Speaker 3: [00:00:00] The love bombing was like napalm. It just completely obliterated me and my. Intuition and my awareness.
Speaker: Welcome to Heartbreak to Wholeness, the podcast helping you heal from the mindfuck of narcissistic relationships and move towards the secure, peaceful woman you want to become. We will explore all of the tools that you need to get through your grief, to move past those I'll be alone forever fears, and rebuild your confidence so you can move forward in healthy relationships as your full self.
Never to get sucked into the narcissistic spell again. I am your host, Bre Wolta, Relationship Clarity Coach and EFT Certified Practitioner. Let's dive in.
Welcome back to this episode. One of the most painful parts of healing from narcissistic relationships is having to reconcile with the deception. So who we thought we were dating turns out to [00:01:00] not be who we were dating or married to, or otherwise partnered with. When the masks start to fall off, we start to see their true character. Which is contrastingly different than the person that they showed themselves to be in the beginning.
And this episode, I am diving deep with Hillary buck, Walter wild. Who went through a narcissistic relationship and this complete mind fuck of trying to make sense of her ex partner's true nature.
You will hear all about her story and the sequence of events that led to her partner's masks falling off and how she responded each time that mask did fall off.
So if you have just left a relationship and are in the mind, spin of, was any of that real? Who is this person? What type of relationship was I actually in? Please listen to this episode,
we talk all about the love bombing phase and how that creates this perfect illusion of the person.
We talk about why we overlook [00:02:00] the truth of what somebody is actually saying to us or the actions that they're actually showing us to who they really are.
And you're going to hear us talk about how both Hillary and I have healed these worthiness wounds. That kept us stuck in these relationships and kept us stuck in. And dynamics with unhealthy people and how you can too. This conversation was so good, but I had to split it into two parts. So you will get part two.
This Friday has a bonus episode. So listen to part one, soak it all in and then stay tuned on Friday.
And be sure to stick around to the end of this episode and to the next episode where we always pull an Oracle card that will offer you a message that you can use this week to stay conscious of in your healing.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Hillary. I'm so happy to have you on the podcast today. Thanks, Bre. I'm so happy to be here. Yes, as we were doing our pre, pre interview interview, I don't know what you call it, our [00:03:00] pre chat, um, you sharing your story, there were so many pieces of that that resonated directly with me and with the women that I work with.
And so I have no doubt that your story is going to touch so many lives today. So thank you, thank you for, for being willing and being vulnerable to, to start your day and sharing stuff that's kind of. Challenging to talk about. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful for this opportunity. Yeah. One of the main pieces that really stood out to me about your story was this coming to terms with the deception.
I don't know if we've spoken about that so blatantly on the podcast yet. So I would like, I would like to start there in your story and just talking a little bit about what was the, the image, what was the, the facade that was given to you in the beginning? And then what did that turn into and how was that process for you to accept that that change was happening?
Speaker 3: Yeah, [00:04:00] absolutely. Um, and the title of your podcast is so absolutely on the nose. It is the mind fuck of ethnic proportions. Yes. When I met him, I had just left my marriage, 12 years of being with my former partner. I love and is a really decent human. And so I, my hair was on fire and, I was starving to death in a variety of ways.
And so I connected with this person and. The irony is that on our first date, he told me exactly who he was. He told me that he had had an affair for two years at the end of his marriage and really done a lot of harm to his wife and children. He told me that he had had a restraining order for assault recently.
He told me that [00:05:00] there were other circumstances where he had caused harm, but it was wrapped in this package of, but I'm a changed man, I've healed so much, I've learned so much, and I'm feeling better than ever. And here's all of the therapeutic and healing things that I'm pursuing for myself. And so I felt like I'd found a unicorn,
And I just fell right into believing all of these things that he shared with me. So I thought I had found the love of my life, my soulmate, Twin Flame. Everything I said, he said, well, I love that too. I couldn't believe that we liked the same foods. We liked to travel to the same places. We liked, fine dining and good wine and all of these healing practices.
It just seemed unbelievable. I felt like the luckiest woman alive. Um, and within a week I [00:06:00] had a key to his house. He left me a note saying, you're going to need this. I feel like the luckiest man on earth. , it all happened very quickly. I met his family a week later. A month later, I went to a family reunion.
I mean, it was, I was hooked in very swiftly into the facade. And within that time frame, Really, truly came to believe that I had struck gold. I was in a healing relationship. I couldn't believe my luck. We had plans to build a cabin on his land. That's where we were going to grow old together. We were going to open a yoga studio in our hometown and offer these healing modalities to everybody.
We were going to lead retreats together in Mexico. , and here we were going to do coaching for men and women. Just this fantastical, amazing life [00:07:00] was unfolding before me, and I fell into it hook, line, and sinker. I mean, I truly believed he was who he said he was. Despite. the fact that he told me who he actually was in the very beginning.
I couldn't see through the, through the facade right away.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Were there, were there any moments looking back where your intuition was like, Oh, that like maybe his words didn't align, or maybe he did something that , didn't quite gel totally with the, with the portrayal that he was giving you.
Were there any, Any of those moments throughout the like euphoria of the love bombing is what that sounds like.
Speaker 3: Yes. The love bombing was like napalm. Um, yeah. And before I go into that, I'll also offer that the text messages that I would get the love bombing and the text messages I would get in upwards of 10, 20, 30 text messages a day.
As the relationship progressed, there was [00:08:00] at least 40 heart emojis. text message. And that's not an exaggeration. And if I did not return the same amount of , , heart emojis, I heard about it.
Speaker 4: Um,
Speaker 3: so it was, it was like napalm. It just completely obliterated me and my. Intuition and my awareness.
But on that first date, the thing that stands out is that there was a four alarm fire going off in my body when I sat down at the table
Speaker 5: and
Speaker 3: I, you know, like so many of us I've been conditioned by pop culture and rom coms and what's modeled to us about relationships, that those feelings, those sensations in the body.
Chemistry. Mean love, right? But now I know looking back that my body was saying no. Something's wrong. Yeah. In a really, really strong way. Like when I sat down at the table, I actually had to stop [00:09:00] and take a breath because I was like short circuiting.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: And so looking back, my body knew Way before the rest of me caught up with what was happening.
And then through that, it was just the little stories and the, the negative ways he would talk about other women, little misogynistic comments or. Homophobic comments or transphobic comments, which I sort of gave him a pass on, unfortunately, because he's from a small town, you know, and so I was like,
Speaker 6: well,
Speaker 3: you know, I know what that place is like and, and so on and so forth.
So there were little pieces, but they didn't, I couldn't square them with the love bomber.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the part you said about , him presenting this image that he, yes, he had done these things, but he was changed. I had a similar experience with my ex where I called him like a reformed bad [00:10:00] boy. And I was like, finally, I'm no longer, you know, going towards the bad boys.
He's like the reform. And I think about that term now, and it's just like total ludicrous because he was not in any way reforming himself. But As somebody who values self growth, as I'm, I'm just going to go out of limb and say that you do it's when someone says that we have so much compassion for the challenge of that journey,
and how hard it is to actually change our patterns and, and do something different. And so when people are saying they're doing that, we want to believe what they're saying. And so I can see how things would come up and it didn't quite gel. You were like, Oh, well he's, you know, it was just benefit of the doubt or justification or whatever.
It's very hard to go there as somebody who's a compassionate, empathetic person. So for listeners too, who like, who are listening, they're like, well, what if they are really changing themselves? How do you know? [00:11:00] Time will tell. Sustainability of their actions meeting their words will tell and it's up to us to be willing to see those red flags or be willing to see where we start hitting the, the walls with what they're saying not matching what they're doing.
100%. Yes.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was not aware that one might allow someone to demonstrate. The sustainability of those qualities. I took it at face value and ran with it and then falling into the love bombing and being deceived and manipulated. And then the physiological consequences of that sent me on a trajectory where I tried to hold some account or hold him accountable for who he said he was, but it was too late.
Almost by that point, because of what was happening in my brain. And yeah, [00:12:00]
Speaker 2: the, the chemical dump that we get from being love bombed is intense. It's it's, you know, the tagline of love bombing is too much, too fast or too much, too soon. And it feels like there's just this tidal wave of desire coming at you, which on one hand feels really good to be wanted and chosen.
And especially if, if we are so thirsty. For that admiration or that love someone's deluging us with it. And we're like, Whoa, like this is, this is everything I've ever wanted. And that, that blinds us to a lot of things. So it feels really great on one hand. And then on the other hand, we're kind of like, well, how do I have a key to his house after a week?
Like, is this what love is supposed to be? Have I just not been experiencing true love? It that's where confusion can start to set in, even in the very, very early parts when it does feel. Wonderful.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah. And some other things started to transpire like around three months in is when the [00:13:00] jealousy started.
And I had a really hard time squaring who he was, pretending to be, with This maniacal person who was stacking my social media, checking to see how many men were liking my posts and then coming back to me and, and sort of casually mentioning it, I thought he's being so silly,
because I believed he was like this strong, seemingly healing healed. man who is in therapy and doing all of these therapeutic things for himself to reform. And then it became about me not being allowed to talk about ex partners. Even my ex husband, who is a good friend of mine, who is the father of my child that I interact with on a, on a weekly basis, I couldn't talk about other people I had dated, other [00:14:00] experiences I had had, it would send him actually into a, a tailspin where at least he said he wasn't able to sleep at night and he was like fighting with himself.
It was this very painful thing for him. And so in therapy, I would bring this up and. It came around that I was the one that needed to make myself smaller for his comfort. And so that's where it really started. the manipulation really started in molding me into a source of supply that he could manipulate to meet his needs.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. These types of relationships, these narcissistic relationships are not based in connection and love in the way that We as non narcissistic people want to build that connection. Their desire to be connected to another person comes from needing power and [00:15:00] needing validation and needing control.
And when we, when we, as, as empathetic people, we assume that everybody has the same motives that we do, right, for relationship. And so it's really hard to, in hindsight, to. accept really that people can be in it for a totally self serving purpose that comes at your expense. Yeah, that's something I could not fathom
Speaker 3: until I got.
out two years later.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like that stuff happens in movies. People get cheated on in movies. People have jealous, crazy controlling partners in movies. One of, one of the ironies of my story is that I used to really like psychological thrillers where it would be like around some sort of, um, unsafe partnership, right?
Where the guy was like doing something psychologically thrilling or psychologically abusive to the other woman and I can't watch those movies now because [00:16:00] I'm like That shit is real. And that came from a real place. I lived it on a level. And, but I, in that, in my last relationship, didn't believe that that would ever be a real person.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So relatable. So
Speaker 2: when, when his masks started to fall off, how, how did you, A, come to terms with what was happening and then B, leave that or get out of that dynamic with him? I
Speaker 3: mean, it came off periodically throughout. That first year, and I've been reflecting on that a lot lately in my own healing process of like, where were the things that I missed?
And the jealousy was, was the first piece and me making myself smaller for his comfort. And then there were things that just didn't ever come to fruition. Um, I didn't realize that this was happening at the time, [00:17:00] but when he would say things like, I love you, I'm going to love you forever, you're the woman of my dreams, love of my life, my future wife, my BFF, I mean, on and on and on.
I would always come forward with, Oh yeah? Okay, let's do this. Let's open a yoga studio.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Let's lead a retreat in Mexico. Let's build a road to this place where we're going to build this cabin, where we're going to grow old together and have a retreat center. Let's get married. Let's move in together.
So without realizing it, I was sort of asking him to up level and prove it. And not one of those things came to fruition.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And so,
Speaker 3: you know, first it was the yoga studio fell apart and, you know, obviously I'm so grateful that none of these things came to fruition now, but at the time it was completely traumatic
Speaker 6: and
Speaker 3: devastating.
And we ended up planning a wedding for like the beginning of the second [00:18:00] year of our relationship. I had a dress. He had my daughter helping him hang the wedding lights in his backyard. We had the song picked out that we were going to dance to. Everybody was invited, food was being made. And a couple of weeks before the wedding, he like unilaterally called it off and told me I couldn't talk about it.
And made me sit down and send an email while he watched me to the guest list.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: He had been diagnosed with a pretty significant illness in that time period. And so that was always the excuse. And so I felt guilt as a, highly empathetic person trying to feel into his experience where I would ask myself, well, how much can I really push back on somebody who's ill?
But I think he was using the illness as a way to further manipulate me and gain favor and force me to do things I didn't want to do because he understood my [00:19:00] level of empathy and my willingness to mold myself to fit his needs. Well, it's like one by one these things Just fell apart. I moved my daughter into his house for six months during this time period and it was that first evening in his home after a long day of moving that I really saw the whole mask slip for the first time.
And we were eating dinner at the table, moving all day, my daughter's exhausted. She was, 10 or 11 at the time. So a kid, a hungry kid going through the stress of moving and all of these things herself. And there was some queso dip on the table and he moved it towards himself. And my daughter looked at him and went like a playful growl, because to her it appeared he was taking it for himself, which he likely was.
What a metaphor, right? [00:20:00] And. He exploded and started screaming, like, we will not fight over food in this house. And my daughter, thank God, had headphones on. She was also like watching a movie on her tablet and she sort of looked at him funny and got up and walked away. And I was paralyzed having all of this, this like cascading awareness that I had made this enormous mistake.
And he took all of the food, even the food I was eating and grabbed it and threw it in the garbage.
Speaker 4: And
Speaker 3: I, in that moment, was like, what the fuck have I done? And I had already given up my apartment. I had given away half of my belongings to merge our lives together. We were getting married. This was before he canceled the wedding, actually.
Um, but then I was in, I was trapped. And now I know that he knew that, now I know that people with narcissistic [00:21:00] personality disorder, diagnosed, undiagnosed, or otherwise, feel very comfortable in their home, their lair, so to speak, and, spend a lot of energy putting on that facade out in the world. And so at home, behind closed doors, where nobody else can see, is where they unmask themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. The, the importance of moving at a slower pace in the beginning of relationships is for exactly what you're talking about, because we, we often won't see the true mass come off until we are in that committed state. And so to that, to be setting your boundaries, to be challenging things that they're saying,
If you try to set a boundary with a narcissistic person, they're going to, Not like that. So doing more of those things before you commit to moving in or getting married or, or what be it is really important to see the character of [00:22:00] that person also.
And one thing that struck me when you were talking about like the, uh, The unilateral decision that he made to cut off the wedding, and the guilt that you felt, and how part of you, I can imagine, was like, well, he is going through this sickness, am I asking for too much, or , you know, I should just be okay with this.
In a healthy relationship, that would have been a conversation, not a unilateral decision. That would have been a very big conversation because that's a, that's a big change and a big plan, right? And both people would have had opinions. There would have been space for both people to talk, to share their opinions and then to talk about what was important to them.
So, Yes, we feel guilt, but if we also know what's supposed to exist in a healthy relationship, we can be like, that's not okay, right? That's where we start to, to heal from these experiences and then bring them into future relationships where we can say, no, you can't talk to me like that. You can't make a [00:23:00] unilateral decision like that.
And that'd be the biggest red flag.
Speaker 3: And when I did push back over time, in the beginning, I was strong still, I could push back against some of these things. And then of course Hellfire and Brimstone would rain down upon me as he began to train me not to do that because he is bigger than me physically and very strong and can be very loud
Speaker 6: and
Speaker 3: scary.
Like measuring, like, how much am I going to push with my own feelings of what's right and what isn't right was like a daily dance and with that first wedding, because there were actually three instances like that, I did push back a little bit and then it became, why can't you just forgive me?
Speaker 4: Yeah. [00:24:00]
Speaker 3: The guilt.
It's always guilt. Always back to just. My empathy and my ability to mold myself for his needs. , it wasn't shortly after that, that we were going to Peru to do some plant medicine ceremony. And he said, I want to marry you in Peru. Get married in Peru, and I thought, Oh my gosh, okay, great, he's back.
Love of my life is back. That was just stress from moving, you know, all the ways we rationalize and justify the monstrous things that are happening. I was elated. We, you know, I was, I was just, On the phone with the Peruvian consulate, my friend, who's a medicine woman, we were doing zoom calls with her about what the ceremony might look like.
I mean, it was happening. Couple of weeks before we're supposed to leave, we're out on a date. I say something about a detail of that's [00:25:00] not happening. We're not getting married in Peru and you can't talk about it.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: Lost my mind beside myself. Pain, trauma, the state of urgency and hypervigilance in my nervous system, you know, through all of this, never abated.
It was always at like this fever pitch. Level of unsettled anxiety. And I was devastated and I, you know, there's something wrong with me. Am I crazy? Is he crazy? Am I losing my mind? And so meanwhile, amidst all of this, like I'm working one on one with clients. I'm working with couples. I'm coaching people on wellness, mental health, all of these.
Thanks, right? Yeah. My life, which I am also simultaneously portraying in social media as being perfect with this love of my life, writing posts about this man and how amazing he is, [00:26:00] is a lie. And I don't even know that it's a lie as I'm like struggling in the soup of my own confusion and cognitive dissonance.
Um, and we ended up going to Peru. We got stuck there. Because the government got overthrown and the airports were closed. So I ended up being trapped in a small hotel room with him as he continuously unmasked, like throughout our three weeks there and. At one point when I stood up to him and said, this is not okay.
The yelling, swearing, misogynist comments, like as a woman, I'm offended. Like there's just, at this point, there was such a vast array of things that had happened. There wasn't just one thing to choose from to try to hold him accountable for. Um, but he looked at me and he said, maybe you're finally seeing the real me.
Oof. Whoa. And I was like, what the [00:27:00] fuck? This doesn't mean to me. When we got home,
I moved out. Moved my child out in the middle of winter, 20 below zero. Thankfully found, an apartment to move to. And again, I'm still like holding my life together. I'm in grad school, I'm working, I'm single parenting, putting out to the world that I'm in this thing because it's so shameful and so embarrassing.
Some of my close friends knew and were calling me out on things and calling me in on things. And some of them I stopped talking to because they're like, this isn't okay. What are you doing? This isn't okay. And after I moved into my own apartment, I stayed, I stayed in the relationship and it didn't take long.
It was about a month. And the mass kept slipping, more yelling, more swearing, more [00:28:00] demeaning behavior, belittling me, me having to make myself small in a variety of ways. Now I couldn't post certain things on social media. Now I couldn't talk about certain things on social media. I ended the relationship.
And was devastating. I thought I was going to die. I literally felt like I was going to die. What was I going to do without this person who I believe is my best friend? And then I went right back four days later
Speaker 6: and took
Speaker 3: him on a trip for healing. Still thinking if I said, said something the right way, if I had the right educational resources, if we were in therapy, If I could teach him about boundaries, if I could teach him about empathy, that somehow I would be able to penetrate, because I had no awareness of narcissistic abuse still at this point.
I thought I was just dealing with a volatile individual who's going through a difficult time that could be taught, that could be shown a path. [00:29:00] And of course, as a person in the healing arts and a person with deep empathy. I thought I could illuminate for them, right? And to my own detriment again and again and again and again.
And so after we got back together, you know, as we know now, that's when things get worse. It's like when you leave them and then get back together, things start to cumulatively really unravel and get worse. And so through the course of last spring and summer, things. We're like high highs and the lowest lows.
And in there, he asked me to pick out an engagement ring.
Speaker 2: Oh, my heart is just like, I beat it in my story, but we didn't, I didn't get back together as many times with marriage on the table. But I know that the fucking hope that we feel when they When they're in that, [00:30:00] the part of the trauma bond cycle or the narcissistic cycle where they're like, I've changed, I'm sorry.
This is what, you know, it's all of the things that we want to hear and so we just pour ourselves completely back into their cup where it's just like, let me fill you up. Let me fix you. Let me go to therapy for the both of us. Let me do this. Let me try that.
Let me try this way of phrasing my boundary and see if that doesn't offend you in the same way. Like it's just, I just feel you so deeply on what you're saying. Thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I'm laughing because now in retrospect is there's, I can find the humor in it now that I am, you know, have healed significantly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But at the time I felt so much hope because I felt like he was finally choosing me. And this correlates to the depth of my own woundedness. around being chosen, around my lovability, around worthiness, which were also the driving factors on our first [00:31:00] date that I was not aware of. Right? So all of this is happening below the surface that I've come to know, um, in a much different capacity now through the healing process.
But then I felt like, Oh my God, he's finally choosing me like, Oh, this we're going to get it right this time. I picked out a ring. I sent it to him. I told all of my friends. And the irony of this is that In this desire to forgive him for the previous two foiled weddings, I had already had a plan to burn my wedding dress from the first wedding with my girlfriends in a campfire.
So on a Monday, I'm burning my dress My wedding dress in a campfire while picking out a ring for the third wedding engagement, whatever, snafu, not able to see [00:32:00] what I'm doing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right. Like burning the wedding dress from the first failed wedding attempt while picking out an engagement ring for the third failed, about to fail.
And it's like that level of crazy is like so emblematic of this form of abuse, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah. And, and what you just said about it, it's like paralleled the depth of your, your wounding around wanting to be chosen. That's such an important piece to this because that's the piece that we can take accountability for when we can recognize that.
Yeah. When we have such a deep well that we're looking for someone else to, to come and feel for us, right? I don't feel worthy or chosen or lovable on my own. I need someone else to validate that. That becomes the driving factor above all else, so I see, and what you're saying, like that part of you [00:33:00] needed him to validate her so badly that she blinded out everything else.
That became the soul, the soul desire, the soul need, the survival, that comes in with the trauma bond, of like, I need this attachment, I need this person to choose me, and that in our healing is what we get to heal, so that we are not in such a desperate need from the next person.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: We can feel our own sense of self, our own sense of worthiness, and other people can appreciate that and celebrate that, but we're not in need of them to complete us in that way. And that's where the term like soulmate twin flame, I get very.
I get very concerned with those terms when people use them because it's like, what you mean by that is your other half, this person that's going to complete you, this person that's never made you feel any other way than you felt before. And that to me is the biggest red flag because in healthy relationships, we want to be [00:34:00] our full self.
And then someone gets to, to move along with us, to compliment us, to lift us up, not be like this missing. puzzle piece to who we are. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: And I've done so much internal family systems work and archetypal psychology work this past almost a year now that I know exactly who those little girls are.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Inside of me. Who were the ones saying, like I would even hear their voices at times, they would say things like, please don't leave me when I, what I actually meant to say adult wise me meant to say was, I'm done.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 3: And I would wonder,
Speaker 5: who the fuck was that?
Speaker 3: Why did I say that? Why did I say, Please don't leave me.
Well, now I know. I know why I was entrenched and stuck for so long. And, and now in my, in this space where I'm sitting with you now have healed so many of those [00:35:00] parts, that I am actually eternally grateful for this experience.
but after the, the burning of the wedding dress and the engagement ring, he immediately went and sought out other women and had actually been doing so for a while.
And I suspect had likely been doing that all along, right? We, we know that that's how, that's how this works. Um, and when I got upset about it. Like now trying to square, but you said in your future, why, if I picked out this engagement ring, we've been through so much, I thought we were on this track. When I got upset about it, then it was returned and like flipped onto me.
And then it really, really, really got bad. And. The, the yelling and the swearing and, uninviting me from things that were planned, uh, making my life miserable with a silent [00:36:00] treatment, like keeping me right at that edge of, of losing my mind and, manipulating me. And at that point I, I really knew something was wrong.
Something that's really, really desperately wrong. Like all of my journal entries for those months. It's just like, get out, get out, get out, get out, get out. Like wise mind.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And things continue to unravel at a clip. I mean, it just sort of cascaded into this horrifying, awful end of summer. Last year, um, I didn't know at the time that he was already grooming a new supply and that's why things were getting so bad, you know, the belittling, demeaning behavior, telling me that my professional life is meaningless.
My education is meaningless, that the work I'm doing in the world doesn't work. And there was part of me that was still looking at it when he was saying these things. And I was like, what? [00:37:00] Who are you? Not realizing he was trying to reverse discard me because he was already moving in a direction towards this new person.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He found different validation, different source. And
Speaker 3: I'd become way too much work.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Accountable for his behavior and all of the things that had happened.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: And so through last fall, he continued the demeaning, belittling, reverse discard behavior. But I wasn't, I wasn't getting it. Like I was still in the trauma bond, still wanting to believe that he was who he said he was, even though I knew I needed to get out, I was completely crippled and paralyzed.
And I have so much empathy for myself. Then and how challenging and difficult it can be [00:38:00] to see through the deception and the manipulation, even when we're basically broken. Like by that point, I had lost 20 pounds. Half of my hair had fallen out. I didn't know who I was anymore. I was living completely in a destroyed nervous system, state of urgency.
Without. Without relief, um, still parts of me believing that he was the relief I was needing for my suffering with the reverse. Was actually true.
Speaker 2: Yes. So much compassion for ourselves, looking back on what we couldn't see and what we didn't know. Right. It's like you had all of these signs from him, from your body, from, from the external environment.
And yet that part of you was still like, He's the, he's the solution. You cannot let go of him out of literally fear of survival. And so that's why this, the healing work, if you're doing parts work, [00:39:00] if you're doing whatever you're doing in your understanding of the motivate the motivators, because we are in these relationships.
I want this to, I want to say this mindfully for women listening, but we are gaining something from the dynamic. So that doesn't excuse abusive behavior. But in your situation, you were gaining, whenever he would give you the morsel of attention, you were gaining that sense of, Oh my God, I'm okay. And that's where we get to start to, to shift where we're getting that, that safety from.
Okay, we're going to take a pause right here from Hillary's story and we're going to finish her story in part two.
That's coming out on Friday. The, what we talk about next was just way too good to leave to the end of an episode. I wanted it to be its own focus. So please tune into part two. We're going to be diving into [00:40:00] how sex was used in her story and in my story to manipulate and control. So to recap this episode, the beginning of Hillary's story. We talked a lot about how hard it is to reconcile with deception, how hard it is to see the masks start to fall off and to not justify why that's happening. So we talked about the love bombing phase and why that sets us up perfectly.
To hold onto this illusion of a perfect partner. We talked about why we overlook what people are actually saying to us and who they actually are showing themselves to be.
And we talk about how important it is to heal that worthiness wound. So that we are not staying stuck in relationships that aren't serving us or aren't treating us well. Or even abusive.
Hillary was so vulnerable in sharing her story and is equally as vulnerable in sharing her story in part two. So please make sure that you head over there on Friday and listen to the rest of the [00:41:00] story. Um, because I did split this into two, the Oracle card that Hillary helped us pull is at the end of the next episode. So I'm going to pull a card on behalf of the listeners today for this episode. And as I'm starting to shuffle the deck, I'm just asking. What is the message that you need to hear today to stay more conscious and awake in your healing?
And we got the guy that's. If you're not watching the video, it looks like a bunch of signs, like road signs that are piled together.
And let me find what the guides message is in my book. And I will read it to you.
You are not alone. You are supported by the guides, angels, friends, supporters, and champions. All you need to do is open the door of your heart. Ask for help. Whisper your prayer. And they will appear. Not because they have to, but because they want to, they are simply waiting for the invitation. Asking for their [00:42:00] support, help or guidance is the key that unlocks the door to manifestation. If you were feeling alone and disheartened know that this card signals it's time to reach out. To be vulnerable to ask for what you need and desire. Your guides are standing at the ready. Allow yourself to fall into their collective embrace and notice synchronicities, start to show up.
What that message sink in. See how it resonates for you. Again, part two is coming on Friday. Please tune in. You are not going to want to miss it. As always this podcast is for you and you are not alone. I will see you in the next episode.