What is Love Addiction? Jodi White, a seasoned psychotherapist, joins me to discuss what Love Addiction is and how we can heal. Jodi has devoted her career to helping individuals overcome love addiction and heal from trauma.
This episode covers the heart of love addiction, unearthing its roots in developmental trauma and revealing the blurred boundaries between this and emotional abuse. Our dialogue dissects the societal influences and the common misconceptions that romanticize love addiction. We also discuss the importance of solid self-esteem and identity before entering into a relationship.
You can learn more about Jodi and her work here: https://www.jodiwhitetherapy.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
What is Love Addiction? Jodi White, a seasoned psychotherapist, joins me to discuss what Love Addiction is and how we can heal. Jodi has devoted her career to helping individuals overcome love addiction and heal from trauma.
This episode covers the heart of love addiction, unearthing its roots in developmental trauma and revealing the blurred boundaries between this and emotional abuse. Our dialogue dissects the societal influences and the common misconceptions that romanticize love addiction. We also discuss the importance of solid self-esteem and identity before entering into a relationship.
You can learn more about Jodi and her work here: https://www.jodiwhitetherapy.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 again for being here. Today we have a very special guest, jody White, who's a psychotherapist and was once my psychotherapist when I identified with love addiction and thought that love addiction was the issue, that it wasn't abuse, it wasn't toxic partners, it was love addiction, meaning it's all my fault. And now in my journey I've learned that, based on my upbringing and a lot of behaviors, that I certainly did have qualities of love addiction and it did take a long time to heal and was quite excruciating at times. I've also learned that just because I might resonate with love addiction, it does not mean that I should be abused or that I should be with partners that are harmful or that that's just what I get. Working on love addiction really helped me learn to work on myself and this idea of perfection that I carried of who I needed to be and how I needed to show up, and if it didn't work out that way, then it was all my fault and I should be better and everybody else gets a free pass except for me. So Jodi joins us to talk about love addiction. We touch on codependency and talk a little bit about how to begin to decipher between abuse and love addiction.
Speaker 2:Jodi is a wealth of knowledge. She has an amazing podcast called Journals of a Love Addict. The link is in the show notes just in case you want to hop on and listen to her. Jodi is also the person that if you've listened to other episodes of mine that I went to, or that rather, called me to tell me that what I was dealing with was abuse. She called out of nowhere. I answered. I remember being in the car. I remember exactly where I was it's facing the sit-go sign, actually in near Fenway in Boston. I pulled over, picked up and she basically said I'm worried about you and that you're strong enough now to leave. But I don't know that you'll be strong enough if this continues to happen and we need to figure out a way to get you out and advise me to drive to his house he was not home Pick up my belongings and leave the key and I couldn't do that at the time, but I did a virgin of that. I actually drove there, like everything that was important to me, and then really limited my contact going forward and allowed myself to believe that it was abuse and it wasn't just toxicity.
Speaker 2:I really love her work. She runs a series of groups. She's a coach, she's a therapist for those based in Texas, and if you feel stuck, as if there's another level of healing that you want to do or a level of behavior that you just don't like within yourself, that you want to heal, I highly recommend checking out her work. Her website is in the show notes, but it's Jodiwhiterabeecom. Thank you again for being here, thank you for listening and, of everybody that I interviewed, I have to say that being able to talk to Jodi in retrospect from where I once was the most personally rewarding, and I know this is going to help many people. Hi, jodi, thank you so much for joining with me today. Hi Jessica, can you introduce you and what you do?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm Jodi White. I'm a licensed therapist in Austin Texas, specializing in love addiction, which is technically we're talking about developmental trauma. So I'm a trauma therapist and I'm also a coach and I work with women to help them not only address potential symptoms of love addiction, which is rooted in codependence, which is also developmental trauma but I help women really, really. What I do is help them build a relationship with themselves and to get to know themselves and start to like and love themselves, and that's certainly the space I was in when I found you initially.
Speaker 2:You were somebody and you know that, someone that I followed on Instagram and you were speaking my language when you were talking a lot about love addiction and I felt like this was the only place that I felt seen. You touched on a little bit of the definition of love addiction. Can you define it for us?
Speaker 3:Yeah, First off, let me just say what you just said about feeling seen is the whole reason I started doing what I do, talking about it on Instagram, starting the podcast because I felt, similarly, that there was no one who got it. There was no one talking about it and it was just me. There was just something wrong with me. So I'm really glad you felt seen. So when I'm defining love addiction, what I like to do is start with what love addiction is not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that would be perfect.
Speaker 3:Because it's great right now. There are a lot of people talking about it now and it's a little bit of a hashtag or a buzzword on social media, which, on one hand, is great. There's more out there. But also there is some misinformation out there and it's still very often misunderstood what love addiction is. So I like to start with what it isn't.
Speaker 3:It's a very imperfect term. It doesn't really describe what we're talking about, because on the surface it can look like we're talking about love, being addicted to love or maybe addicted to a person or addicted to a relationship, and it can feel that way when you're in it. When you're really in it, that's what it feels like. It always felt like that to me. There are songs about being addicted to love and addicted to a person Because it really can feel that way. But love addiction has very little to do with love, at least on the surface, where it looks like romantic love, right, or functional, healthy, adult love. It has very little to do with that. It really is the love that we should have gotten from our parents in childhood, that Unconditional, positive regard, that unconditional love that says, no matter what you do, no matter, I am going to love you. It's that kind of love that gives us value, that sends us out in the world, feeling confident and Able to esteem from within. It's that kind of love in childhood that supports us as we get to know our imperfect, authentic selves. The thing is, lots of us don't grow up with that Unconditional positive regard, or it's inconsistent for us, right, or there's some sort of interruption. Maybe we start out with this and there's a change in our family of origin, maybe we lose a parent, or there's a divorce and everything shifts right. So there are lots of reasons that we may not experience that unconditional positive regard in In childhood. So it's not about blaming parents necessarily although parents do have the responsibility, but it's just to look at okay, this was missing or Inconsistent. And so what we do is we grow up looking for it from partners and adulthood. And the thing is and this is where we get into cultural Beliefs and stories we grow up with fairy tales, right, yeah, tell us we're gonna be rescued, someone's gonna come along and make it all better, we're gonna ride off into the sunset, we're gonna live happily ever after.
Speaker 3:But when we talk about functional, healthy, adult love, that comes with Ideally functional boundaries, right, and it's not, no matter what you do to me, I'm gonna stick around, right? That's what a parent no matter what you do, I'm gonna. I love you, no matter what, right. So we look for that.
Speaker 3:Not only that unconditional, almost boundary less love in adult relationships, but we're also looking to fill the bucket from childhood that is either empty or isn't completely full. And so we come into an adult relationship saying fill my bucket, yeah, and an adult partner, no matter how hard they try, cannot do that. That doesn't mean they won't love you. That doesn't mean that functional love isn't amazing or healthy adult love isn't amazing. It just means that if that buckets not full, if it wasn't filled up in childhood, that is our job to fill our bucket and to come into the relationship with hey, I want to be together, I'm working on building my bucket. Let's work on this functional relationship instead of saying feeling incomplete in some way and looking for this.
Speaker 3:That's another one of those fairy tale ideas that whole you complete me, yeah. And I think that some people listened to me talk and think I've got it all wrong. But and Maybe they don't struggle with love addiction and maybe that idea works for them. But when you're dealing with love addiction. Part of the recovery work is learning about these cultural beliefs and how, these messages that we get, especially for women from a very young age you know that someone's gonna take care of me someday, someone's gonna rescue me, someone's gonna fill my bucket, and also we're coming at it from a place and we don't even realize this. I don't even know who I am, yeah, so I'm gonna look to someone else to tell me who I am.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I read a quote this morning that said if you want to have a stand, to have to start by knowing where you stand. Ah, I love that, and I loved it because it was just sort of this reminder of when I have been in places or relationships when, like, I don't even know what I think or what I want, or what's important to me, or and Boundary lists, my stance is so shaky because I don't actually have one.
Speaker 3:Right, and so the quote that you heard this morning. What I would add to that is not only where you stand, but what do you stand on? Yeah, yeah, because that foundation. Oftentimes you know I'm talking about those of us who deal with love addiction we are so wobbly we don't have a foundation, so we don't have a foundation to stand on. We reach out Wordly for a life preserver. That's often a relationship, something to rescue me because I don't know who I am, I'm not totally secure in myself. So by grabbing on to this relationship, ah, I feel more secure, although still insecure, mm-hmm. And that security the thing is, it's leading.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because we still don't have that internal security as I was listening to your description, which was it always hits different every time.
Speaker 2:I've listened to you on a few different things and I've also worked with you, so I've heard it a few times that something always hits different. And this time what stuck out to me was about and this is probably in reflection of some of my clients that Once they start to work on themselves, their relationships, the way that they are showing up in them, if there's abuse or not, what I noticed is that the question of needs comes up a lot, and sometimes I think it's our needs, like well, what needs can I have? And I think sometimes it's what the partner says they need. Like I just need this, I just need validation from you, I just need you to like help me with that. Like whatever that might be, it could be fit, it could be mental, it could be physical, it could be sexual, obviously. But like I wonder when, if somebody is identifying with love addiction and they're probably realizing that they might put a lot of their needs on their partner but at the same time, their partner doesn't meet their needs right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I love what you're saying and it of course makes me think of PM melody, and I say of course, yeah, because all the work I do is yeah, in PM melody and her work, I mean she, I stand on her shoulders, you know as far as everything that I do, because Pia, she was talking about this in the 80s and but what came first was her work around codependence, and that's another buzzword right now and it's also very misunderstood. There's a lot of confusion about what codependence is and what it's not same with love addiction and so I always tell people if you're confused about this, look to PM melody, because if you work like I do, I just every time I talk about codependence, every time I say that word, I'm talking about Pia's model. Yeah, and that is the five core issues which she identified as far back as I think, the 70s really, but it's, you know, when we have developmental trauma, which is anything that happens along that developmental timeline from.
Speaker 3:According to Pia's work it's birth to about 18. That's according to Pia's work. I would say it's a little longer, because we're looking at now brain development. We know a lot more about brain development, but let's just use Pia's not how she does it from birth to 18. So anything that happens along that Timeline that is traumatic to the child and, according to Pia, anything that's not nurturing to a child is traumatic to a child. So we're talking about a measurement and or emotional neglect or severe neglect, and that's going to happen somewhere to most of us. It's just how resilient are we as children and also how mature are our parents? Right, because there can be repair things. Stuff's going to happen and if parents repair and they're able to be mature and take accountability, there's less chance of that shaming the child, because that shame is really very abusive, because the shame gets put on the child. So you know, you look at those five core issues according to Pia melody, when there's wounding along that timeline, you've got issues with self-esteem, which means we're either one up or one down. We vacillate between the two instead of being able to esteem from within and realize we're all valuable equally. We're either because we consider ourselves either less valuable or more valuable, possibly, depending on how we're parented.
Speaker 3:The next one is an issue with boundaries. We're either too rigid or we're too porous. Again, you see, those extremes. An issue with reality, and this is a big one. We struggle to own our reality. We look to someone else to define our reality for us, because we learned early in life that sharing our reality was dangerous or we got shamed for it. It wasn't safe to our nervous system, so we looked to others to define that reality for us.
Speaker 3:Then there's an issue with what she calls dependence, which is really either being anti-dependent meaning I don't have any needs or wants, I can take care of myself, don't worry about me or I'm going to depend on you to take care of those needs and wants, also to read my mind and know what those needs and wants are. You see, there's two extremes again. Then there's the issue with moderation. We're unable to moderate in our behavior. Those five core issues came first. Again, he has worked.
Speaker 3:I look at that as the garden and then the dirt in a garden. Then from that is where the love addiction. The love addiction is the weeds that grow in that garden. We've got those five core issues first, and then the love addiction comes from that. The love addiction is rooted in the codependence. You can be quote, unquote codependent, even though I don't like to use that label as much, but I'm talking about PiazModel. You can be codependent and not struggle with love addiction. But if you're struggling with love addiction, you are definitely struggling with these five core issues. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, they're talking about needs and wants. That was a long-winded way of getting back to talking about those needs not knowing our needs and wants. That goes with PiazModel, that we struggled to know what our needs are. We might be dependent on someone else to know what they are and to take care of them.
Speaker 2:I think that we struggle with what needs we can rely on a partner for and which ones are really us, like they're on us. In most unhealthy relationships there's a very clear double standard there, too, of the partner's needs can overwhelm the room where they might not be respected. I know, in the relationship that I was in when I was working with you, I don't think I advocated for any of my needs. Yeah, I didn't know what they were and I didn't know that they were okay. I was always caretaking somebody else's needs and my love addiction was almost fueled by and this is very much related to my upbringing wanting to be so needless so that nobody would criticize me, mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:So you could be safe. Yeah, yeah, as survive. This is all about survival. When we say survive, we don't just mean living, we're talking about how can I, first of all, survive? The family of origin, because there's a dynamic going on around us as children. There's a dynamic created by the family of origin, and so we learn to adapt to that environment in order to survive, to make everything okay, to feel safe. That's all we're trying to do, as little humans is trying to feel safe, and also that can involve, if I act like this, if I do this, if I behave like this, this is how mom or dad will act, and so I know this works, right, yeah, instead of just being able to be a little kid and be imperfect and authentic and know that you're going to be loved, you're like this is what I need to do in order to feel safe, and if I do that other thing, whoa, I don't feel safe, so I'm not going to do that thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think about some of the behaviors that I did. I mean, I think people that know me now would have never they never would have seen me in this light. But it was so clear for me at that time and this part of me is still so clear of how clingy I was, how stuck to the phone I was, how I was unable to stop thinking my rumination was great, like all the time I wanted so bad I would like wait for, like the hit. I know I'll touch on abuse in a bit, but, like in the cycle of abuse, I would want that calm stage so badly. But I didn't recognize it as the calm stage.
Speaker 2:That's what I was addicted to. It was like when things could settle and my relationship felt okay, even if it was for a minute, and I wanted it so bad, I wanted it from someone so bad, and then, when the relationship was over, I still wanted it so badly. It was like I would have accepted the painful love just to have any love which is directly connected to my origin story. And I remember when I would ask you how do I get out of this? What you pointed out to it was always 30 days, no contact. And now, looking back, I can see how helpful that would have been if I'd given that to myself sooner. But can you talk a little bit about how love addiction is addiction and therefore needs to be treated like one when we're trying to work hard?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so let's start for a second. I want to talk about the no contact you were saying you can see how helpful it would have been if you would have given that to yourself sooner. And I wanted just I hope you're able to have compassion for yourself around it yeah, because I have done 90 days no contacts when I was in it and I really think it was the hardest thing I've ever done as far as emotionally, yeah, yeah, and so there's a reason we don't do it Either we can't do it or we don't do it, and it's also it allows us to reset our brain, basically, and 30 days is really the minimum because really he recommends 90 days and even that is still considered a minimum. It really can take longer. But the thing is, if I were to tell clients, hey, let's talk about the 90 days, let's talk about 90 days no contact, a lot of people just wouldn't talk to me anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then they will. Then they would, and it also wouldn't be manageable enough for them to like their mind around it. It's like okay, if this thing feels like heroin and I'm telling you, tomorrow we're done with heroin. Like it's going to feel like your life is at stake in an instant. You know Right, you're right.
Speaker 3:So not every. We want to make sure, you know, as a someone in the helping field working with clients who are dealing with this yes, there's this, we know this will work. And also, we need to make sure you're resourced and we need to make sure that you're going to be able to stay within the window of tolerance, you know, because if you're not in the window of tolerance, you're going to end up, it's going to be chaos or you're going to end up back with the qualifier anyway and have to start the cycle all over again. So there's definitely I don't want to say it's not for everyone, because I believe it can work for everyone, but it depends on where the person is right. So, as far as looking at love addiction and being treated as addiction, so we look at it as if we're searching for that unconditional, positive regard right, that we didn't get in childhood.
Speaker 3:The thing about love addiction it's so complex and I mean, look at me, I've got 40 episodes of the podcast and I don't even think I've talked about the entire. Yeah, but part of this starts with auto regulation in childhood, right? So let's say, in childhood we are, there's emotional neglect, let's use that example and so we are left to attempt to soothe ourselves, right. So we turn to auto regulation. Auto regulation is innate and it's automatic. We are born knowing how to auto regulate our nervous system when we are dysregulated. So that's what children suck their thumbs, babies suck their thumbs. It's to calm themselves, it's soothing for them, children might rock in a crib, and these are things that might be done in a pinch when maternal care or care of another adult is not available right To for someone, when someone's not there to attune or co-regulate. The thing is, when this is constant and it goes on, then we are using auto regulation almost in place of co-regulation or attunement, and so we're finding ways. Okay, this is what I have to do to regulate my nervous system.
Speaker 3:So fantasy is a huge part of love addiction and the use of fantasy starts very young. I mean, I started fantasizing about a rescuer when I was probably six or seven years old and it was such a big part of my life and I loved it. Of course, I had no idea what I was doing back then with it, but that's and it maintained this fantasy that people would change, but the thing was always the same, which, in that fantasy, I felt empowered, I felt like I could conquer the world. I felt very secure, I had everything I needed and wanted, and I was also in my fantasy. I was an adult, I was grown up, so I could do whatever I wanted to do.
Speaker 3:But this fantasy. Then when we start having relationships, we take that fantasy and put it on the other person. So not only are we looking for this person to fill our bucket, we are making or attempting to make them into someone that they're not. We're taking this fantasy and putting it on the other person. So it goes together, because in that fantasy the bucket is filled by the other person and you can feel how secure and good that feels right. And so we get into these relationships and we spend a lot of time trying to get what we need from this other person something that they can't really give us, because we should have gotten that in childhood while also trying to make them into who we need them to be, or we think we need them to be. So it's like a project really, and we get for lack of a better word, I look at it as we get addicted to that project.
Speaker 2:Yeah, would you say that that's very similar or in line with like you get addicted to, like wanting to change them? Yeah, if they change, then.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a lot of the addicted process. It's a process addiction, right, but it's also we're addicted to the process of trying to get what we want and need from this person. Yeah, yeah, so as far as like looking at it as addiction too, is that, thankfully, we're looking at addiction so differently now than we did in the past and we're looking at if you look at Gabor Maté's work and he says it's not why the addiction, but why the need what's underneath that? Why are we trying to soothe ourselves? What's going on, what's rumbling underneath there? So why the pain? And so that's where we look at.
Speaker 3:All of this is rooted in trauma, and when we're talking about love addiction, we're looking at this developmental trauma, and so that's what we look at. We look at, okay, what's underneath all that, and that's what Pia's work does. We go back to childhood, we do a timeline, we write out a timeline, everything that happened, because owning our reality, allowing ourselves to look at what happened and have that be validated and explored, can be so healing. Because for so long we tell ourselves, oh, that was no big deal, I should be over it by now. Maybe that's not even what really happened. So we stuff all of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that I personally continue to stuff and stuff until because I wanted so badly to be over my childhood or like, in a way, forget it, that I didn't realize how much would bubble up in romantic relationships, because my excuse then was blaming myself for always having tough romantic relationships. So just like this blame game was created that took away from that actual healing and being able to see what I was doing and how I was showing up and what beliefs I had. Like one of the concepts that I think was really groundbreaking for me to understand in my own life, but even more so in the relationship with others, was unconditional positive regard, and I think I know that there's ways that I wanted that from partners. I also was able to see how badly other partners wanted that from me and how I couldn't give that to them because they would act out or be reactive or something would happen, and then the expectation would be that I just shove it down and move on, in the same way that a parent might do that in a temper tantrum, and I think it was you that said like the only person that should get that from me in that way would have been my daughter.
Speaker 2:Like. That doesn't mean that I'm not boundaryless, but do I always show up and want her to be happy and okay and work through any little pinches and things like that. We have 100%, like I'd go to the end of the earth? Yeah, but that's because I'm her mom. I think unconditional positive regard can be confused for like unconditional love sometimes. Right, can you just talk quickly about the difference?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think unconditional love it's more a romantic idea. Yeah, Love done conditionally Right, and that's really from romance novels, movies no matter what I do, you're never going to leave me right, or I'm so valuable to you that you're going to stick around no matter what I say or do. But that's not. We don't want that. If we want to have a functional relationship, we need to have functional boundaries and we want our partner to have boundaries. You know, it kind of goes like in my love addiction.
Speaker 3:I looked to that other person to basically validate me. And that's we're going to get to the unconditional positive regard. Because the unconditional positive regarded childhood is validating. It's like you are worthy just for being here. You don't have to do anything, You're just worthy, You're valuable Just like every other person on this planet, Right, Just for being here, you are valuable.
Speaker 3:The thing is we don't get that message all the time or it's fleeting or it's inconsistent, and so we learn we have to do something in order to be valuable and lovable. And that's where the conditions come in. You see, it's like I'm lovable if I do this, I'm valuable if I do this. So the unconditional positive regard is really that unconditional parental love that comes with I, you are valuable I. I think Pia says as children we're only able to esteem if we receive the esteem from parents. Right, that's how we learn to self esteem. And I look at self esteem as a verb, not something we have or don't have. If we don't have that esteem from parents, that unconditional positive regard, and we start to learn to do something to get that unconditional positive regard, then we're learning to other esteem. So I get my esteem externally from doing something or from another person who maybe will give it to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then the reaction that comes when they can't is often very childlike.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh yeah, Because it feels like rejection, abandonment, fear oh, fear oh yeah, yeah, you and I were doing a lot of this deep work while I was also in therapy, so I would take a lot of these concepts and unpack them, and both you and my therapist separately. But you first started to point out domestic abuse when I was in the relationship that I work with you on, which I do talk about pretty openly here. I remember you called me and I've talked about this before I like almost like it was almost like an out of the blue call, not our typical time, and you basically named what was going on and why it was abuse, and then I wasn't seeing it as that. I totally was in more self-flame fixing type cycles, and I think that that was such a pivotal moment for me and it still is, because I never forgot it. I think I needed to hear it exactly at that time. But the other part is that it started to move the conversation away from I'm the problem in some way, but more of like this is abusive and I can't be in it.
Speaker 2:So, even like my Google search has changed the books I was reading changed my thought patterns were changing and so a lot of people that listen to this podcast are in abusive relationships or healing from abuse. And I'm curious if you could touch on maybe some of the intersection between love, addiction and abuse and maybe how somebody can decipher it. And the reason that I'm bringing it up is because I think a lot of people, especially those that are here that are listening and trying to understand patterns and are looking at themselves and they're like willing to break around parts of themselves that might need work or focus or to unpack and to heal. We are likely going to take that on, but we may stay in relationships with people that aren't doing similar work or are like using that against us or are abusive, like no matter what we do and no matter what we heal, the relationship's not going to change.
Speaker 3:Right, right. So I guess what comes to mind as I'm listening to you talk is that in my 25 years of love addiction, I started out in my teens into my early 20s in more codependent relationships. But the love addictive relationships didn't start until I was about 23, 24. And that was my first devastating addictive relationship and it was also emotionally and mentally abusive and to me it was normal. This is what you do, because I think to talk about this, I need to also add in their PMLADES three symptoms of love addiction.
Speaker 3:We talked about her five core issues of codependence, but her three symptoms of love addiction are that we expect the unconditional positive regard from the other person, but we also assign too much value to the other person, so we make them more valuable than they are as a human being, right, so we overvalue them.
Speaker 3:And then the third is that we neglect ourselves while we're in the relationship, so we undervalue ourselves, so we have this person on a pedestal. If I look at this specific relationship that I'm talking about, you know he was a very powerful person out in Los Angeles, los Angeles, and I thought he knew more and knew better than I did, and so everything he said, as far as I was concerned was the way it was. And when it comes to mental and emotional abuse, it's these slight digs right, and if anyone else around heard it, they wouldn't notice it right or they might just think interesting, but they wouldn't feel it the way that you feel it when you're in the relationship, because you know, you get to know that this is directed toward me, this is pointed, this is there's something that's said. You get it.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, they call it dog whistling and narcissistic abuse. It's like the thing that only you can hear to the outside world. It's just the sound, but for you it's like a pointed, abusive, manipulative thing that is meant to throw you off and yeah, I mean, it's so true, because when I think about this relationship, there are so many things that come up.
Speaker 3:But there's image coming to me right now is that I was having to take my car in on a Saturday morning to have some tires put on and I didn't know where I was going. So he was driving his car ahead of me and he wanted me to follow him. And so he's driving and he starts driving pretty fast and so I'm having to speed up, which is not how I would normally drive, and he was changing lanes and doing some crazy stuff, and so we was. I could see him, but I wasn't comfortable doing what he was doing, you know, speeding up and changing lanes. So we finally get there which, by the way, was only not even a 10 minute drive but we get there. He gets out of the car immediately, comes over and it's just this look and it's this body language and it says I told you to follow me. You were not following me.
Speaker 3:So there's this shrink that happens because my nervous system goes under freeze and it's just I'm in trouble. He's the one who knows what we're doing right now. I don't know anything about tire.
Speaker 2:You know, there's just all this sort of like I should have just done it this way. Why can't I just follow? Yeah?
Speaker 3:Yeah, what's wrong with me? I guess it's just all this shame you go into and it's stuff like that that's. It's just over time. It just adds up and it adds up and it adds up and it's meant. I look back now.
Speaker 3:It was meant to keep me very small and there were lots of things that were done by the end of our two year relationship. I was completely dependent on him. He didn't like my job, so I quit my job. Someone hit me head on in the car. It was totaled. He didn't want me to get another car. He said we have my car, you can just use my car.
Speaker 3:I had no car, I had no job and I was living with him and so by the time the relationship completely blew up. I mean, it was devastating for so many reasons. I also had lost so much weight. I was just literally it was probably the least I've ever weighed and I had to completely rebuild and I did. But I had no idea I got out of that relationship and I was in withdrawal, didn't know I was in withdrawal and so I completely avoided relationships for a year and so I went into what Pia Melody calls a love anorexic stage, which is just completely avoiding any sort of chance of that happening again or anyone getting close to me, and then I ended up doing it again Because I didn't know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So yeah, going back to your question about love addiction not all love addicted or addictive relationships are abusive, but as you can see from this example that I'm sharing you can, it's almost like, due to those five core symptoms, when we become dependent on the person, the abuse, we're more likely to stay in that cycle because we also we stop believing that we know how to do anything different too. Right, I mean, it's hard to see it. So that's the issue with reality. It's really hard to see it. It's like our nervous system is talking to us the whole time. But we've got this story that well. It's just me. He's so wonderful, he's so great. All these other times.
Speaker 2:And nobody else seems to have this problem with him. Right, exactly, yeah, everyone else thinks that they're so nice and I use him. But obviously this also happens with women. It's like, oh, but she's so great, she takes care of everything. It's like, but yeah, well, you know, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just the subtle, how subtle it can be. And I still think when I think about some of the things that were said and done in that relationship, I still have this fleeting feeling of ick, you know, but I couldn't see it at the time.
Speaker 2:I couldn't see it. Yeah, I know that we are almost at the end. I want one last question, and then I would love if you share how people can find you, because this has been so wonderful to talk to you again and it's also been, I think, so informative and reinforcing of so many of these patterns that I've noticed in clients, that I've certainly have, and that there's work that you can do in education. What are the steps to beginning to heal so?
Speaker 3:support.
Speaker 3:I'd say first and foremost. So whether that's a therapist who understands this work now that doesn't mean they have to be trained by Pia Melody but who understands developmental trauma and who understands that we have to look at attachment when we're working on this. Because for me, I was in therapy. I was even in therapy during that relationship in my early 20s which started out as couples therapy and quickly turned into therapy for me, because I was the problem. Yeah, yeah, Right. And so for so many years I had very well-meaning therapists who didn't talk to me about trauma, didn't talk about attachment, because we just didn't know as much about it back then. We know a lot more now.
Speaker 3:So a therapist who gets it and I always recommend, if you're looking for a therapist, have several consultations, have your questions ready, use that free consultation, get the most out of it because you want to make sure that you feel like, ah, ok, I'm comfortable with this person, I'm going to move forward or a coach who understands it, because that is support. Like for you, you had a therapist and a coach, and that is why I do therapy and coaching. Because when I started my recovery seven years ago, I had a therapist who is the one who introduced love addiction to me. She was trained by Pia Melody. She introduced me to Pia's work and she also supported me through those 90 days, which were life-changing for me. And also there is coaching that can work in conjunction with that therapy. Coaching is much more directive. With you I was able to be much more direct.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and honest in calling out the patterns.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so support and then also just educate yourself. Read, read, read, read the books, listen to the podcasts. I don't believe that is enough. We need that support, and so another way to support it is free would be 12-step groups. So you could go to SLAW, which is Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. There's also LAA, which is Love Addicts Anonymous. You've got ACA, which is Adult Children of Alcoholics. You've got CODA, which is Codependence Anonymous. Yeah, there's a lot of free 12-step groups out there. You can do a lot of it online and, again, find a group that you feel comfortable with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for doing this with me today. I really enjoy it and having you, can you? Share your offerings and how people can find you, and I know you still run the same program that I first joined. It was a love addiction group, but I had the name on the tip of my tongue and now it's gone. So if you could share what that is and how people can find it, and how they can also find your coaching website.
Speaker 3:So the program is called Understanding Love Addiction. I call it ULA for short, sort of like University of Love Addiction, because we really can't heal what we don't understand. We need to understand what this is, because that allows us to go in with knowledge and also to have compassion for ourselves and our histories. So it's called Understanding Love Addiction. It starts in January, so registration will open in December. It's a big program and anybody can find more information about that. I have two websites. I have JodiWhitetherapycom, and then my coaching site is JodiWhiteOnlinecom, and then Instagram is a great source too. I have two profiles there One for the podcast, which is at journals of a love addict, and then my other profile is at JodiWhite.
Speaker 2:And I'll include all your links in the show notes so that people can easily find you Great Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me. I'd love to have you back in the future.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'd love to come back. Thanks for having me. Thank you.