system, it was just I wrote down what was in my head, what was I thinking, what was I feeling, no judgment attached to it. This is just what I'm. This is how I feel in this moment, whether I'm angry.
Speaker 2:It's giving those thoughts a voice Like you know. It's like instead of, instead of like telling them like, why am I thinking this? It's like okay, well, that can go down on the paper. Like why do I keep thinking this? Like it's just like it gets it out of your head and puts it somewhere?
Speaker 3:else? Yeah, absolutely. And I think it kind of helped too, Cause when I would go back and look at it, I remember at one point I read some old entries and stuff during the six weeks and I remember getting almost angry because I was like he has had such a hold on to you and he's not worth that, like it was just very eye-opening to see it, to see it on a piece of paper, how much he was consuming my thoughts and at this point in time I had been seeing more manipulation from him. There's, I mean, all of his stuff continued even through our quote unquote friendship as he's seeing it now.
Speaker 3:And so I'm like look at this, like look at how he's still lying to you, look at how he's manipulating situations, look at how he's competing with you, like y'all are in fricking high school, you know, and it's just like he's not worth all this crap, like he was never on your level to begin with and you're allowing him to have this kind of hold on to mine, like and it almost was like this kind of like sassy mindset that I have, whereas it's like no, no, he's not on your level, it's kind of soft, you know. So in a way, it was like it was good for me to be kind of my own pep talk because I could. I could go into like I don't want, I'm not, I'm not giving him this much power anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, yeah, I had a very similar moment to what you said about, like you know, coming back and journaling and being like, oh wait, I don't have to do this. Like I used to save time every night Cause that was my, that was my strategy was like I'm going to get to the end of the day, like I'm going to give myself space to think about these things, but I just have to get through the day and then I will have my time. And at the beginning it was like I could not wait until that time. And then it was like, all right, I I could get to that time. And then it started to be like I just want to go to sleep. And I actually was like, oh, my God, that's so much growth.
Speaker 2:So just be like I think I just want to go to bed, like I don't need this hour of crying and venting and writing and speaking out loud and doing all these things, and it helps so much with the process. And when people come to me and say like, well, how do I break it? I think a lot of people at least a lot of people I work with they get stuck on the actual writing, like about the actual pen to paper, or I even say, like, talk to yourself in the car, like we have to get these thoughts out of our head, but that block is so strong and what do you think that that block is that people have against the pen to paper or the finding different ways to get the thoughts out?
Speaker 3:I joke with my clients sometimes. I'm like I know that journaling can feel like homework and they usually laugh because, like I think that is part of the problem is that you know it does have this element of where maybe it feels like work or it feels like homework. But what if? But just like kind of you touch one. What I tell them is to have a new journey is really not important. If you pull up your notes on your phone and just type everything out and delete it afterward, that's great. You still gave space for you to acknowledge how you feel.
Speaker 3:I had one client that I don't know if I could ever do this, but it worked for her and she did she recorded videos like she sat down almost like he did for a dick doc and she would just talk her feelings out and she kept all the videos, you know. So the avenue of quote unquote journaling is the most important part. What?
Speaker 3:the most important part is is just to acknowledge what's going on in your head. What feelings do you have associated with this, and don't judge them. Because one of the things that keeps us stuck in remediation and I see it all the time, and I did it myself is we have this horrible narrative that we say to ourselves of, like, when we miss them or when we're angry, or at this or at that, we try to negate those feelings and say that we shouldn't be feeling them Like, oh, look, he was such a, he was such a PLS. Like I don't need to be, I know I shouldn't miss them. Yeah, that may be true, but like, ignoring that feeling isn't going to help you. It's actually going to make it more intense. You know, or, I don't need to be angry over he didn't treat me well. Like well, he didn't treat you well. You should be angry about it. Like, why would you not be? And that's just like we did this thing where we tried to use our own feelings and our own emotions and say that they're not valid when they actual office it.
Speaker 3:If you just embrace that feeling fair and almost just invited in, like you're inviting someone over for dinner, and have that mindset of you know what? I don't understand why I feel this, but I'm just going to embrace that. It's here. I promise you you actually process it faster. It's kind of the same concept of like and you know, you have a kiddo. You know what I'm going to say my four year old Love into pieces. That boy's also incredibly stubborn and every time I say hey, bud, like maybe not do that, 30 seconds later he's doing the exact thing until I'm not to do. Like it is head down and it comes more intense and the urges it's stronger. Well, we're not any different as adults. When we tell ourselves, like I'm not gonna feel this, our brain is like no, but it's here and it needs to be processed. So I'm going to keep bothering you about it until we do something about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I have so many people that are like, oh, I don't want to give them more of my time. It's like, well, you're giving them your time anyway and also you're giving it to them, you're giving it to yourself, you're giving it back to yourself, this is your way of getting time back for yourself. And I think that a lot of us get so stuck in that mindset of like, well, I don't want to give them more energy. It's like, well, they're, they're getting it anyway. Right, if we can, if we can think about it that way, or we can think about it Like it's coming back to us.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean, and that that example of the kid is so it's such a good example because I actually was on a flight with my kid yesterday, so I spent, they, you know, two hours being like stop, stop, stop.
Speaker 2:You know, just let her do whatever the hell she was doing, which, in this case, was like sitting with her legs up, like she probably would have gotten bored of it and stopped, and within a minute. But I think it's like that cycle of like we can be so mean to ourselves, instead of just being like nope, this is where I'm at, like, where I'm at is thinking about this, you know, and I feel like I used to wake up and purge, but out my thought. I call it a thought purge, when I just get everything out of my head. I Used to do it at night, I used to have to do it during the day, and I still do it during the day, and I've been. This is a practice I've always done my whole life and but with healing from abuse, it's been so essential to just be like. I don't even know if these thoughts are real, but I'm allowing them to get out of my head.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think if you've journaled in the past, that helps make this process easier. I think if you've never done it before, then it is gonna be harder to pick it up right now, because I was the same way like I used to keep a journal. I was never consistent about doing it every day, but I've journaled often on to the types in college. I already knew the benefits of it for me and so I just picked it back up like at that point I hadn't journaled, and probably over a year. But I've grown with experience I knew that it doesn't help. So I think if people also Haven't done it for whatever reason or maybe they tried it in past and it wasn't the right avenue for them so you know what I also tell people generally may not be the right avenue for you and that's okay, but it's not the right avenue then Do a 30 minute.
Speaker 3:Who liked you set an alarm on your phone and just ask yourself in that moment, how am I feeling right now? And just acknowledge how you feel in that moment, you know, or whatever. But it is just about giving Acknowledgement and credit to how you're feeling. And I think there's also a level of frustration With it because we don't like admitting that we think about them as often as we do. We don't like that they live in their head room three, and so it's like I don't want to acknowledge it, but at the same time, the more that we do and the more that we I don't know. It was kind of like I said the same thing with my journal when I went back and I just looked and saw how often I Was being consumed by thoughts of him. It actually helped Me get to the point of like I'm done, I'm done with this, I can't do this anymore. So I think it helped me get to that point faster.
Speaker 2:Yeah, something that was interesting. That happened to me as I started to realize that when I was thought purging, as I would call it I would consistently write out I'm tired or I'm so tired or I'm exhausted would be the first thing I wrote out. And then I was like, wait, why is that the first thing I write out? Am I tired? Do I actually think this? Right now? And that was pretty big for me to realize, like maybe I'm writing down thoughts that I don't actually think anymore About him too, like if I'm not tired and if I'm not frustrated and if I'm not these things, why am I saying it? And so that was, yeah, important, and that was a pretty important part to be then Would that happen? A while later, I was able to start to try and question what those thoughts were, rather than just letting them just be like no, this is it. It's like what if it's not it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah so I really, really appreciate you talking through this with me. I think one of the most helpful things that people are going to see is how helpful it was to hear you talk about All the thoughts that you had, because I think you just you know, even though you're healed from it, it's like there's a way that you talked about it that sounds like you know what it's all it's like right here. It's so clear and that people can really resonate with the types of things that you said. So I really appreciate you sharing you know the intricacies of your story in talking about this. I also know that you have a program about rumination and how to break rumination, so can you tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I actually have. Most of what I do is kind of centered around that, mainly because this was my biggest struggle and it was hardest to overcome and it was also the thing that I had the least amount of resources over. So I tried to. I tell people all the time Like my goal with all of this is to be the resource that I desperately needed at that time and just didn't have. So I do have one-on-one coaching and I have like a pretty pretty set out for me and the people that you can help them with that. But I obviously I coach on everything like building self-worth or whatever it may be.
Speaker 3:But I could, I've coached on that a lot. Now I have a group coaching and called unshackled and set free. It's for For a session total and we kind of break it down into Four different struggles that are commonly linked to rumination and it's like your emotional management, its anxiety managing triggers, the brief that's associated with this, with all this place and seeds into the rumination, and so I have that as well, but probably like the best resource that's absolutely focused. Rumination is my online course and it's a seven-week course. He's called narcissistic recovery toolkit and it's a seven week itself base and it gives you Strategies to focus on every week.
Speaker 3:So it's like okay, here's our topic, what happens to you. Want a neurological level Like that's week one like this is what happens in the brain. This is why it happens, this is why you're struggling with it, it's normal, it's expected and here's how we deal with it. And then we do and I go into the next topic and here's strategies and all of that. So it gives you a specific focus each week For a total of seven weeks and there's also a journal that goes with it. The journal it's the same title narcissistic to recovery close recovery toolkit, reflection of journal, and you can either do it in conjunction with the course or you can just do it like Restain me on a damn. But those two things are by far very catered towards specifically the struggling with remediation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much for sharing those and I resonate with that so much because I definitely Create resources or think about this in terms of what I didn't, what I could not find when I needed it. So I think that's why these podcasts with you goes to the smoothies, because we have, we're coming from the same place. I'm just like really wanting to be, that resource and I know that this specific podcast is going to help a lot of people.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, I appreciate it yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, just tell us how to find you, and I will put all your links in the show notes as well, so people don't have to rest write it down. But where can we find you online?
Speaker 3:So I am on a TikTok, facebook, instagram and now threads, which is like the newest one, the file. My handle on Tiktok, which is my main platform, is I was like yo under four tray If that's pretty much what it is everywhere with the exception of Instagram and has a one at the end of it. So I was like yo under four tray one. I will just go ahead and tell you to be aware. Now I'm family and cool enough to have impersonator accounts, so I only have one account on each. Be aware.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I've got. Oh. Just be aware, be aware of that. There's nothing. Usually they put like something in the front of it like another period or underscore Some things. Yeah, but doesn't start with the letter I, it's not me, oh, that's where yeah? That's where I'm at.
Speaker 2:My favorite was when Lee hammock, mental illness got it, had an impersonator account and he posted like he kept posting about it. And then he he posted like another one, like I don't send good vibes, I don't like all the things I like, I don't. I'm not sending positive healing. I don't have good vibes like like it was just yeah, I can't.
Speaker 3:Same as me. Like I'm not gonna do zodiac reading for you, I'm not gonna message you asking for money. Yeah, none of that's gonna happen. So, yeah, yeah, I Like on a serious side of it, though, like they, like I have noticed that these hackers really are coming after, like narcissistic abuse survivors, creators, because they know our population. Yeah, so just be aware and this isn't just with me or Lee hammock or for you, we're anything like that Just be very cautious. If you have creators that reach out to you, you know whatever, like well, with positive DMs, but I'm not going through my followers and messaging them 100%, yeah, so just be very aware of it. It's, it's not just that like it's. I mean, I know, dr, not the boys have some, we've got a couple. Like there's a lot of us and, yeah, catherine Kline, she's got a couple. So there's a lot of us that have impersonator accounts. So please just be very cautious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and everybody was saying definitely and those and all the names you just mentioned, they would not reach out to you, being like do you need help, you know? Like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm friends with all of them Like, yeah, they would not be messaging. Yeah, they would be messaging out for support, exactly not to To promote their zodiac reading business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they don't have time for that either. Yeah, yeah, well, again, thank you so much. I'm sure he'll be back soon, but I really appreciate you being here and talking through this with me.
Speaker 3:Of course. Thank you for the honor of asking me to come back, and it's a pleasure to be here. I'm always