transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Welcome to the Let's Get Vulnerable Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Morgan Anderson, psychologist, relationship coach, attachment theory expert, creator of the ESL Relationship Method, author of Love Magnet and Athletic Wear Connoisseur. My mission is to help you raise your self-worth, have great relationships, and step confidently into the next level of your life. Each week, two episodes will air featuring expert advice, live coaching, and tips, showing you exactly how to improve your life and attract a healthy relationship. You deserve to feel empowered, secure, and loved. Buckle up and Let's Get Vulnerable. Welcome to the Let's Get Vulnerable Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Morgan. We have a very important topic today. We are discussing how to not sabotage a healthy relationship when being in a healthy relationship is new for you. When you are in the healing journey, you are working on becoming securely attached, but you know that you're not quite there yet, and you find yourself in a relationship where you know, this had a lot of potential, this could be it, this is a great partner, and you go through that moment of how in the hell do I not sabotage this relationship? How do I not push this person away? So that's what I really wanted to talk about today, because I talk with a lot of you that find yourselves in this situation. And this is such a vulnerable piece to acknowledge, because to even get to this point, okay, you are acknowledging, hey, it's not all about finding that healthy person. To get to this realization, you've taken ownership, you've realized, oh, it could be me that's sabotaging it. I could have the most wonderful, emotionally available, secure person. And if I haven't worked on myself, if I haven't learned how to receive love and have a calm, regulated, nervous system, you're realizing I could sabotage it no matter how healthy the other person is. So I wanted to talk to you because, hey, if it's ever been you, I need to know this, it's also definitely been me. I have been there myself. We will get all into why do we do this? Why do we sabotage a relationship even when we logically know, hey, this is a good person? So why do we do it? I will talk to you about some of the signs. These are the things to look out for, because we want to catch this as early as we possibly can. So we'll talk about some of the signs, and I'm going to also give you some practical tips. We'll talk about what do you actually do when you find yourself in this place. Okay. So we're going to start out with this. I really want you to hear this. Your nervous system was calibrated to your earliest relationships. Your nervous system was taught by your earlier relationship experiences that love could be unpredictable or painful or conditional. Your brain had to adapt to that kind of love, right? You learn how to brace for impact. You learn how to be hypervigilant and try to predict and control and not be abandoned. So many of you, your nervous systems learned how to be on high alert at all times. And it's not like you want it to be that way. That is what you had to do in order to feel safe in a relationship. So then what happens? A healthy relationship shows up. One where you're not anxiously waiting for the text message. You're not having to chase this person. You're not having to perform. You're just your authentic self, okay? Your nervous system goes, wait, this is unfamiliar. Why am I not having to be hypervigilant? Why am I not in overdrive? An unfamiliar can feel dangerous even if it's good. Even if that unfamiliar is the first stable, emotionally available, curious, highly attuned person that you've ever had in your life. If it's unfamiliar, your brain can still label it as dangerous, right? So if you've been listening to the show, you know I talk about this a lot. I'm just going to review it because this is always worth revisiting. The concept of repetition compulsion, right? We are repeating what we do not repair. So if that past relationship template for you was built around chaos, inconsistency, having to earn love, then now when you find yourself with a calm, consistent, predictable, potentially secure relationship, your brain goes, what is going on here? You might be labeling it as boring. You might say things like, I like this person, but we just don't have a spark. Or you may even be looking for reasons why it won't work out. And what's happening is that at the subconscious level, you do not fully believe that you're worthy of this kind of love. And it's even on another layer, you don't believe that this is love. You don't believe that this exists. Your brain hasn't come up with a model where love is stable, consistent, predictable, emotionally safe. So your brain goes, I don't even know what this is, but this isn't love. It doesn't fit your template. Okay, I think it's really important to look at this and really understand this because when you are mistaking, ooh, there's not a spark, and you're going, oh my gosh, there's just not a spark, you can be pushing away potentially good partners over and over again. And once again, being drawn to the people that fit that template, right? Repetition, compulsion of it all, being drawn to those people that help you create chaos, that show up in your life as a way to maintain an insecure attachment style, to maintain your anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment style. You can be attracting those people that confirm your worthiness wounds, that confirm the idea that you're not worth being invested into, that you're not worth having someone who's emotionally available and present with you. Until we start to shift and actually embody a secure attachment style, we're never going to find secure relationships attractive. This is so fascinating to me. I have lived this experience. I have seen so many clients go through this experience. And one of the things that I always love is when a client comes to me and they say, I have never been attracted to a person like this before. I've never been attracted to the quote unquote, you know, kind person that does what they say they're going to do, who is emotionally available and attuned and wants to be close to me and is curious about me. And that was certainly my past. I was talking with my husband today about how I'm so glad that we reconnected when we did. Had it even been a year prior, two years prior, I would have absolutely sabotaged our relationship, whether that was by pulling away, finding reasons that I didn't like him or thought that we weren't compatible. I hate to acknowledge this piece, but it could have even been, you know, finding someone I liked better and kind of just abruptly ending the relationship. I had all kinds of unhealthy attachment strategies that were connected to the past, relational trauma, that was my repetition compulsion, and the type of secure attachment, presence, emotional attunement that he brought to the relationship, I would not have found that attractive, and it certainly would not have fit my relationship blueprint, my template for what a relationship was and what attraction was. So I was literally having this conversation this morning as I was getting ready with my husband, and I just said, I am so grateful that I had worked on myself and worked on becoming securely attached before we reconnected. Because it's true, I know for a fact, I would have sabotaged the relationship. Okay, let's get into this. I want to move on. We've talked about kind of where this comes from. Let's talk about some of the signs that you are about to sabotage a potentially good relationship. I want to give you some signs. Let's see if any of these signs land for you. If you're not actively in this situation, this will help you in the future as well. I really want to go through these with you and just check in and see if any of these resonate. The first sign is if you are noticing that you're pulling away, right when things are starting to feel close. For example, I've had millions of these conversations it feels like with clients, but let's say your partner cooks you your favorite dinner and they bring you some roses, and they're just being so sweet with you and showing up in such a loving way. And then you notice in your body that you have tension, that you want to pull away, that it's just, oh, it's not landing with you. You're maybe even in that tender moment that's supposed to be close, you can almost feel yourself tense up, or you can kind of pull away. Logically, you may be going, why am I like this? Why am I rejecting this? But it's that nervous system response, trying to sabotage the closeness. Okay, so that's an example where there's a tender moment and you can feel your nervous system response, try to pull you away out of the moment. Another sign, if you are noticing that you're picking fights out of nowhere about things that don't really matter, if you're honest with yourself, that doesn't actually matter and you're still picking fights about it, that's another sign that you could have some subconscious sabotaging going on. And this is one of those ones where you kind of have to be very honest with yourself of, wow, is that a legitimate thing? Because we never want to gaslight ourselves and try to invalidate what we're feeling, right? But you have to really check in and say, is that really an issue? Or is there something in me that is causing an argument because I am not close, I am not comfortable with the level of closeness, okay? So that's another one, picking fights. The third sign I would talk to you about is foreboding joy, as Brene Brown says, aka you're not allowing yourself to feel excited or to feel happy about the relationship. When you catch yourself feeling happy, or you're feeling some joy or passion or deep connection, you then notice yourself wanting to put the brakes on. Your thought is, I don't want to get my hopes up, right? You start thinking about, well, when is the other shoe going to drop? When is this relationship going to fall apart? That's another sign of, wow, you're probably sabotaging this connection, right? And this one breaks my heart because it's those old strategies running the show. It's that unhealed past relational trauma that is preventing you from having the relationship experiences that you deserve to have. It's preventing you from being able to feel excitement and joy and connection and love that feels easy and I always remind people, you know, when we have secure attachment, when we have a regulated nervous system, when we have emotional capacity, we're not carrying our past relationships around with us, like a 100-pound sack of bricks on our backs, right? When we are showing up how we're meant to show up in our dating lives, dating is fun. It's enjoyable. It brings you joy, right? I think sometimes we forget that. So if you are preventing yourself from feeling excitement, from feeling hope, from feeling joy, then that's a sign that you could be sabotaging something that's good. Okay, another sign. If you find that you're constantly thinking about, when is this person going to leave me? You're constantly thinking about how is the relationship going to end? I know myself when I had a disorganized attachment style, I was always playing in the background in my mind of how things were going to end. Are they going to go have another relationship? Are they going to get a career and have to move somewhere else? Are they going to discover this thing about me and then realize that they don't actually love me? There was that part of my brain that was always playing with, okay, well, how is this relationship going to end? So if your brain is doing that, you are in that mode of wanting to predict how the relationship is going to end so that you don't feel hurt when it happens, which is a false belief that so many people with relationship anxiety have, right? Is that if I can just predict it, if I could just control it, that it won't hurt as much, right? But being focused on how a relationship is going to end is just sabotaging. It's just taking you out of the present moment. Once again, disconnecting you from the joy of the relationship, right? One other final sign of sabotage, I do see this one a lot and this was one that I had certainly done in the past, is if you find yourself comparing them to exes or to other people, if you're constantly comparing someone that you're dating, that is a sign that your brain is trying to get you to distance yourself, right? Once again, sabotaging because closeness does not feel safe. So this could look like, wow, they don't like to cook, and my ex loved to cook. Or it could look like, oh, my person I'm dating is only 5'10, and my ex was 6'1. If you're constantly finding little, little things that you're comparing about, you're comparing them to past partners or people you know, that can be a sign that you're also in that sabotage mode. What do you think of these sides? Do any of these sound familiar? Because if they do sound familiar, I want you to know that this is not about you being unlovable or being bad at relationships. This is simply about you using old strategies to try to keep yourself safe. When in reality, we know that this is just keeping you stuck. It's just keeping you engaged in a relationship, but not actually close, not actually secure. What can you do in this third part of this episode? I'm going to walk you through what are some practical tips so that you can actually show up in a healthy relationship and not sabotage it. Okay, let's talk about these tips. I know you're going to love these. Let's get into the practical tips. What are some things you can do if you notice yourself sabotaging a healthy connection? I have some really practical things that I know will make a huge difference. So let's start out with this one. This is reality testing, okay? Like looking at the actual data versus the story that you have going on in your brain. So slowing down, right? Whenever we're healing and we're inviting new healthy patterns into our relationships, we want to remember the mantra, I will respond instead of react. So slowing down, asking the questions. Is this actually a red flag from this person? Or is this a past wound of mine doing the talking? We want to be inviting curiosity instead of just allowing our nervous system to react. Remember, you're gathering the data. As I always say, you want to be stepping into that love scientist mode, and really running your thoughts through that filter of, is this the data, or is this just a story that I'm telling myself based in old relational patterns, based in trying to protect myself? There's so much more I could say about this, and I actually have whole episodes on how to be a love scientist, so you might want to go listen to those. But this is a really important piece when it comes to stopping the sabotage cycle. The next thing, and I love this one, do not process your anxiety or your avoidance or whatever is coming up. Do not use your partner as your processing partner. Your partner is not there to be your coach or your therapist, right? You want to start practicing soothing yourself first. Get good at regulating your emotions, getting your nervous system back to a calm state, and then communicate. This is a game changer. I help so many people learn how to do this, and it is absolutely life changing for your relationships. When you start to realize, there's things that I need to process on my own first, and then take it through that filter of, will this be helpful to our relationship? Will this help us have a more secure relationship if I share it? Then take those things to your partner. That's a really important one. Use the notes app on your phone, whatever you want to use. Some people want to voice note this stuff, get it out, process it, and then take the things that are meant for your partner, that will help the relationship. Take those things instead of all of your processing. Okay, the next thing I want to talk to you about is you have to, when you're working on not sabotaging, you have to start getting comfortable with good feelings. You want to start getting comfortable with excitement, with joy, with ease, with safety. You have to start catching yourself in the moment that when I start to feel some connection and joy and love, how can I remind myself it's safe to feel this? It is safe for me to receive love. It is safe for me to let my partner in. It's safe for me to be close. You got to start to allow yourself to be in those good, good feelings. I have found that bodywork is very helpful for that. So a yoga practice, acupuncture, even doing some sauna or hot and cold therapy of some kind, because there's so much that gets stored in the body. So when we can kind of do a pattern interrupt with our nervous system and just remind ourselves, hey, my body can show up differently. It is safe for me to feel loved. We can make some big changes there. The other thing I would do in this, so to prevent sabotaging, you have to start getting honest about what you are bringing to the relationship. So I talk with this with my clients all the time about, we want to be able to show up with a blank slate to where we're only collecting data on that relationship, and we're not using our past relational trauma to make decisions about our present relationship. So getting good at wiping the slate clean, and this is where I want to just remind you, this is what I help people do, right? You can do this deeper work that genuinely helps you wipe the slate clean, to where you've let go of your past relational trauma, you are embodying secure attachment, you have a calm, regulated nervous system, and you're able to attract and maintain healthy love. That, doing that deeper work and taking full ownership of how you are showing up, that's one of the biggest game changers, and that's where I want to invite you, if this is resonating with you and you're going, I don't want to sabotage another healthy relationship. I want to be able to meet a healthy, emotionally available, secure person, and know that I am going to show up well, and I am going to be able to maintain that connection. If that's you, then I think you would be a great fit for our empowered, secure, love, one-on-one coaching intensive. And right now, we're offering this as the secure relationship reset, because you're also gonna get access to the identity reset course that I've just created that is next level for really embodying that secure identity and making the full identity shifts to becoming that person that attracts and maintains a secure relationship. So if this resonates with you, go to the link in the show notes, apply, it takes two minutes. I know that we do have just a few spots left this month, so don't wait on this. And this is honestly the perfect time to do this work. Let's get you doing this work before we're full on in summer, so that you can have your hot girl secure summer. Right? Let's get you, I don't know what the male equivalent of that is, because yes, we also work with men. If you're a guy tuning in, we'd love to help you as well. The hot guy secure summer. We want you to be able to enjoy your dating life. As I said at the beginning of this episode, it's about becoming that version of you where love feels good. It feels enjoyable. It's adding value to your life. I remember when I was full on in my relational trauma, disorganized attachment, love just felt so hard and it drained so much of my energy, and it just took up so much of my time. It just felt like, oh, I can't figure this out. It's never going to work out for me. All my friends are getting married, and here I am going through another breakup. This is exhausting. I want you to realize that it's not supposed to be that way, that it doesn't have to be that way. When you are embodying secure attachment, it gets to be easy, it gets to be fun, and you're so deserving of that. So, I hope this episode is kind of giving you just some practical places to start and some awareness around, you know, where you might be sabotaging a good connection. But if you're like, yeah, I need to go deeper, go apply, go apply. It takes two minutes and the link is in the show notes. If there's one thing I want to leave you with today, it's this. Sabotage is not proof that you're broken. It's not proof that you don't deserve love. It's simply proof that your nervous system learned to protect you, to prioritize protection above all else. And it's up to you to update this blueprint, to change the relationship strategies that you're using, okay? You are not too much. You are not too damaged. You're not behind. You're just someone who is worthy of doing the work to change their relationship strategies. So if this episode has landed with you today, please share it with someone who needs it. Share the episode with the link. And if you haven't done this yet, it means the world to me when you go and leave the podcast to review. So if you've been listening or you want to help me help more people, please leave the podcast to review wherever you're listening to the show. That just helps me reach more people. Okay. I am so happy you're here. Grateful to have you in our Let's Get Vulnerable community. We have so many amazing things coming your way. And as always, I'm wishing you high self-worth and great relationships. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for tuning in. I really appreciate each and every one of you. The best way you can thank me is by sharing this episode on Instagram or Facebook. Make sure you tag me. It would mean the world to me if you took just a moment to leave me a written review on Apple Podcasts. This podcast is not free to produce. And the more that you help this show grow, the more people will be able to help. Until next time, I'm wishing you high self-worth and great relationships. Thank you for being part of this community.