Are you stuck in a trauma bond and struggling to break it? Join Lisa Sonni and I are we dissest Trauma Bonding and paint a vivid picture of what trauma bonding looks like and feels like.
We shine a light on the psychological process that fosters a false sense of attachment in abusive relationships. We also bring to surface the feelings of fear, obligation, and guilt that often chain victims to their abusers. We end delving into the deceptive hope for change that blinds individuals to their existing circumstances.
You can learn more about Lisa and her offerings here:
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
Are you stuck in a trauma bond and struggling to break it? Join Lisa Sonni and I are we dissest Trauma Bonding and paint a vivid picture of what trauma bonding looks like and feels like.
We shine a light on the psychological process that fosters a false sense of attachment in abusive relationships. We also bring to surface the feelings of fear, obligation, and guilt that often chain victims to their abusers. We end delving into the deceptive hope for change that blinds individuals to their existing circumstances.
You can learn more about Lisa and her offerings here:
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 so much for being here Today. I have Lisa Sunny. Lisa joined us last year to talk about trauma bonds and she's back today to discuss trauma bonding and how we can begin to heal and why it is so disorienting. I hit her with some really hard questions about the ins and outs of trauma bonds and we have a very informative episode around what that looks like, what it feels like, what we tell ourselves and how to begin to heal. I absolutely love Lisa's work. I talk about it in the episode, but her journal how to Recover from a Trauma Bond was very helpful in my journey and it is something that I recommend to a lot of people.
Speaker 2:If you are struggling and if you're wondering if you have a trauma bond, what a trauma bond is, I highly recommend listening Not only to this episode but going back to a few others. All that I will link in the show notes so you can find them easily. But understanding what a trauma bond is and beginning to replace I am trauma bonded, not I'm in love with, is going to be a very big thing and a very massive change and a very substantial change. It will start to unravel the grip that it has. I really think that this episode is going to help. If you have questions, if you're confused, if you need support, you could always reach out to me, jessica, at JessicaNightCoachingcom, my website, emotionalabusecoachcom and just remember that if it doesn't make sense, it's kind of what this is supposed to feel like at the time. That's not inviting, that's not comforting, but there's so much peace on the other side and I've traveled through it reluctantly Lisa has and so lean on some of these supports.
Speaker 2:Lisa's content is great. Especially if you're trying to understand what you're going through and you need to put together some of the pieces. I always recommend going on, maybe even doing a session with her. All of her links are also in the show notes. She offers one-on-one coaching. She offers panels where you can go on and listen to a few experts in the field. But if you keep hearing this word, trauma bond in so many places and you have no idea what it means. Start educating, start learning. That's the first, that's really the first place to start. That's why I created the Emotional Abuse Breakthrough Course is because it's the first step. I needed a first step to validate what I was feeling when I was going through it and that's what that is meant to be, and I hope that's what that is for you. If you're wondering what that is, it's my Emotional Abuse Breakthrough Course and you can find that by going on my website, emotionalabusecoachcom. Hi, lisa, thank you again, again, for joining me today.
Speaker 3:Hi, it's so great to be back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would love if you could introduce yourself and tell the listeners about you and what you do?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. My name is Lisa Sunny and I'm otherwise known as Stronger Than Before on all social media platforms and I'm a relationship and recovery coach, but what that means is that I specialize specifically in helping people exit toxic and abusive relationships, with a real specialty in breaking trauma bonds, which can happen if you're in an abusive relationship or a narcissistically abusive relationship.
Speaker 2:Can you define for us what a trauma bond is? Just to get us started.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people don't fully understand what it is and, honestly, it's complicated and that's why it's a psychological phenomenon. So a trauma bond is really an emotional attachment that exists in a relationship where there is a mix of abuse and devaluation with positive reinforcement and kindness. But really what that means is that it's a relationship that's hot and cold and they're the pain and the comfort and there's a lot of up and down and to a degree, you feel like you need to leave but you just can't and you feel guilty for leaving. You might feel like you're abandoning them, but there's usually a sort of a rooted feeling of I know this is harming me, I know I need to leave, but I just can't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, From being trauma bonded. I know that just can't Feeling feels like I'd rather chop off my left arm than leave this relationship. It feels easier to actually subver my arm off than to actually leave. It's so deep and painful and real.
Speaker 3:I so passionately agree with that. I honestly I don't know if there's a better analogy. I would truly have cut off a limb. I agree with you. I remember one moment specifically, where I was crying on the bathroom floor. My kids were home and I was scream, crying into a pillow and I just couldn't even fathom the amount of pain that I was in at the thought of leaving but simultaneously at the thought of staying, Like I knew that I couldn't, but I also couldn't leave. I couldn't stop. I couldn't imagine not being with this person who treated me so badly, and it's a bizarre feeling. It's hard to look at yourself in the mirror sometimes when you're stuck in one of these. But we have to realize that it's not rational, it's not logical, and that's where we start to sort of beat ourselves up about it, Like why am I so stupid when it has nothing to do with intelligence?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like people typically will also say, like you know there must be something wrong with me, like why do I get myself here? And I say all the time like it's, like you didn't like quote unquote get yourself here. This is what this relationship was. And you may not see it now, but, like through that pattern you know of intermittent positive reinforcement followed by abuse, you actually like you get addicted to it. You didn't just like walk into a trauma bond and say I want to try this out, right?
Speaker 3:This sounds fun. Now it sounds horrendous. You know, you don't know that you're falling into one. I mean it. When you are falling into a trauma bond, you are falling in love. What that's what you think so it feels good to get into one is that when you're in one it feels awful, but falling is great.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so I want to just take a second and talk about that middle point of like you know you're falling into it, which is typically feels great, like you're being love bombed, you know everybody's on the same page, like you think that this is the best. And then the middle is when, like, everything starts to get really confusing. It is when the abuse is happening. It's like it's when you're like I don't feel good, I don't want to talk about this relationship to my friends. If I sit down in journal about this, every entry starts out with I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:So when we are stuck in that middle point of being in this relationship and going through the cycle of abuse, you know in many cases on a daily basis, like, how would you suggest that somebody begins to start to see what they're going through clearly, like if they are being, you know, that's usually a time that I'll say, like you know, we're like almost self gaslighting, like we're telling ourselves it's fine when it's not over and over. If someone comes to you and they are like, so stuck in the cycle, they're rationalizing this other person's behavior, they're rationalizing their reactions and, like that, you know, downplaying their abuse, how do you help. What would you say to begin to like, begin to break that apart? A bit.
Speaker 3:Well, it's obviously depends on the person, but typically there's sort of two ways and sometimes you use them in conjunction. But looking at the evidence, because I think one of the biggest challenges we have in this is that we're not living in true reality. We're living in the abusers distorted reality that they've convinced us that they are seeing things clearly and we are not seeing things clearly. So our reality is very distorted. We aren't trusting ourselves and that is a key piece is that we don't trust ourselves. So when I say like, live in reality, you don't even trust that. You know what that is.
Speaker 3:But using evidence such as can a person who hurts you love you? And it might seem like the answer is yes, but you do some kind of further digging into that. How do they demonstrate love? And people can often answer all the nice things that they do, but can a person who loves you also do the awful things? And we start to focus on those character traits that the abuser shows when they're being abusive and kind of compare Can a person be good and bad at the same time?
Speaker 3:Which sort of leads you into how you resolve cognitive dissonance, which really is the key in living in reality, that you start to resolve that mental confusion and you start to see them for really who they are Person who lies, a person who cheats, a person who makes false promises, begs, doesn't take accountability, blames you. Is it really possible that you are completely the problem? Do you really believe that what you're asking for is too much, Because of course, that's what they're trying to convince you of? But so, living in reality, from an emotional perspective and from an evidence perspective, how do they actually treat you? Not how do they tell you? Because they again the abusers always tell you I treat you so great, but they really don't. So it starts with the reality of it and educating yourself on some of these phrases and even as simple as what is cognitive dissonance knowing what that is is also very important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, can you define that for us quickly?
Speaker 3:So it's the mental discomfort that we feel from the confusion of trying to hold two different, conflicting beliefs. So it's funny, a clinical psychologist who I believe has been on your show before, dr Kerry Maccaboy I love Kerry, yeah, isn't she phenomenal? And so Dr Kerry Maccaboy worded it so plainly to me and I love that, because you expect a clinical psychologist to give you a really confusing clinical answer, which she's fully capable of doing. But she was like you know that cognitive dissonance the sort of slang word for that Really is a mind F. Yeah, it's such a confusing place to be to really sit there and say like no, but he or she is so amazing sometimes but also Abusive, and it's like can a person be both of those things? And I know we lean to say yes, but like the answer is no, no, they cannot be.
Speaker 3:Nobody who, just to go to an extreme, nobody who beats their Life is a good person. Nobody who intentionally Gaslights because, again, right, gas lights, not lying. It's an intentional choice to try to distort someone's reality, doing that on purpose. You're not a good person, it's not possible. So again, looking at some of these things to bring you into the reality. But we experience cognitive dissonance towards the abuser and I hear that talked about a lot. But we also experience it about ourselves, right, I'm not the kind of person that would be in an abusive relationship. So to resolve that confusion, you say, well, I must not be in one or you must be only treating me this way because of me. You start to rationalize the behaviors and it's really sad to see people go through it. But I mean, I can late because I've been through it and I know you have to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like when I was going into it, like it just felt like that was what was real. You know, at the time it was like no, this is real, it must be me. I keep finding myself here. I clearly keep going back to it.
Speaker 2:Everyone else, like all my friends, are saying that they would run, but I'm not running, like I had every excuse in the book as to you know, internal excuses to like why it was okay when it wasn't.
Speaker 2:And it was actually your journal that I bought because I started to learn what a trauma bond was. And I went on Amazon and I typed in trauma bonds and typed in like all these words of what I needed at the time and I couldn't find anything. And then I stumbled across your journal and I was like I'm gonna get this and I'm gonna commit to helping myself get right with the reality of what I'm going through, because that feels like what I need right now. Like I don't understand what a trauma bond is, but I'm gonna assume that I have one and I'm gonna start to figure it out. And this was like two and a half years ago, but it really felt like at that time, at least, nobody was really talking about it in this way and also there wasn't a word for it other than like me feeling crazy and that I was a dick yeah.
Speaker 3:I totally get that actually. Actually I was talking with mental illness and self-aware narcissists, but those that don't know. About a week ago, and he actually said that he had never heard of a trauma bond until he heard me talking about it on my page. I was absolutely Lord that he didn't know what it was, but at the same time he's on the flip side of it, so he would be the other party in it, not the person who's a victim of it. But knowing more about it is good for anyone to understand I mean not so much on, maybe, abusers knowing what it is and how they can weaponize that against you, knowing that you feel so stuck. But the awareness is so important and I think for me having a name for it was pivotal in part of my healing, because if you just feel crazy, what do you put into Google if you don't? Know what a.
Speaker 3:Assistant. Yeah, and you know what a top on is. You just feel like why is my husband angry all the time? Or why does my girlfriend Scream at me? Why do I feel so stuck in a bad relationship? And these things don't prompt Maybe there. Or you know what, though?
Speaker 3:Two and a half, three years ago it was not coming up about trauma bonds and narcissism. It's a much more hot topic now and I know we get a lot of flack for Narcissism being a buzzword. I don't personally subscribe to the idea that it's a buzzword. I think that it's important that it's being talked about more, and I do think that maybe it's being used in places where it were not actually talking about a true narcissist. But in my view, we're talking about people who are narcissistic or on the sort of spectrum of Possibly having the disorder. They don't go get diagnosed, so we're never gonna know. But the point is we need to focus on the behavior and you can be in a trauma bond whether they're a narcissist or not. So, ultimately, knowing that there's a name and that it's a trauma bond is a good thing, even though being in one is bad, because then you know what you're dealing with and you know how to get Uncrazy, if that's a thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I typically tell people like, instead of saying I love them so much or I'm so in love, or like I just I really love them, I start to. I say just replace love with trauma bonds.
Speaker 3:Every single time you say it to yourself yes, you know the clients who say like, okay, I know, but I love him. Stop saying that if you can shift the mindset and it's. You know, it's not like a Instant solution, but this idea of but I love them, it's not love. It is not love. A trauma bond feels like love. It mimics love to a degree, but it's not. It's an addiction and it's something that is bad and it's something that needs to be broken. You don't love them and you're in a trauma bond, and a trauma bond isn't love. They're completely separate things. If you're trauma bonded, it's not love. But you tell a victim that they don't love someone that they feel that they love. It's an understandably upsetting thing to hear. I really, yeah, I understand that, but truth hurts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember, like when I first started to like, break that apart for myself. I I then would reflect back on, like well, why am I so stuck on claiming that I love this person? Like what? Like? Why am I like, like, no, I love them. When they're treating me like crap, I can try this, right, nothing else is working. I'm saying I don't want to do this anymore, but then I'm also saying, but I love them. You know, I'm so stuck in the cognitive dissonance, so it was something that I did to start to break away from staying so stuck. And that's actually one of the questions I wanted to ask you, based on what you see when you work with people is like, where do you feel? Like you See, people get the most stuck when they are like almost on that brink to begin their healing journey, but they are right before it, like they're stuck, they might be going back and forth, or really, second cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 3:I think some of the primary feelings that keep people stuck is fear, obligation and guilt. It's misplaced loyalty to and ultimately I call it guilt, but it's actually it's false guilt, because nine and a half out of ten times you've truly done nothing wrong, and even in the cases where perhaps there was, you know, like the victim had an affair or did something that they shouldn't have done, yeah, I think that it's still a response to what they're experiencing. I'm not justifying something like cheating, but nine and a half out of ten times it is this feeling of like. But I love them and I feel guilty for leaving. I feel guilty for breaking up the family. I feel stupid for being here in the first place. I should have known better. Maybe we're both, you know, mutually abusive together.
Speaker 3:Fear, obligation and guilt are these things that just keep us stuck and even in fear. I mean that's a really layered, huge topic on its own. But fear of your physical safety, certainly, but the emotional fears are fear of being alone, fear that you're the problem, not them, and you're gonna leave and they're gonna go on and be happy and you'll be miserable because you were the problem the whole time. All of these mixed feelings keep us, but it's what keeps us so stuck in the relationship, because Every ounce of guilt that you feel and everything that you believe that they're saying, as you believe it, as you muster through the confusion of it all, an abuser or a narcissist will prey on that and use all of that as a Weapon. They see that you feel guilty, they can see that, and then they say to themselves, likely, subconsciously, but ah, this is working, and so they continue, or they ramp it up.
Speaker 3:And abusers tend to switch back and forth between Hoovering and telling you they don't need you. But even that, that hot and cold, one minute they want you, the next minute they don't. You don't know where you stand and you just want it all to stop. At the end of the day, all we want is for everything to just go back to normal, the way it was in the beginning. Why can't they just be that version of themselves again? And then everything would be better? So we get really stuck in past when we get stuck in thinking about the future, but we're not really living in reality, living in the now, living in. What can I do to recognize what my life is like right now? He used to be great Things will be better when, but what about right now? How do they treat you every day? That is the hard place to stay, because the abuser is crying so hard to keep you there. They'll use any tactic they can.
Speaker 2:And I think, like just to add on to that, we keep hoping that they're going to change, like they're just going to snap out of it or like they'll just stop being abusive without the abuse or really showing any level of self-awareness that they would ever change, or that they do think that they have an abusive behavior or that they aren't treating us right, and that without any evidence that that person can think that we still hold on to this hope that they're going to change.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've never held on to anything tighter in my life. That hope for change and I think we underestimate how much we want it to be true is a root problem for us, because we want so badly for that to be true, we want so desperately to think listen, people can change, right, and I think that also ties into like, is the person a narcissist or not? Because if they're not a narcissist, then they can change. But I think and I'm going to quote something I was in a training with Dr Romany last month and she talked about this idea of change and I love how especially for again for a clinical psychologist to just be so concise and clear and direct about this Change is hard for anyone, hard for you, for me, for victims, for abusers, for narcissists, for everyone.
Speaker 3:Well, narcissists are less likely to change. There's no real study of how less likely, right, but people struggle to change and at best you're going to see a bit of change, but not a lot with any person. But more importantly, they have to want it and they have to want it so badly because two things. Number one, it takes years, like decade-long type of not saying for a narcissist to be cured, don't get me wrong, because that's not possible. But for any person to really show true change it could take 10 years in therapy. Now think about how much time that takes really. Like we're talking weekly, bi-weekly, once a month, but whatever, it's a huge commitment from time.
Speaker 3:But think about the money. Can you even afford that? Can he afford that? Can the abuser? Is the abuser going to say I'm going to go to therapy forever and I'm going to pay for this forever? It's so incredibly rare. So you're up against this massive thing that you're at best going to see what 15% change or let's call it a 15% reduction in abuse and I made up that 15% but in the end, after 10 years, they'll be 15% better than they are now. What are we doing? Why are we not focusing all of this energy on? Can they change into? How do I break this trauma bond? How do I stop wanting someone who treats me so terribly? That's what we need to focus on. We need to take all the energy that we put into them and changing them into ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm wondering if you can touch on what are some of the steps to beginning to heal a trauma bond. I believe on your website there's a PDF of like seven steps to healing a trauma bond. Please correct me if I got that wrong, though.
Speaker 3:Well, there are seven stages to how one builds and in terms of getting out of one, I suppose anybody would make up a number of steps, minus truth, right, yeah, yeah, but there are. So I mean, we'll start and I won't go into, you know, an immense amount of detail, but from a top level standpoint, there are seven stages to a trauma bond, and it's love, bombing, trust and dependency, devaluation, gaslighting, control, loss of self and addiction. And it isn't like you're in step one and now you're in step two and then you're in step three. It is a bit of a ball of yarn, let's say so. You flow through these a little bit back and forth and you of course go from gaslighting back to the love, bombing and whatnot. But ultimately you meet, they shower you with love and kindness and validation, and there's this intense emotional bond. And then you start to rely on them and you trust them for validation and support and whatnot, and you start to feel like they're the only source of that comfort. So, once you trust them and you rely on them for validation, this is really the beginnings of why we start to believe.
Speaker 3:Now, when you move into the devaluation stage, you think well, this person loves me. They're probably saying this out of concern for me or because they love me. And when they gaslight you, you trust them. So when they tell you that your perception is wrong, you think, well, okay, maybe my perception is wrong because you trust them. So the beginning stages are really pivotal. At this point, when they start to exert that dominance over you and they start dictating your actions or your feelings and some are much more covert about it, some are a little bit more overt, but this is still happening in all the cases, because you can look at control versus coercive control, which is much more subtle you lose yourself and now your identity is tied to them. Your sense of self is being lost. You are so attached to that person that at this point you are emotionally and psychologically addicted to the cycle, not to the person, and I know that we think it's to the person. I need this person, you think you need this person, but you're addicted to the spikes in all of your chemical and hormone levels right, the dopamine and you're going on this not awful roller coaster. So that's how you, those are the steps of getting into one. You don't notice that you're falling into one, certainly. So it's not like you can go oh, this is a trauma bond and stop. But to answer your question, in terms of getting out and really being able to break them, I have 12 steps, but fundamentally it's three. Yeah, but just to make it easier I mean I have little mini steps within it, but my steps I have a course called the Trauma Bond Recovery Course and it's 12 modules and it takes you through all of the steps and all of this stuff that you need to know how to break this trauma.
Speaker 3:So the first section is education and clarity. So this involves some of the basics, what we're talking about, knowing what it is. But, more importantly, what is the trauma bond? What is the science behind it? Why is it so hard to break?
Speaker 3:So you're learning what cognitive dissonance is and learning how to resolve it. Not just learn what things are, but how to resolve it, how to live in reality. You're starting to let go of the future that they've promised you. You're starting to let go of the past and you're really trying to find the roots in present reality of how they treat you. So first step is education and clarity. Second step is now shift that focus onto yourself, because you need to have already had that background of they're not going to change, doesn't matter if they're a narcissist. This is who they are. Now you have, to a degree, settled on who they are. Doesn't mean you're out of your trauma bond and now you learn about yourself. So you want to figure out how you feel about yourself, about them.
Speaker 3:What got you here? Start looking at your childhood trauma. You want to start looking at some of your patterns that we often see. I know for me, just as one short example, I always felt as a child that it was difficult to be seen and heard by my parents, and I would argue I had great parents. Not all parents of victims or survivors of abuse were abusive or bad or neglecting their children, but often they did the best they could and it still resulted in people like me feeling not seen and not heard. So it was normal to me when I was in a relationship with someone where I was not seen and wasn't heard and I found myself having to work really hard to get his approval. Subconsciously, that's just a pattern from my childhood. That might not be everyone's pattern. It might be many people's. I've heard a lot of people relate to that. But, regardless, find your patterns.
Speaker 3:So you're digging into your childhood. You are learning emotional regulation skills. You're learning distress tolerance skills, and these things are all actionable steps that I've put into the trauma bond recovery course. But rather than just reading about it, you're learning practical ways to implement this, because those are really key things. A lot of what will help you get through all of the pain of this is emotional regulation and learning how to cope with anxiety and so on, as well as learning about yourself, whatever acceptable and unacceptable behaviors for you in a relationship, and learning what has allowed you to be somewhere. Be in a relationship with someone who is doing all of the unacceptable behaviors, and you're staying not from a place of judgment but from a place of understanding. You don't owe this to other people, but looking at yourself is important.
Speaker 3:And then in my third step, I call it build your future, because now you need to figure out your unmet needs, how to meet them yourself. You wanna look at your future life. What does that look like? And really that's three pieces to that Are your personal life, your romantic life and your professional life. You may need to plan some things out If you were a stay at home parent and you need to get a job if you're financially independent of the abuser. Maybe that's not so relevant, but where are you gonna live and do you share children and all the logistics and stuff? So planning out your future and then looking at your support system Is it a good support system? Do you have one at all? Do you think your mom is great but also she really invalidates you? Can you talk for her about that? So it's a matter of building a support system. Whether you think you have one or not, let's hail her it for you. What do you need for support and who in your life can deliver that? Where are the gaps and so on. And then that last piece of build your future is learning self love and confidence, which is the 12th step, but it's certainly one of the bigger ones, because you can't just learn that in one module.
Speaker 3:I realize I did write a follow up book, not a follow up course, on self love and building your self esteem and self worth, but you need to start the basis of that. And that also starts back in your childhood, looking into what led you to not believe that you were worthy, and it's again typically sort of subtle, inadvertent messaging, as children of just you know, if you had a parent that wasn't listening to you, or an alcoholic parent, or. Lindsey Gibson wrote a great book about the adult children of emotionally immature parents. And while that book is not about narcissistic parents because again, not everyone had that, but a lot of us, a lot of us had emotionally immature parents and you can learn a lot from that book about why you are the way you are, and again this is all about bringing the attention off of why the abuser does what they do onto why you do what you do. No judgment, but look at it, look in the mirror.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really love how a lot of these steps do bring it back to a very compassionate, like invitation that we do need to look at ourselves and we do need to ask ourselves like what? Not that we're at fault, but just like the knowledge, so that we don't find ourselves back here again and that when, like, the healing is actually true healing that's not I'm just gonna get over this and get into a next relationship. It's how do I actually truly heal and use this to better understand myself and rebuild.
Speaker 3:I totally agree.
Speaker 2:I just appreciate, like, how many times you said in that, like the no judgment part. I think that's probably a place where people get the most stuck in that, I see, and most self-blame me and I did this too is I got so stuck in the self judgment of being ashamed of where I was, rather than really just inviting myself to get through it and being like, okay, I'm here, what am I gonna do?
Speaker 3:That's hard though. Yeah, it is hard because we get so stuck in the idea that you're stupid, right, like how could I not at home, especially as you start to learn and you expand your own knowledge and you do your little deep dives into narcissistic abuse and you feel like you've got a PhD in domestic violence, right, and you really are like how could I not have seen this? But you have to remind yourself that you didn't know then what you know now. You couldn't have known. They're not teaching this, and even if there was a class to you could take, it would certainly be elective, but you wouldn't necessarily recognize it. Because they are so good Narcissistic people, even abusers, can be so good at convincing you and there's so much. That's part of this. I wish it was just like here's how it happens and here's how to get out of it.
Speaker 3:But the truth is that you can't just unpack your childhood trauma in two or three coaching calls. It's a very deep conversation and if you want to get really, really deep, I always would recommend speaking with a licensed therapist. But coaches good coaches, right have the ability to get into your childhood trauma and understand internal family systems and are trauma informed and able to help you get through this, but really looking into it and just realizing that you are where you are, no judgment it happened and we're gonna get out of it and that's it. You just treat yourself with the same kindness. Because if I had a best friend that went through what I went through, I wouldn't say you stayed, what's wrong with you? I would show her compassion. But we fail to give ourselves that same compassion often.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that reminded me of something else that you said. That really stuck out to me and I was so glad when I heard it. It was about when you said, like about your support system and like, is it a good support system? Because a lot of times we don't have a good support system when we're healing and that does bring in more shame and blame to us and having people that are essentially blaming us for being so stuck in the trauma bond or having trouble figuring it out, breaking through, finding a way to leave, I found it to be so unhelpful and more detrimental, like I would keep trying to get my like what I believe my support system to be supportive, but that was just. I also wasn't right with the reality there of that these people weren't supportive. Maybe it's not because, like they weren't doing the best of what they were able to do, but it wasn't what I needed in order to heal from this very complex and confusing thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree with you. I think I used to say, like I have friends, I have family, but when I more see this with others, I think I was relatively lucky with a support system. But I don't know. I mean I think use my sister as an example.
Speaker 3:It's like I wanted her to be this emotional support for me, but with who she is, it's just not. I mean, she doesn't invalidate you, she's not a terrible support person, but she doesn't understand a trauma bond at all. I could explain it to her a hundred times. She doesn't judge me, she just doesn't understand. So she was not the right person for me to get that emotional support from. But she helped me, she listened to me, she helped me financially. So I had to step back and recognize what do I need? Who do I have and are they fitting that? And honestly, I didn't have anyone not one person in my life that understood me therapist, who I couldn't afford to see for a year, who understood what a trauma bond was, not one, and I had a friend who was a therapist. I had no one who understood. So where I found my support system? I can't even believe I'm saying this, but truly is on TikTok.
Speaker 3:I found it in a creator, lovely lady, love, and I found it in mental healness. And then sinful and Carrie, dr McAvoy. I found it in how to love a battered woman. In roller coaster of love you need to find people, and eventually these were just faces on the internet, I realized, but eventually they became actual friends. I've connected with these people in real life, in actual, literal real life, in person, and that's amazing.
Speaker 3:Because you need that, you need that kind of support to help you, but everybody needs different support. So do you need money? Do you need a friend to make you laugh? Do you need somebody who just can sit with you and hear you say the same thing over and over and over for a year? We all have one friend at least. I hope that would do that, and if not, where else can you find that? There's also private Facebook groups and other ways to get support. I mean support groups as well. Those often cost small amounts of money per meeting, but Facebook groups and things like that can be free if you don't have anybody in your real life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would lean on like I wasn't even down that path yet. I was more on the imminent abusive relationship and I need to find a way to get out of this. And it was Paul Colliani's podcast, love and abuse, that I would just listen to over and over again, like I deep dive the episodes, I would listen to them twice, I would go for walks with it. It just was like this constant reminder of like I might not know this person, but I have his voice in my ear, basically right sizing a lot of my thoughts. And he had a private Facebook group at the time as well, so when I got really stuck I'd write something in there and there's only. You know, it's like hit or miss if people respond, but I think it felt good to like even just let it out. It's almost like I had to like create what my support system was in a way, even if it didn't, even if it didn't look like what a typical what you would think of as a support system.
Speaker 3:Yeah, agree. Yeah, yeah, you got to just make it happen. And it's hard because a lot of this is people will ask me how did I do it? And it's not that I don't know. I mean, I follow these 12 steps. But if you find the steps hard, some people are further along in their abilities, like it, having the emotional regulation skills or the distress tolerance, or there's the life experience, whatever you want to call it. It's just, everyone is different, so everyone's healing journey is unique. You can follow the same steps, but how easy or difficult the steps are is so personal it's it's really hard, but having a plan is key.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think you know, to piggyback way of what you said earlier, it's like really starting with the education and like starting to understand it and educating yourself at what cognitive dissonance is and Begetting to really just get right with the reality of what you're going through, without judgment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, without judgment. That's the key, because you always have the other like Aunt Kathy, I just made that up like some person in your life to be a sister, a mom and aunt, a friend, someone who's like I get it, but I don't. You know the someone who just kind of they're okay to hear you for a certain amount of time and then they're sort of they slip into the just get over it phase. Yeah, even if they don't say it which some are ballsy and they do. You feel it. You feel that there's certain people in your life that are like and we're done, get over it. And they don't realize that you're not divorcing or breaking up with someone or separating.
Speaker 3:You are Like you're just changing everything, like your whole life is upside down, everything you thought you knew is wrong. It's like finding out the sky is pink and the grass is yellow and in everything that you thought is wrong. That's what it feels like. So you're just in a complete state of everything is Changing. You thought he loved you. He doesn't. You thought you loved him. No, that's a trauma bond. You thought the future was gonna happen. Nope, that's not happening. The whole thing was fake. You just feel not yourself. So it's hard because people don't get it unless you've been through it. It's really hard to get. People have to try really hard to get it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like that, you know, sort of like being able to get right with the reality, understanding that our support system is not Not necessarily supportive. Was that one of the reasons that led you to create the journal, the trauma bond recovery journal?
Speaker 3:Yes, so I started getting questions. So I was on Tiktok just talking about what it was like to not be in this relationship anymore and Because I think people watched me and saw me go from you know clearly crazy to I don't want to say healed, but Doing yeah, yeah and healing, and they were like oh, how are you doing it?
Speaker 3:And, to be fair, I was like I don't have no idea, I couldn't tell you, but I've got the question so much every single day and my followers, like I, went from like zero to ten thousand in like 30 days, so it was a huge jump. And all the stuff and all these eyes were on me asking me how and I'm like I need an answer. So I actually just sat down with a notebook one day and I was kind of journaling, but I was just writing how did I do this? So I started thinking about it and I wrote eight steps down and it was partially, you know, eight of the 12 that I have now that I was like, oh, it's not that I also did this, and that I was like what order did I do them in? How did I really do? First it? Just I just sat down one afternoon and just wrote out, well, things that I did. And then I Was like how do I sort of put this together in a way that I could answer people? I want to just put in the comment sections these are the 12 things I did. And it just kind of I was like how do I make I? Maybe I can make this a Download thing. And then I was like, oh, you can self publish and it just, I don't know, it just popped into a journal. That's really how it was born. I really put so much thought into the questions Like what did I think about? That really helped me. What made this work for me? So my method of 12 steps I feel very confident in calling it a proven method because a I proved it because I did it Mm-hmm, and at this point we're looking at almost two and a half years after that book has published and I've sold thousands of copies and I get such great reviews and people telling me like this really helped me.
Speaker 3:Put it together, it gives you something to do. You know, I always say to people like you wake up tomorrow and you do what. But some people want action. They don't want to hear like journal, what does that mean? Journal, what, what am I writing? What am I supposed to think? What am I? All you write is I wish it was different and I'm in so much pain. So I Created a guided journal so that you could wake up and have an actual question to answer and something to think about, that is specific and that leads you into the next thing you need to think about, and so on. And this is also how Course was born, because I wrote the journal and a good friend of mine said you should have made it a course. Thanks, congratulations on your book. That's what you meant.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, do more. Great friend of an internist, yeah, do more. So she inspired me, though, because she said write a course. And my first thought was hit, write a course. And the second it came out of my mouth I said wait, yes, I can't, I have no idea how, but yes, I can.
Speaker 3:And I think that even kind of what I was talking about earlier about some people just have a different life experience. Some people may not have that. That, jenna, say what I've like, just like you know, knowing what I don't know, I just I have that I can do this. I just have that. Maybe it was the way I was raised. But if you don't have the thinking like I can do this, I can break this trauma bond, I can write this course, I can become a coach. I had that, and so it led me to write the journal into the course.
Speaker 3:And then what do you do after you break your trauma bond? I wrote the next one, rebuilding after a trauma bond, a self-love journal which is focusing more on the self-love aspect and what you do after the trauma bond. Recovery journal in the course ends with learning self-love, but, as I said, you can't learn it in a module in a course it's a huge thing and it's lifelong, in fairness, but there's beginning point of it and there's a self-love workbook by Dr Ali that you can get on Amazon. It's really great. I love that one. How to Meet Yourself by Dr Nicole Lapeurla and, of course, my book Rebuilding After a Trauma Bond a self-love journal, they all. You just need to start thinking and working through it and realizing that self-love is as simple as choosing to put yourself first.
Speaker 3:If your kids want McDonald's and you want Wendy's, one Saturday afternoon, go to Wendy's. Like that self-love. Just choosing I wanna watch a certain show, I'm gonna do that. I wanna binge. I'm gonna put the kids to bed half an hour early and I'm gonna binge watch a show. That's self-love. Your friend wants to go for Mexican and you prefer sushi. Just saying I prefer sushi, even if you end up having Mexican food, just saying it out loud, is just an act of self-love. It's so much easier and more attainable than we think and if we're struggling we look at why we dig further into that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And if somebody is listening to this and then they go on and buy the journal, I just will say, like, what I realized when I was doing it is sometimes, if I woke up and I felt so like I don't know, resistant to just go to the next page or the next step, I would just flip to a random page and I would just focus on that question. Often I would end up going back to the one that was next in the order and then re-answer the other one, but I just let it be whatever I needed it to be, because I figured like I don't have to do everything perfectly, I just need to start doing something that is gonna excavate a lot of this shit. That's all in this, but that will help me get closer to my own personal reality. Yeah, I get that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, lisa, thank you so much for doing this with me today. It is always so insightful when I talk to you and, of course, I've been following you for a very long time on social media, so I just feel like you have a really amazing way of taking something that's real complex and making it digestible for people and also really giving us ways and tools to think about it and work on it so it doesn't feel so overwhelming. Thank you so much. Can you tell us how we can find you, if you have any offerings and what your social media handles are?
Speaker 3:Yes, absolutely so. You can find me on every social media platform as stronger than before. My suppose my biggest one is TikTok, but I'm on YouTube, instagram, facebook, you name it. My website is stronger than beforeca and I have.
Speaker 3:The Trauma Bond Recovery course is my sort of signature course. It's only $99. You get the whole 12 modules and you can binge it or do it slowly over 12 weeks, it's up to you. There's no time restraints and one thing that I very purposely did with the course is I kept it affordable and there's no weekly Zoom meetings at 7 pm on Tuesday night. There's no homework. There's activities and worksheets and things, but it's all self-paced. It's designed for people who maybe can't find the time to sit down and do these hugely detailed programs or show up to group meetings regularly, and affordable for people who need access to it that maybe can't afford ongoing coaching or ongoing therapy. But a lot of people do it in conjunction with therapy or coaching, whether it's working with me or working with other coaches, because it's important to work with someone that you have a good energy with. But the Trauma Bond Recovery course is helping people left, right and center just learn radical self-love, break their trauma bonds and helping people all over the world. So that's my primary offering. You can also work with me one-on-one as a coach and I also have a new mini course, which is rewrite your story.
Speaker 3:Release guilt and self-blame. I love that we talked about it earlier. Right, this guilt that we feel. I find that guilt is honestly one of the worst things. We blame ourselves or we think that we made mistakes based on the way that we responded to being abused. We might start falling down that path of thinking that we're in a mutually abusive relationship or that you caused them to abuse you because of your own behavior, or guilty for breaking up the family, guilty for staying, whatever. But it helps people push through that specific feeling and everyone that's taken the course thus far, I've sought feedback and it's gotten really great feedback. So rewrite your story is a mini course five modules and it's only $22, which could also be a great place. I think, if you're just sort of starting, the Trauma Bond Recovery course would be the perfect place to start.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, thank you so much and I absolutely will put the links to your program and your website and your social media and the show notes so people can easily just click and find you Amazing. Thank you so much. I'm sure you'll be back.
Speaker 3:Oh, I hope so. Thanks so much for having me again. Just research on troublemakers.