Healing Your Relationships: The Stories That Keep You Small

So many of us live trapped inside stories we inherited long ago — stories about who we’re supposed to be, what makes us worthy, and how love must be earned. In this episode, I explore how these old narratives block us from our authentic, divine unfolding — and how remembering who we truly are is the path back to freedom.

We’ll look at the invisible agreements we made in childhood, how codependency keeps us stuck in outdated roles, and the difference between your story and your soul. I’ll also offer gentle ways to begin rewriting your story and reconnecting with your true self. Because your story doesn’t have to be your prison — it can become the doorway home.

If you’re ready to explore what lies beyond your old story, I’d love for you to join me.

Transcript

Over these past episodes,

We've begun looking at what codependency really is,

Why it runs so deep,

And how it costs us our connection to ourselves.

And at around this point,

You might be asking yourself,

Who am I really?

Who is my authentic self?

And this is where you begin to shift.

Once you have awareness around your codependent patterns,

You're also going to begin to have awareness over who you are.

When you begin to make room for yourself,

When you're not living in autopilot,

Or making decisions out of fear,

You begin to make way for your true nature,

Your true essence,

Your true desires.

And so while it might feel like you're on a mission to discover,

You're really uncovering so that you can remember.

Remember parts of you that have always been there,

Parts that have been shut down,

Pushed down,

Parts that feel lost.

And then you're also making room for this discovery of who it is you actually want to be in the world,

How you want to move through the world,

What kind of connections you want to have,

Where you want to put your energy.

When we choose to come home to ourselves,

It is a very sacred initiation.

And at the same time,

I really want to honor that it's also scary.

And there's this space of feeling lost and confused and uncomfortable.

And it can almost feel inauthentic when you begin taking contrary action in your life,

Because it's so foreign.

So I would love to invite you to look at this as a journey of exploration that is going to be ever-unfolding,

That you are going to be divinely unfolding.

In every single moment that you choose to live with awareness,

In every single moment that you choose to trust in your courage and your strength,

In every single moment that you allow yourself to do this imperfectly,

You will be unfolding.

And that is part of the process.

And I think that while we want things to be linear,

We live in a spiral path of life.

And so we have to allow ourselves to take another swoop through the loop,

To try again,

To do it differently next time.

This is where you invite a lot of grace and patience and curiosity to yourself.

A lot of women come to me inside of one-on-one work,

Not knowing who they are,

Living in a lot of fear and disaster mind and confused about how they got to where they were,

Experiencing this deep pain inside of the lives they have,

Inside of the choices that they make,

And at the same time not being able to make a different choice.

And it can feel crazy making and so painful.

But one of the things I always say is that if it is painful,

That's good.

The part of you that knows that you're not living authentically is alive,

And it knows that you deserve and ache for more and better and different.

And what this work really is about,

And why I say healing our relationships is about healing your relationship to yourself,

Is it's returning to your most highest self,

Before you had knowledge,

Before you had language,

Before you could speak to yourself,

Before so much of what you believe is learned from experience,

From other people,

From trauma.

And the most empowering thing in my life was realizing that I didn't have to be a victim to my story,

And that my story and all of my attachments to it was blocking me to my authenticity.

And it was when Don Miguel Ruiz gave me permission to be the artist of my own life,

To not bypass everything that happened to me,

To acknowledge it,

To honor it,

And then to move forward,

To choose who I wanted to be,

And to have the courage when the person that I was choosing to be was rejected,

Or judged,

Or criticized,

Was to have the courage to keep going.

The initiation,

The starting point,

Is the moment that you realize that you're living in a story,

A lot of stories,

And that while your codependent behavior,

Your trauma response behavior,

Is contributing to how you see yourself in the world.

And while we're going to dive deeper into those patterns and how they do this,

And I'm going to be giving you very specific action items and tools to help you take contrary action,

So you can practice living in your authenticity.

But if we even go a level deeper,

You also have a story about who you are and your life that has kept you stuck.

And I realized this at around eight years sober when I was on a retreat with the Ruiz family,

When I was standing in this room and Don Miguel was talking about the power of our story.

And I was thinking about the stories I'd been carrying about myself for so long,

Especially growing up in 12-step recovery program,

Where it was a part of the journey to continuously share your experience,

Strength,

And hope.

So I actually had almost like an elevator pitch or narrative about my life,

What it was like,

What happened,

And what it was like now.

And I'd been telling that story for so long that I don't even remember the last time I checked in to see if it was true.

Because if you think about the way we create story about our lives is whoever we are in the moment,

Whatever awareness we have,

Wherever we are emotionally,

Spiritually,

And mentally,

That is how we're going to see our story.

And when you go back and you look at your story from a different perspective later,

You realize there's a good chance you've been telling yourself a narrative that isn't true.

And a lot of my story was excuses for who I was because I felt like I was always having to defend myself.

So I was deeply attached to the trauma that happened in my life.

And I didn't want to let that trauma go because how were you going to know why I was the way I was if I didn't share with you all these things that happened to me.

So I was standing there at this retreat and Don Miguel was taking us into,

Or it was Don Jose was taking us into a meditation.

And we were just thinking about our attachments and our story.

And I was standing there as this woman with all of these years sober.

And yet somehow I still felt 23.

Like the broken young girl who never grew past her addiction,

The girl who was still carrying that energy of crawling onto the front steps of a rehab and asking for help.

And while I was growing,

I was still deeply attached to who I was because it gave me so much safety and comfort and care to understand myself.

But I wasn't dying and being reborn.

I wasn't shedding the skin.

It's almost like a snake who keeps shedding their skin,

But they hang on to the old skin.

So while I was having all of these moments in my sobriety and in my recovery,

And I was shedding all these skins,

I would take the skin and like drag it behind me,

Just carry it with me.

Like I was still carrying the weight of who I was.

And when I look back on it now,

What a scary thing to let go of your story.

Don't we want to honor it?

It's important.

It shapes us.

But the invitation was to live a present life.

And in living a present life,

We don't have to be addicted and attached to our story.

And I personally was addicted and attached to my story.

And what I began to come into a place of awareness around was that my story was limiting me.

My story was limiting me because I was still living from a place of fear and anxiety because of things that happened to me when I was a child.

Beliefs and agreements that were created either because my teacher or parent or somebody told me that I wasn't smart enough,

That I would never be able to actually get anywhere or do anything,

And I should just go into some trade or pick whatever nine to five I could get.

Because I just don't have the attention span or I don't have what it takes or I can't finish anything that I start.

And I lived from that belief.

I wasn't going to push myself in my life if I believed that about myself.

Or if you feel like you're too much,

You don't look a certain way,

You don't act a certain way,

You're not the normal,

You're not the regular,

You're not palatable.

How are you going to go out and live your life from a place of curiosity and energy and exploration?

How are you going to let your divine self unfold if you're still thinking about what people told you when you were 10 and 18 or 20 or even what your ex-partner said about you six months back that shifted the way that you see yourself,

That shifted your possibility.

And this is why Don Miguel says one of the greatest fears we have is to love ourselves and to really be alive.

Because we're so addicted to what other people think.

When we're younger we trust we need somebody to tell us about the world and we honestly need people to tell us about ourselves because we don't know.

But if we give them the power,

If we give other people the power over who we are,

Then we don't ever have the opportunity to check in with ourselves and say who am I really?

What do I believe about myself to be absolutely true?

What do I love about myself even though it annoys other people?

The invitation here,

Part of your quest to your authenticity is that you do have to go back and check in and see if you can remember times of your life where you felt very authentic and happy and embodied and comfortable with yourself even if it is like a brief moment or memory.

And then what happened to squash that?

I mean I have so many vivid memories in my life where I was in my wild,

Loud,

Happy,

Expressive self and like immediately after there was someone there who was annoyed or frustrated or telling me to calm down or telling me that I was too much.

And honestly maybe I was being a little bit too much for that person but that was like a moment in time.

It didn't mean I had to stifle myself for the rest of my life and what I know now what Don Miguel has taught me is that we're all mirrors for each other and that throughout my life I am always going to come across people that don't like my authentic self because it activates something in them.

They don't like how big I am or how I don't care about what other people think and when someone else in my life really cares about what other people think,

Guess what happens?

They try to stifle me and life's a little different now.

I'm not running around being loud and crazy but if there's someone in my life who's so anxious about what other people think so I can't be my authentic self,

In codependency I shapeshift for that person and I get small.

In recovery I stay my authentic self and I allow them to hold their own discomfort.

I allow them to hold their codependency with the world around them and their fear about being seen a certain way and I know that that person judges me as much as they judge themselves but I trust in who I am.

I trust in who I am today and that's that's the recovery.

That's the difference.

My guess is is that as I speak to this you are thinking about and recognizing parts of you that you love that other people haven't loved so much and then it's made you question who you are.

As I speak to this you might be able to go back and think of a time or a moment where you felt fully expressive and safe and in your authenticity.

As I've been speaking to this you might also be thinking about certain people in your life that activate the desire to shapeshift and change so you can be more comfortable and palatable for that person.

What stories do you have about yourself?

What story about yourself have you been carrying for so long that it is woven into the fabric of your life that the choices that you make have come from that story?

I want to break down and give you some examples of this.

So these are very common stories.

I'm too much.

That was one of my big ones with adults saying stop being so loud or dramatic or quiet down.

As an adult it manifests as dialing down deeper parts passion,

Creativity,

Staying small,

Avoiding expressing feelings.

It blocks the authenticity when my authenticity is vibrant and expressive.

Staying small disconnects me from joy and soul expression.

The story of I'm not enough.

The story of I'm not enough can come from very high expectations in childhood or in relationships.

Maybe people in your life only gave you praise upon certain conditions so you felt invisible unless you were performing so you could get that praise and as an adult that manifests as perfectionism and constant striving and deep self-doubt.

The authentic self is imperfect.

The authentic self is human.

The achiever is not the true authentic self.

The story of my needs don't matter.

An origin of that belief could be if you had a caregiver or you grew up in an environment where nobody was available for you or they were emotionally overwhelmed or neglectful and so you learn to suppress your own needs to avoid conflict or burdening others or just the feeling of being rejected.

If I ask for this and this person's going to say no I'm going to get rejected and I want to protect myself from that so I'm just not even going to ask and as an adult that manifests in that chronic people pleasing guilt for resting or receiving or asking for help.

It's abandoning your own desires.

It blocks your authenticity because your authentic self has desires.

It has preferences and it has limits.

It has boundaries.

You lose connection to your inner wants and your true voice when you live in a story that your needs don't matter.

I have to keep the peace.

It's my job to keep the peace.

This story can come from growing up in a chaotic environment or maybe there was a lot of conflict between your caretakers or the people that you were living with and so you become this like mediator especially if you're good at it like I was really good at it and actually enjoyed bringing people together so it almost felt good to do that but the adult manifestation of that might be over functioning to keep relationships smooth or walking on eggshells or maybe you avoid difficult conversations because you want to keep the peace.

The story of I'm responsible for how other people feel and this can originate when we're younger if the dynamic in the home was that you really did feel responsible for your parents emotions because they were boundaryless or they leaned on you too much or they overshared and you might have been praised for like being so mature so familial dynamics where we don't know who the parent and the child is and as an adult that manifests in taking on the emotional weights of other people and being hyper vigilant for other people's moods and it can be difficult for you to discern where they end and you begin and it blocks your authenticity because the authentic self can hold space but it also has sovereignty so constantly scanning others and tending to their emotional needs blocks your true presence and your true authentic emotional needs.

I must be perfect to be loved and this origin story most likely happened again when you were a child when praise only came from achievements or good behavior when criticism felt like a loss of love from that person and as an adult this manifests as masking your flaws and hiding vulnerability and difficulty receiving love as well because you're constantly just keeping track and tabs of all that you feel like you're not doing correctly or perfectly.

Well the authentic self is imperfect the authentic self is real and raw and perfectionism keeps you locked behind a mask of inauthenticity.

I'm unworthy of love now this story often originates when there's abuse and neglect chronic emotional or physical absence from a parent or a loved one and so you might have learned as a child that love is just not available to you and so as an adult it manifests as settling for breadcrumbs in relationships or sabotaging intimacy constantly questioning your worth not allowing yourself to be loved by someone that the thought of even letting someone love you for who you are is so scary so you wall off and you block that love and you sabotage it.

The authentic self the authentic self knows it's worthy of love living from unworthiness dims your light dims your human right to receive love so the origin story I have to be strong and I don't need anybody most likely comes from childhood trauma that forced you to be hyper independent and it wasn't safe to be vulnerable and as an adult this manifests as having a difficulty receiving support and maybe even having a fear of depending on somebody and so you take this kind of false pride it might feel real but I'm just going to do it all by myself I don't need anybody when really your authentic self that inner child that was not cared for wants help wants to receive love and the hyper independence is keeping you isolated it's safer not to feel now this origin story can come when there are very overwhelming or chaotic emotions in the household and emotional neglect that every time you had a feeling or an experience and you want to share it with someone they either got upset at you or they weren't available for you to listen this happens in our adult relationships too if we find ourselves with partners where every time we're having an emotional response and we want to go to them with it they take it on and take it personally and almost double down on us because they're now they're upset with us about our feelings and so we just numb out or we disassociate or we become flat or this is where we can start manifesting a lot of resentment inside of ourselves but it blocks the authenticity because the authentic self feels all of it joy grief love pain annoyance frustration anger rage jealousy if the story is it's safer not to feel and so you live your life numbing and severing your connection to your feelings and you're severing connection to your soul into your life force that was born to feel all of it my voice doesn't matter this story can come from being silenced and i know we're talking about a lot of the origin stories being as children but remember in one of the last episodes i said we can begin to develop these behaviors in adult life depending on the relationships that we're in you your voice might matter at work and you might feel so embodied and authentic with your voice at work but when you come home and your partner silences you or interrupts you all the time or doesn't take the space to listen to you can begin to manifest this idea that staying silent in your relationship is safer because i don't want to be interrupted again so i'm just not going to say anything forget it this person can't hear what i'm saying anyway my words have no impact they don't care what i have to say how it blocks your authenticity because the authentic self desires self-expression it also desires to self-express and be received and receiving doesn't necessarily mean agreed with but just holding space for acknowledging and honoring when we use silence to erase ourselves where that's where we're erasing ourselves from the relationship and from the world so each of these stories if you can see that each of these stories is an agreement you made along the way to survive and each of these stories are a form of self-abandonment and in the last episode we talked about the cost of self-abandonment and as i was standing at that retreat and jose was taking us into a meditation i was thinking about my story this huge story about how i got sober at 23 years old and how i'm an alcoholic and i'm in recovery and all of the beliefs and agreements i had learned since then about what that meant what alcoholism and addiction meant and all the programming that was happening this idea that i was selfish self-centered that my alcoholism was character traits that it was my job and my duty to share this story like an albatross hanging around my neck and making sure everybody knew what it was like what happened and what i was like now but i wasn't 23 anymore i wasn't 18 i wasn't 14 i wasn't 12 i was an adult woman who had her whole life ahead of her who could choose to honor and acknowledge her experience to use it as medicine absolutely to share it so people didn't feel alone absolutely that's why i'm so vulnerable i'm not afraid of you seeing my shadow in those parts of me they're necessary parts i'm not pretending that they don't exist but they do not define me anymore and i don't use them as excuses for who i am that day when i stood there in that meditation i suddenly saw like thousands of these golden strands of light these energy cords on my back and they were just streaming from my back going all the way into my past attaching to every single moment every single relationship all of my beliefs all of my agreements my entire story and in that moment i just felt ready to let go to allow what is meant to stay with me stay as medicine and just to let it go so i could begin new and i just imagine this like beautiful spirit or spirit guide or i don't know what it was it just like i imagined this cord cutting this just like energetic cord cutting this release and all of those cords turned into these beautiful like cosmic blue butterflies just thousands of them and they just all flew away and there was this deep inner knowing i had that they were i wasn't attached i wasn't carrying them i wasn't pulling them i let them go but they were still living and they were alive and if i needed them if i needed to access them as medicine that i could that i had a choice to go back to reflect and to see but i was free to shed my skin i was free to shed those cords and those beliefs and agreements and start over i was much more than i'm marisa i'm an alcoholic who got sober at 23 years old and this is all the things that happened to me and this is everything i did that's a part of the story but oh my gosh since then there have been so many death and rebirths in my life and that's what life is is that a true embodied powerful fulfilling life is allowing for death and rebirth to occur it's transformation we can transform we do transform when we're not holding on to the past living an authentic life is living inside of transformation look around at nature look at the trees that shed their leaves every winter and grow new ones look at the caterpillar that turns into the butterfly look at the death and rebirth everywhere human beings are obsessed with hanging on they don't want to die we want to survive but in order to really thrive and not just survive we have to allow for death in our lives we have to let go it's okay it's safe to let go it's just we're not really taught how to do that we either suppress or repress or we attach and live in it but we're not really taught how to honor it and not live from it and that's really what i'm hoping to offer you in this space is that we're always going to honor your story we're always going to honor your feelings we're always going to honor everything that happened from you and i'm going to encourage you to do what you need to do to heal from those things and move forward and reclaim your life take back your life from the people that hurt you that is living an authentic life so yes the in-between is scary the self-discovery is scary and i really think that's because on a soul level we know that in order to return to the authentic self we have to face our fear and in every moment you face it instead of running away from it is moment you're making room for the authentic self to unfold so as you do this work as you choose to be curious to be in awareness to get curious about your patterns of codependency just know that in every single moment you're making room for yourself and i really want to encourage you this is one of the first things i do with my clients when they do a 12-week journey with me and they're really struggling with their story and limiting beliefs is that i have them witness their thoughts and their stories from a place of compassion to step into awareness to it's hard when we're on autopilot but to really think about the stories that they're telling themselves all day long and the stories that they're telling other people about themselves or about their experience just to gather data and just to get curious and you can go as far and deep if you want to do this as you can actually go and write your story it might be a little bit harder now that you're in awareness of some of these things but try to just write your story from the perspective of the way that you've been telling it to yourself your whole life and you write down your story and you look at it and you ask yourself from a place of love and radical self-honesty has my addiction to my story has my obsession with my story has the wounding from my story dictated my entire life and what parts of my story do i need to honor that i haven't because i've been suppressing and repressing them what parts of my story do i need to get some therapy for what parts of my story do i need to talk to somebody about what parts of my story have i talked about to death and i just refuse to let go because i'm scared because i don't know who i am without it what parts of my story are medicine but i'm not carrying them as medicine i'm actually not seeing the medicine i'm just seeing the story what parts of my story are very very true but i'm so afraid to let go of the idea that i don't have to be perfect or that maybe i am worthy or i am lovable because i'm so afraid of the vulnerability of living my life that way that what if nobody receives me as lovable or perfect well let me tell you what you you will receive yourself as lovable and perfect you will see yourself as sacred you will enjoy your wild parts you will enjoy the sacred silence that you choose to have you will come into a place of deep love and reverence for who you are i really believe that as a woman who hated herself for so long who struggled for so long with the voices in her head and the stories and the beliefs and agreements that i know that if i can do it that you can do it too so be gentle and be patient ask for help when it gets hard and keep going keep coming back here keep seeking keep making room for yourself i love you i'm proud of you and i'll see you on the other side

Reviews

Whooo, big work. Letting go of the story…. Need this! Thank you ✨🙏🏼✨