Sorry My Birth Ruined Your Golf Game (Season 2)

Kids often blame themselves when dad leaves the home and becomes less involved in their lives. When they aren't given an explanation about why dad left, they make up their own scenario and jump to the conclusion that it's their fault and that they're unlovable. After my mom and biological dad divorced I rarely saw him for the next 10-12 years. The only thing worse than being abandoned is knowing that you're not even worth an explanation. I rejected happiness because I never felt worthy of it.

Transcript

Welcome to The Stuck Stops Here Season 2 Episode 3 And it's called Sorry My Birth Ruined Your Golf Game When loneliness is a constant state of being,

It harkens back to a childhood wherein neglect and abandonment were the landscape of life.

Quote by Alexandra Kotakis.

So what we're going to talk about today is daddyless daughters.

I really hate that term,

Daddy.

But daddyless daughters.

Fatherless.

Fatherless is way better too.

But it means the same thing.

So after my mom and biological dad divorced when I was three,

I didn't see him much.

For the next 10 to 12 years.

And based on everything that I've read,

The only thing worse than being abandoned is knowing that you're not even worth an explanation.

So nobody ever explained to you why he left and why you didn't see him?

No.

Did you ask?

You know,

I was three.

You know,

It's hard to remember.

I just remember feeling afraid a lot.

Wow.

And as I remember back to being three.

Oh,

Yes.

Yes.

I remember being afraid a lot.

They're definitely blurry.

But what stands in my mind is fear.

Wow.

That's what I remember.

And,

You know,

As I got a little bit older,

You know,

I looked around my neighborhood and everybody had dads and families of six.

It definitely made me feel like an oddball.

Which only added to the chaos as I got older.

How soon after he left did the stepdad come to the picture?

Great question.

I was eight or nine years old.

And initially when he showed up,

It was good because he's a control freak.

That appeared good to me at first because there was order.

You know,

There was less chaos.

My mother was,

You know,

A 13-year-old with two young children.

So from three to eight,

It was just you,

Your mother and your brother.

That's right.

That's right.

And I was definitely.

.

.

And you remembered being chaotic?

I remember being chaotic and me feeling like I needed to be the hero and the steady one.

And,

You know,

My mother was,

You know,

Hearing impaired as well as alone.

So I was more worried about her than I was for myself,

Which manifested itself in some pretty tragic ways too.

Wow.

It's such a young age too.

Yes.

That's,

Again,

That's parentified child,

Which we've talked about and we'll talk about again.

So I was worried about my mother,

Who was a narcissist with a disappearing dad.

And then it didn't take too long for,

You know,

My stepdad to,

You know,

Probably within two or three years of them getting married to him,

You know,

Start to enable.

You know,

Their first few years were screaming because that's what's going to happen when you don't enable a narcissist.

I don't think he started off enabling,

But I think he gave up.

What compelled him to marry her though?

Well,

His first wife's a psychotic bitch.

And my mother's a better person than his first wife.

Wow.

Yeah.

So it was a step up for him.

Yeah.

Like I said about my dad last week,

I'll say about my stepdad this week,

You sure can pick him.

So,

You know,

You think about all- It's a narcissistic dating game.

Yes,

Exactly.

Let me find the most angry as fucked up,

Insane person and let's marry them and pass it on.

You can choose between narcissist,

Schizophrenic or bipolar.

Actually that would actually be a great play.

That would be very funny.

What not to do.

We will write it.

Yeah,

It's on our to do list.

So the shame of abandonment.

And you say your stepdad didn't love you.

No,

None of them did because they were too busy licking their own wounds.

Did he tolerate you?

Initially we got along very well.

And then I think my mother resented whenever he got more attention than her.

So again,

It goes back to what Dr.

Carol McBride said,

A narcissistic mother is the son and everyone else is a planet revolving around.

So when that family dynamic was disrupted,

There was a lot of yelling,

A lot of chaos.

It's that momiocentric universe.

I like that.

Momiocentric.

Just came to me.

Fantastic.

I like that.

So I also think that my stepdad has antisocial personality disorder as well as being a covert narcissist.

Does he love anyone?

No.

He doesn't.

Okay.

So it's not just you.

Not just me,

But it took me a long time to see that.

And that's the point of the podcast.

It's really never about you.

My biological dad taking off,

Well,

He had learned that from his parents and grandparents.

His grandmother abandoned three daughters for six months at a time and left them home with her husband,

Their father who worked full time.

This is going back to the early 1900s.

Where did she go?

Florida.

Wow.

So my biological dad's mother was raised with an absentee abandoning mother.

So she felt shame and rejection.

So what did she do?

Repeat that.

Now she was physically present,

But most of the time she was either working or with her friends.

And now my dad is either golfing or with his friends.

And that's where Sorry My Birth Ruined Your Golf Game came from because he was very disinterested in having a real relationship.

He just repeated the same pattern that had been very predominant in his family.

So his mother was never around.

And his dad,

My grandfather just verbally and physically abused him.

So that's a recipe for disaster.

That toxic shame is going to manifest itself in many different ways,

Depending on where you're at in life.

A lot of people who are narcissists had the same amount of abandonment and physical and verbal abuse.

And it just comes out as narcissism,

Sometimes it comes out as codependency and many other ways.

It also can come out as addictions.

Sometimes bipolar.

Depression,

Anxiety,

Bipolar,

OCD.

I mean,

I am not a therapist.

I am not a life coach.

But that type of rejection and physical and emotional abuse doesn't just go away if it's not dealt with.

It will seep out.

And it will come out,

Whether it's passive aggressive behavior,

Disgust with yourself and with your children or your spouse.

Because you feel all those things about yourself.

You really don't want to face that.

That's horrible.

That's sort of your normal,

Right?

That's the way you feel normally because that's what you grew up with.

Not you,

But the person,

Right?

The proverbial you.

That's their normal.

That's their baseline for normal.

Exactly.

So that's all they know.

And most people continue to be miserable and misguided as a result of not dealing with that.

I'm going to put a link to a book that I'm actually in the middle of.

It's Healing the Shame That Binds You by John Bradshaw.

Fantastic book,

Everybody.

Run to Amazon.

I don't know how you can do that.

I used to say run to the bookstore.

Rapidly dive towards your keyboard.

Type quickly.

And buy this book.

It's fantastic.

So their physical absence and their emotional abuse left a scar.

And that scar doesn't disappear.

No matter,

I kept doing things to hide the scar.

And as John Bradshaw talks about in his book,

No amount of doing will ever stop who you're supposed to be being.

So I kept this doing.

Is it like when you were doing where you're just running away from,

Trying to run away from it?

Because you're trying to escape that feeling of toxic shame.

So if I win that road race,

If I get that promotion,

Or if I get that car,

Or if I have a million friends,

Regardless of how superficial that relationship,

Those relationships are,

These external-based visible accomplishments,

Goals,

Whatever you want to call them,

Trick you into believing that you don't feel that toxic shame.

But lies- Okay.

Temporarily,

Just like a drug.

Wow.

It wears off very quickly.

So then you just need more- Didn't John Bradshaw write also a book called Healing Your Inner Child?

He may have.

I don't know.

If it is,

I'm going to read it.

We're going to look at it.

I'm going to run to the keyboard.

But I'm in the middle of healing the shame that binds you.

And it's just unbelievable.

So as I became a college student and a young adult,

My relationships with myself and everyone was fractured,

Intense,

Short-lived,

Meaningless,

And a power game.

So part of the badge of honor that I wore was being indifferent,

Very much like how we would label guys.

You know,

Was having a million friends,

Flitting about,

Meaningless relationships.

They don't really care about anything.

And I had sort of become that kind of person,

Or behaved like that kind of person.

I wasn't really like that,

But that's what I was pretending to be.

So would you say you developed like a hard outer shell nobody could get in?

Suit of armor that King Arthur would be jealous of.

Now was anybody ever able to see through that?

Did anybody ever call you on it?

Not really.

And if they have,

I probably don't remember.

I think there was a couple of relationships I had with guys that ended,

I ended inappropriately.

Rudely.

And in a way,

Be like,

Ha,

See,

I can do this.

I don't feel anything.

It's pathetic.

You know,

That might've been my early twenties too.

So again,

Rage,

Shame,

This feeling of rejection.

I just found ways to cover it,

Clever ways to hide it.

They don't work.

You think they work,

But they don't work.

It's just you just create this protective barrier around yourself so nobody can get in and hurt you.

And you feel lonely.

And isolated.

But you're already hurt inside anyway,

So you're just basically keeping it in.

It's very,

You're cutting off yourself off.

You're building this wall.

And the wall is just a house of cards,

Paper thin.

So I have a great quote here.

The paralyzing fear of being lost is fed solely by the irrational fear that we will never be found.

Quote by Craig D.

Lonsbrough.

And if you're not lost,

You never have to be afraid of whether or not you'll be found.

So if I controlled my environment with external based accomplishments,

Superficial,

Visible achievements,

Whatever you want to call them,

Then I didn't have to admit that I was lost.

And then I didn't have to admit that I was ashamed.

Who would you have admitted it to yourself?

That's what you have to do first by saying,

It's like what Lizzie said last week,

At 28 or 26,

27,

She has started to pull her life together.

Kudos to her because I could not have done that at 28.

So according to Pamela Thomas,

Author of Fatherless Daughters,

Which is a book that examines how women cope with a loss of father by a death or divorce,

Women who grew up with absent dads find it difficult to form healthy relationships.

Makes a lot of sense.

They were scarred by their dad's rejection of them.

And they don't want to risk getting hurt again,

A la King Arthur suit of armor.

Consciously or unconsciously,

They avoid getting close to people.

And they may form superficial relationships in which they reveal little of themselves and put very little effort into getting to know others.

So I was a classic case of that.

And it's an internal power struggle.

I am not going to face this shame and this rejection.

I am not going to do that.

I'm going to prove that I am worthy.

It amazes me how fathers can just,

After getting divorced,

Can just step out of their children's lives,

Just leave.

Like not only the divorcing the mother,

They're also divorcing their children.

How about this first statistic?

I don't remember where I got it,

So sorry.

But I did.

It's one of the articles I read.

Half of the daughters in the US self-identify as having no father in their lives.

But the reasons for that fatherlessness vary.

Approximately 28% lost their connection to their dads via divorce or separation,

While 26% cite emotional absence,

13% to abandonment.

So I'm in all three,

Lost connection for divorce,

Emotional absence from both my father and my stepfather,

And abandonment from my biological father.

So talk about a wham bam.

Thank you,

Ma'am.

Serious.

So girls who grow up with dads who are emotionally or physically absent are more likely to struggle with depression as adults because they fear abandonment and rejection.

These women often isolate themselves emotionally.

Ding,

Ding,

Ding,

Ding,

Ding,

Ding,

Ding.

So it's a lot of,

I would call,

Spiritual garbage to sift through between my mother being a narc and having two quote unquote dads that both chose different ways to reject and abandon me.

Do you think things would have been different if your stepfather was there for you if he took on the role as dad?

Great question.

Had he been allowed to?

And he wasn't.

My mother didn't permit that.

She drove the wedge between you two.

A big part of it.

A big part of it.

I mean,

He had kids.

I mean,

He had a lot in his play,

His choice.

He had kids with that psycho.

And were the kids psycho too,

Or were they able to accept you and your brother?

We actually got along.

He treated them better than he treated my brother and I.

He felt bad for them because of their psycho mother.

He never felt bad for my brother and I.

Wow.

He didn't recognize that your mother was psycho too?

Just in a different way.

Yes.

Wow.

Yes,

If you have,

I think,

Had a more healthy connection with some sort of male role model,

All that bad shit that happened before first grade probably could have been reversed.

But it just more kept piling on and piling on.

And it became overwhelming.

The reason I never went the addiction route,

Substance abuse route,

Or gambling route,

Any of those is because I was a perfectionist.

And that's not what perfectionists do.

Perfectionism is another cover for internal shame.

Oh,

For sure.

It's a sort of control.

Yes.

Because you could never complete a project because it's never perfect.

Right.

And I was very involved in fitness and athletics and being a big shot.

I was been in the sales world and the business world.

It was always about having everything,

No matter how hard I worked,

It had to go the way I wanted to.

And I was always a pretty hard worker,

But I was misguided as to.

.

.

I was focused on,

Well,

If I work this hard,

I'll get these results.

So I was hyper-focused on the results and not the process.

Perfectionism also makes me think never good enough.

That too.

You cannot look.

.

.

When your parents leave you or abandon you or ignore you or criticize you,

You can't say,

God,

I'm in second grade.

Gee,

There's something wrong with them.

That's not what you do in second grade.

It's true.

And then I walk around the neighborhood and I see everything much different than what I was experiencing.

So when you went to hang out with other friends and you saw that their families were a little more loving or their parents were more engaging,

How did that make you feel?

Worthless.

Like there was something wrong with you.

Like it's your fault that this happened.

Yes.

And there were times my mother would make snide comments.

You like going over there because it's a big family or this or that.

You like that better.

And then I would have to.

.

.

Just to make you feel bad.

Yeah.

As if I didn't feel bad enough.

So I would sort of deny it or say,

Oh,

She invited me.

I made up some sort of excuse because she made me feel guilty.

And everything she did was very snide and covert.

So it would not be obvious or recognizable probably to the average person,

But when you live with somebody like that,

She did things like that,

Said things like that constantly.

Wow.

Like a master manipulator.

Oh,

For sure.

Manipulator.

How about we renamed it seven episodes ago.

So abandoned daughters are very susceptible to addiction and self-sabotage.

So one of the things for me is I was always high stress.

So I did not have an eating disorder,

But I did have a hard time eating.

And I look back at pictures of me and I'm very,

Very,

Very thin.

But I would eat,

Just not a lot.

And because I was so stressed internally all the time,

I just wasn't hungry.

Yeah.

Because those kinds of feelings can make your stomach churn.

Exactly.

And then who wants to eat?

And there are women who cope with multiple marriages,

Multiple boyfriends,

Drugs of all kinds,

Whether it's booze or pills or opioids or going to a psychologist and psychiatrist and getting these antidepressants and sleep medications.

All of that just numbs the pain.

It just masks.

And there's a whole Bessel van der Kolk in his book,

The Body Keeps the Score,

Talks about those drugs,

Yes,

Some people need them,

But they also kill joy as much as they kill pain and sadness.

So you never feel worthy and you'll do anything to either overcompensate or numb.

And I did both.

And I am not alone in feeling abandoned and rejected.

As you can see,

Those numbers were pretty big that I read.

So if you're feeling that way out there,

You should know that you're not alone as well.

That's right.

We're going to take a short break.

We'll be right back.

Ah,

And we're back to the Stock Stops here,

Episode three,

Season two.

We're about to talk about the emotional effects of being abandoned by a father.

Go ahead,

Tammy.

So with all the reading that I've done and experiencing that myself,

Overall,

Very rarely experiencing constant,

Consistent levels of happiness.

It's just more dull pain,

Higher levels of frustration,

Anger,

Rage-related depression,

Difficulty navigating the emotions of relationships,

Overwhelming fears of abandonment,

And a total lack of emotional intelligence and deep misunderstanding of yourself and the people closest to you.

So I have a quote.

I just want to give you a little kudos here for a minute because you've been married for how many years?

27?

27.

You've been married for 27 years.

That's how long I've been married for.

And you have a very,

Very nice husband.

So did he understand all this about you when he first married you?

No,

I kept it hidden.

I was two people.

I kept it hidden.

Wow.

But now he knows.

Well,

Yeah,

With my book and the podcast,

He doesn't have a choice.

So is he happy knowing that you're on this journey and that you're finding your way and that you're kind of coming to terms with all these things?

Well,

He's happy and relieved that I stopped yelling at him.

I'm sure.

He's a good sport,

Though.

He's always been a good sport.

And maybe he came from a different kind of family upbringing where he didn't internalize that.

Yes.

His family is,

I call them,

Idiosyncratic but not dysfunctional,

Rage-filled,

None of that.

So you found someone that you were able to be with and so you could heal.

And that's really a wonderful thing.

Yes.

Because you could have easily- But it's lucky.

I was lucky.

My first boyfriend,

And probably the only relationship I had,

Was a narcissist.

And even though it was a short-lived,

It was less than a year,

I knew something wasn't right.

And it's one of the only times I listened to my gut instinct.

That's so great.

One of the only times.

Could you imagine?

I would have been divorced and probably on drugs.

Wow.

And then the cycle would have continued.

It would have absolutely continued.

So the decision that you made to marry somebody who was not a narcissist and who came from a healthier upbringing- Whole opposite.

Was such a smart decision for you,

Even though it took you a while to find the right path,

Was such a smart decision for you.

Right.

One of the things is being codependent,

Even though I was angry and controlling,

Codependent,

You'd still have empathy and you're still a people pleaser.

So he benefited from that.

Also I was angry and controlling,

But I was also empathic and a people pleaser.

So quite honestly,

You probably didn't know which Tammy he was getting.

Wow.

Poor guy.

But that's one of the,

If I had been turned into a narcissist,

Which is very common,

Then he would have left me.

He definitely would have left me.

But I had the upside to codependency is the empathy and the people pleasing.

And that's,

I say that very loosely because I'm not encouraging people to go out and be codependent and people please.

There is no upside.

So I was being facetious,

But in this particular situation,

It probably saved the marriage because had I been the only angry,

Controlling narcissist,

No one's going to get married to that.

Right.

Wow.

So I remember- Unless you're my dad and stepdad.

They did.

We see how that turned out.

I remember when I got married and I decided,

I started to observe my parents' marriage,

Which my parents were married for 40,

44,

45 years.

My dad has been two to three different people.

Go on.

Okay.

My parents are married to each other for 40 something years.

And it was,

I mean,

My parents are both from Poland.

It was a different type of mentality.

They were different people.

My mother was forever dissatisfied.

My father was stoic and quiet and he was there for me,

But he wasn't really the warm and loving man that she wanted.

And she complained about it regularly.

And I remember thinking to myself that I didn't want to be that.

I remember every once in a while,

I would do something or say something to my husband and the glimmer of my mother would come out and I would say,

No,

I'm not going to do that.

And I made a conscious effort to change those patterns and not be that wife because that's what I grew up with,

But I didn't like it.

So we're still together too.

Long story short.

That's a no,

But it's anyone who has any kind of awareness or clarity at some point without having to go through what I went through,

Kudos to you.

I think that's amazing and I admire it.

I was not so blessed with that awareness or clarity at a younger age,

But I wish I was.

Happy to have it now.

I'll tell you,

It's hard.

I mean,

To make a decision about who to marry at such a,

When we're in our late twenties or early twenties or whatever,

It's a hard decision.

And we know as women that when we,

Later on in our thirties and forties and even fifties,

We change a lot.

So we're not the same people we were when we got married in our late twenties.

So to find somebody that you can grow with and go through those changes and they still want to be with you,

You still want to be with them is really amazing.

And that's what I tell my daughters.

Never ignore that little,

Because I only listen to that little inner voice twice that I can vividly remember to dump my first narc boyfriend and to marry my non narc,

Non anything like my family husband.

That's honestly,

The only other times I regularly used my instincts is when I was parenting my daughters and those two instances outside of that,

Everything else was a performance and a false self.

So I tell my daughters,

You listen to your instinct.

You can ask me for advice.

I will give it to you,

But your instincts are always right.

I'm not living your life.

You are a different person than I am.

And I will give you guidance and advice based on my experience and with as much altruistic intentions as I can.

But it's like,

If something doesn't feel right,

Exit stage left.

Yeah,

That's really good advice.

And I think,

You know.

.

.

Because sometimes they're young,

Your daughters and my daughters and not super young,

But they're in their early twenties.

And sometimes emotions come in and they say,

I don't know if it's right.

I don't know.

But you're right.

The instincts,

Sometimes you have to do the hard thing,

Even if your emotions are hurting and you feel guilty about it or whatever.

But if your instinct is telling you to do it,

You should listen to it.

You know,

In terms of relationships,

I say to both my kids,

Better late than wrong.

Right.

And don't look at it,

Oh,

I got to be married and have kids,

Which a lot of kids.

.

.

You don't.

There's no have to,

Especially nowadays where things are much more flexible and fluid and.

.

.

And women are having careers.

And the roles,

We had rigid roles back then.

Our parents were raised with,

Children should be seen and not heard.

And they are a product of that.

And women should be beautiful and presentable and play a musical instrument and look for a husband at 18.

It's funny that you say that.

My mother,

Who is and was gorgeous,

Used her femininity or beauty to assert herself.

And again,

She also had unfortunate limitations with her physical handicap or physical challenge,

Disappearing dad.

So she had a lot of toxic shame that she was dealing with.

And I feel very badly and I have a lot of compassion for it,

But I can't fix it.

And her way of fixing it is to play games and manipulate and be the narc and over control and guilt trips.

And I can't play that game.

If she wants to find another way to heal,

I can do that with her,

But I can't do it her way.

Certainly not.

Part of me was rejecting her.

It's called self-defeating rebellion.

Susan Forward coined that term.

Self-defeating rebellion is to go against,

As I see it and as I experience it,

Is going the polar opposite of your parents.

It's your way of rejecting them and rejecting what they did.

They're still in control because everything you're doing is,

Whether it's to please them or reject them,

They're still in control.

So I thought if I became this powerful businesswoman or this successful salesperson and business owner,

Whatever it was,

That would make me different than her and them.

And that was my sole goal and it wasn't,

It was a false self.

It wasn't a true goal.

I listened to my friends who were nurses and teachers or medical,

Any kind of business owner,

Anything that,

And it's their passion.

Kudos to them.

A lot of successful people have been successful in their career and the personal life has been pretty tragic as a result of similar events to me.

Mine's just been the opposite.

I've been scurrying around like a squirrel in traffic trying to figure out who I'm supposed to be.

Squirrel in traffic.

Playing Frogger here.

Yeah,

Exactly.

So Dr.

Steve Perry,

I found an interesting quote from him.

He is an important voice in the life class discussion on fatherless sons.

And he agrees about the importance of daughters having a father figure.

So what a father does for young ladies sets the standards.

Without a father figure,

The daughters have to set their own standards and they end up making the mistake of allowing others to define them.

And since you allow others to define you throughout your life,

Others will define you and you will focus on maybe what's most attractive about you or what do you get the most attention for?

And you'll start putting certain things out there to attract positive feedback or what you perceive as positive feedback.

So you combine me needing others to define me,

Which I did because I had no definition inside,

Combined with my narc mom-induced codependency,

That was a recipe for chronic misery.

And then the abandoned dad.

Absolutely.

It's no wonder I was ruled by toxic shame,

Fear of abandonment,

And scary lack of emotional intelligence.

There's a whole bunch of why dads abandon their children.

And there's different ways of abandoning them.

There's a long list and I'll put that link in the notes.

But the short one,

I have a list of six and my dad and stepdad were a combination of both.

There's the absent dad who walks out on their families.

There's the divorced dad who disengages after divorcing not just the mother,

But the children.

The distant dad who is emotionally distant,

Even though he can be physically present,

Which is my biological dad now.

He was able to convince,

Even though I've talked about his moments of clarity,

When he's with us,

He's not really with us.

Just too much of a reminder of the mistakes he made and he just can't get past it.

The abandoned dad who disappears and makes any little effort to make contact.

The critical dad who is highly critical and sets standards that are impossible to meet.

Oh,

That's a rough one.

And that was my stepdad in terms of dealing with my mother,

Is I had to make sure that she got her supply or else he had to deal with her.

He didn't want to deal with her.

So that became put on me.

And the rejecting,

Neglecting dad who was openly annoyed and repulsed by his children.

Both my stepdad and biological dad did that.

There was one time I was having a dinner,

I was 10,

Maybe nine,

With my biological dad.

And I mean,

He had dinner once a year and he used to complain about having to drive 45 minutes.

Once a year?

Yeah,

It was at that point,

It was once a year.

And he used to get mad that he would have to pick us up for dinner,

Take us to dinner,

Drop us off,

And then drive all the way back home.

And he kept telling me that relationships are a two way street and I need to make more of an effort for him if I want him to be in my life.

You were 10?

I was 10.

I actually remember this conversation vividly.

And I used to fight with him,

Like try to defend myself.

How can a 10 year old compete with a,

I don't know how old he was,

40 or something.

That was his projecting onto you,

His own inadequacy.

You'll thank?

Oh my God.

It reminds me of the Amy Schumer movie Trainwreck,

Where at the beginning the father's saying relationships don't work to both the girls and they're just little,

They're just like eight and 10.

And that's what they learned.

So you end up,

I ended up having a lot of grief and grief I would hide as anger and rage.

So the ACA is adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families,

But they abbreviate as ACA.

But it is not just for alcoholic families.

So I'm quoting them.

We can pinpoint and measure our loss by comparing the treatment we received as children in dysfunctional families with the care we could have received if raised by loving,

Consistent parents.

And on my healing journey,

Little baby steps,

Watching how my in-laws were loving and consistent.

They're not perfect.

I'm not saying that.

And I don't want to put anybody,

Including myself on a pedestal,

Not saying that.

But they were loving and they were consistent and they still are.

And that makes a huge difference despite any amount of personality flaws or idiosyncrasies that you may have,

Because that will be the overriding message,

Which I never got.

It's a level of trust that the kids have knowing that no matter what happens,

Their parents are going to be loving and consistent and be there for them.

It doesn't mean they don't discipline them,

But just knowing that your parents are there for you and will always love you.

It's huge.

One of the exercises ACA has you do is you have a worksheet and you describe what would have been different if you had had a loving parent.

What would the scenario have looked like?

And they explain that experiencing loss in this way can help us release it.

But if you're blocked,

As I was,

You switch from grief to anger because it just hurts too much and anger is a much more comfortable emotion to express.

So that becomes like a button that's pushed.

Grief is a button that's pushed and it sends us into shutdown,

Blame or rage mode.

Classic may,

But experiencing and acknowledging that sadness and grief,

You can actually see how destructive their behavior was and their decisions were rather than how quote unquote awful you once thought you were.

It goes back to laying the blame on where it belongs,

On the people who caused it,

Not on yourself.

It's not easy,

But it's worth it.

I actually have the ACA book and I read it a lot.

It's very,

Very good.

Yeah.

Wow.

Excellent.

Well,

I also had mentioned earlier,

John Bradshaw,

He wrote a book in 1987 called Healing the Child Within.

I'm pretty sure I read it.

Another good one to check out.

Oh,

I'll put the link.

Yeah,

We'll put the link.

So that wraps up this episode of The Stuck Stops here.

We have some wonderful interviews coming up in the next few weeks and we're excited about it.

So Tammy,

I think we are good to say goodbye.

Sayonara,

See you next week.

See you next week.

Don't be afraid to cry.

Goodbye.

Gonna change my name,

Gonna change what I do,

Gonna change my mind,

Cause I can't change life,

Gotta get better.

Those days turn into years drowning inside my head.

You can't see that when the skies are blue.

I took the long way around just to get through.

I'm ready as I'm ever going to be.

I took the long way around just to be free.

Oh,

Oh,

Oh,

Oh,

Yeah.

I don't ever adore no one's ever home.

All of us together,

All of us alone.

On the road back to me,

Not your slave anymore.

Climb down your window and knock it down the door.

You can't see that,

But the skies are true.

I took the long way around just to get through.

I'm ready as I'm ever going to be.

I took the long way around just to be free.

Oh,

Oh,

Oh,

Oh,

Yeah.

Gonna change my name,

Gonna change what I do.

Gonna change my mind,

Cause I can't change you.

Reviews

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

After to listening to four of your podcasts on Insight Timer, I do believe we are twins. At the beginning of this Podcast you defined my childhood to a “t” - connection to friends families who were loved and connected - my addictive nature and my feelings or lack of self. At the age of 3, I knew things were missing and off and compensated for it as “the doer”!

I didn’t think I would relate to this episode as much as I did. I’m vocal about my narcissist mom but daddy was no piece of cake either. He was just as emotionally unavailable as she was BUT he could tell me he loved me and I believe he does even now.

I divorced after 27 years and looking back it’s no wonder I married the guy I did. It was doomed early on with rage from him and that was one thing I’d never experienced in my 23 years living with my parents. The dysfunctional rage was quite prominent with his immediate family. His uncontrolled rage led to an abusive relationship (physical and verbal) that started 6 weeks after we wed and continued for 24 years. We’ll be divorced 17 years in May and he’s still the same person . Thank God for the courage and strength to get out of that mess!!

It really makes me sad to see people I love struggling with interpersonal relationships because they don’t have the skills to make changes or the desire for counseling. Hopefully they can see through me that life can and will be better if we just take the steps and make the changes because we deserve more! 💜💜💜