155: Why You're Addicted To Someone Who Hurts You

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2:06something much deeper. Through working with a lot of women who were trapped in the cycle for years I've discovered that the women who feel the most addicted to emotionally unavailable and inconsistent men are usually some of the most self aware, most emotionally intelligent and most empathic women in the room trust me which is why today I'm making this video for you to show you why most women feel like they can never just walk away. Why simply knowing your worth and all the things you hear online will never be enough to actually break the cycle that you're in and how to transform your identity and finally be met with the treatment you deserve and the devotion you deserve. Oh and by the way I've just opened the doors to my new transformation five week cohort the unbothered woman. If you want my help on achieving this transformation and becoming the woman you've always dreamed to be who never questions her worth and just feels good about herself then you will find the links in the video below and I'll tell you more about it later anyway let's get into this video. Why does it feel

3:09like love when it actually isn't and when it hurts so much and it's not actually a pleasant feeling in the end because a lot of the time what you're feeling isn't love it's a cycle that you're trapped into the hot and cold cycle closeness then distance it's connection and then it's silence from him it's effort a lot of effort love bombing and then it's nothing and from the outside it's obvious but from the inside you feel very lost it feels very rare and exciting and it feels like chemistry it feels like I've never felt this before and all these butterflies and the reason it feels so intense is the contrast baby it's the contrast the high feels high because the low was so low that you're finally feeling the relief of it when something is steady it feels calm and when something is inconsistent it feels consuming because you're chasing the steadiness and we've been taught consuming is passion consuming is romance it means that something special is going on we see it on TV and movies

4:10but intensity is not a love language a lot of the time is just instability in the relationship and here's the real mechanism that is at play when this is happening when he pulls away your nervous system goes on alert something was wrong you start scanning for signals you start reading the meaning into everything and past text messages you start trying to get back the version of him you felt safe with you're trying to cling on for something he was and then finally he comes back and you feel this wave of relief you're like oh my god he's back and you're in your best behavior and you call the relief love not the actual relationship and the relief is your body finally exhaling it's not proof of a soulmate or it's not proof of anything it's just proof of you holding your breath and finally getting relief that's why it's addictive it's not because it's extraordinary and amazing it's because you're going through a stress cycle by darling and I want to add a small detail that a lot of women miss your brain doesn't only get dopamine when something good happens like we're always taught it actually gets dopamine in anticipation of something good

5:13happening so the addiction isn't only when he texts you it's the waiting it's the hoping it's the maybe it's the maybe he'll change it's the mental rehearsal of how good it was and how good you can have it the loop is the actual hook to him not the relationship it's the same reason slot machines work you don't keep playing it because you win every single time you keep playing because you win sometimes and that is why they're addictive inconsistency training trains your nervous system to stay on standby always ready always watching and always trying to adjust your movements and behaviors for him to react accordingly and this is why it's so hard to recognize from the inside because a part of you's addicted to it the intensity feels like the evidence you need for it being special you think if this if I feel so much it must mean something like we're having this epic romance or something like that but feelings aren't always true they are not the truth sometimes they're simply an activation in your body women confuse activation with depth in a relationship all the time a

6:16deep relationship is something that is steady it feels something like something you can actually relax in right a long-term relationship activation feels like I can't eat I can't focus I can't sleep my friend is talking to me I can't hear her talking how many times you found yourself in a place like that where you are thinking about this one thing and you cannot focus on anything else that's not depth that's your system trying to restore safety within that moment now here's where the mind starts protecting the cycle the good moments become headlines to you and the bad moments just become something that you let their like footnotes you build a story around his potential he disappears and you explain it with him being busy and being so important or having this amazing job he gives you a good moment after that and it resets the whole school board with him being amazing and the sentence that keeps women stuck in these kind of cycles is when it's good it is so good I've heard that one so many times despite a bullshit relationship which sounds romantic and it usually means when my body finally gets relief it feels amazing because of

7:18the relief not because of the guy and that's not love baby that's a nervous system coming down from stress and here's the line I want you to remember upon listening to this there's a difference between love and needing something to survive or someone to survive and your nervous system will blur the line if you don't understand what's actually happening to you in that moment because when a person or like a man is inconsistent your body doesn't interpret it as he's unsure he doesn't like me your body actually interprets it as I'm not safe so I need to seek the safety that he's not giving me now I want to separate two things that get confused all the time so I think it will help seeing the good in someone versus needing them is very different because you can absolutely see someone's potential I see everyone's potential all the time you can see their amazing nature you can see their traumas and how they had a hard life you can see the parts of them that are beautiful and completely understand them and that's not the problem

8:20I see people like that all the time I'm an empath the problem is when you when your nervous system starts treating this person like a life source and you start depending on them and outsourcing your sanity and how do you know that that line's been crossed will hear the signs number one his mood starts dictating your mood when he's not happy you're not happy if his warm and kind to you you're okay and if he's off your whole day is off and you're like seeing the micro signals of how he's off you can be in the middle of something really important work kids life whatever and one short message of him being unhappy about something can completely drop your mood that's a sign of you outsourcing your nervous system to him number two his consistency starts dictating your self-worth if he's consistent you feel amazing about yourself and everything if he pulls back you immediately start questioning like am I good enough as a person even if you don't recognize it what did I do was I too much was I too cold did I say the wrong thing did I say the right thing I see all my DMs of you guys asking me exactly

9:22those questions just because he is a bit upset it's like your confidence is controlled by remote control that he's holding number three is his attention starts to dictate whether you feel okay about yourself and your body as in you can't fully relax unless you know where you stand with him and if he wants to be with you and how much he wants to be with you and that's not romance that's actually a sign of codependence even and I want to be really clear this is not about you being a weak person this is about how you've trained your nervous system and how you've allowed it to be trained because what happens in these dynamics is your body starts outsourcing safety to that person so you seek to keep them in equilibrium and happy you stop generating safety and depending on your own self and you start seeking it from him and his approval and when he gives you warmth you feel safe and when he goes quiet you feel threatened and like you have a tiger chasing you it's just biology it's not dramatic it feels dramatic that you can't even really tell your friends

10:25and happens gradually it's like a system you build no one wakes up one day and things kind of love you know to build my emotional stability around Jacob over there that would be really great no no one thinks that it builds in tiny little moments where you reinforce it like a period of closeness then distance then relief when he returns and then round and round in circles again in this anxiety loop then hit reassurance from him oh that feels good now I can feel okay about myself now I feel attractive and pretty again over and over again and your nervous system learns that relief comes from him not from you so your body starts tracking him like a survival cue like you're out in the jungle and he is the source of water that's why when he goes quiet you don't just feel sad like normally sad you feel like you are dying that stomach drop and the anxiety is like a survival thing that hidden heat in your chest that just comes up it's it's a body thing if you really think about it that urge to check your phone like it's a compulsion that weird

11:29a restlessness where you can't settle or even focus on someone else talking it's the clearest sign that it's moved beyond a relationship of like him don't like him and into your nervous system integration it's a part of you and it's dangerous frankly and this is where women start saying things like I swear I can feel something is off everything comes about feelings and their body because the relationship is controlling that and sometimes yes something can be off but often what's off is not something it's your body is living in uncertainty and uncertainty keeps your system in this overdrive because if you don't know where you stand your system doesn't know when it can rest and when it can recuperate you're always on alert and vigilance so I want you to understand that you don't just miss him you miss the regulation that you can feel by yourself you will start chasing the version of yourself that felt calm in the past and the only way you know how to access that version of her who's calm and happy is his reassurance and that's why

12:30you can't detach from him because you're missing your old calm happy self it's not him that you're missing or him that you're chasing now let's talk about why inconsistency is more addictive than someone who actually shows up for you and is super reliable because logically it makes no sense right like you'd want the person who's reliable if someone's consistent kind of clear amazing you'd feel more attached right like that's the obvious thing to think but the reality is consistency creates a calm in you and consistency creates obsession that is how you get people obsessed with you and that's not a personality flaw that's just neuroscience that's all that is it's a concept called variable reward that's what it's called it's the same mechanism behind slot machines and rats who get a bit of sugar then they don't if you pull the lever and one every single time you would get bored of the slot machine that's not how addiction is built and if you pull the lever and never one you'd walk away because there is

13:33no game but if you win sometimes and you never know when you're going to win then your brain locks in because uncertainty keeps you engaged if you're a mammal if you're a human that's what happens so when you're dealing with a man who's a walking slot machine sometimes warm sometimes distant sometimes he calls you and sometimes he makes plans and sometimes he disappears and acts like he doesn't know that you even exist and that you're annoying for wanting basic communication then you're addicted like you would be to a slot machine sometimes he's obsessed sometimes he's cold it is actually genius he's not doing this on purpose but it's genius that inconsistency actually trains you to stay on high alert and zoned in on him you start scanning everything about him not in an obvious way but just in a he's the source for you in all the most subtle ways you read his tone you become like this walking encyclopedia on his mood so there's responses his reactions I was there in my early 20s it is exhausting monitoring someone so closely and you think

14:36that you're obsessed with him and what he wants and does but actually you're obsessed making yourself feel okay you become basically like a walking translator of his moves and it's super exhausting it's trying even thinking about how I used to feel about it because your body is trying to predict something that's unpredictable if you can't predict him you can't prevent the pain you feel of the unpredictable and you can't get ahead of it to stay safe right that's why your nervous system is is doing this is trying to keep you safe by tracking him and this is why the addiction doesn't live in the high itself it lives in the anticipation of the high and the low and the mood swings in the spaces in between it's the maybe it's the waiting it's the mental rehearsing I know you've been checking your phone because your board looking at it every time it flashes it might be him because you're trying to find a resolution but the resolution is him the resolution is not him and your brain hates unfinished business on unfinished neurological

15:40connections so you keep reaching for the one thing that seems like it closes the loop of your anxiety I reply assign a gesture a pigeon with a note a good morning anything that tells you where you stand with this guy because now you're relying on him when you finally get it you feel like a rush down you you feel like oh a relief and that's how you know it's in your body and not in a reality because your system finally got a moment of safety it's like a drug high then the cycle repeats again and over and over again until it becomes normal but you wonder why you can't have someone normal and safe because you don't get that cycle and that reinforcement you're just living with this constant background noise of checking someone's feelings and moods and always adjusting and always calibrating and trying to say the right thing in order to provoke the right reaction but the reality is you can't because this is just how this person conducts themselves and so the loop or pee and that's why women end up feeling tired in in a in a way that

16:42sleep doesn't even fix you're like physiologically psychologically tired it's a nervous system tiredness and it's a burnout it's exhaustion of constantly reading the room reading someone else's face because we're not built to do that on a long on a long-term basis when it's just this one person and here's what I want you to hear after having said all of this that the man isn't addictive because he is special yeah he's addictive because your nervous system has been trained to chase the payouts he is not that amazing and that cool when you look at a photo of him after you break up you will understand what I mean it's not love even though you keep calling it that it's actually a conditioning that's occurred and it could happen to anybody when you're constantly trying to stabilize inside an unstable dynamic your nervous system basically becomes the relationship manager and that's exhausting you're not just dating him you are like managing him you're running the whole relationship you're managing your own anxiety and you're trying

17:45to manage his inconsistency at the same time and when he pulls away you start analyzing like adjusting anticipating things you're very like on everything you start doing little invisible jobs all day you should text him first should you wait if he's not coming should I be sure that he said that even though I have my feelings should I ask him where he's going do I talk too much do I not talk enough I all act busy okay no I won't be busy you know I'll message him now and what does that do in your body he keeps you in a low level fight or flight can you live like this long term I would not say that it's this love I would say it's going to lead you to some form of panic attack but that constant something might happen state is not good for you the body never relaxes because relaxation requires a feeling of safety and safety requires a feeling of consistency that you're not going to get from him so when things are fine you're still bracing because you used to something going wrong and this is where women start noticing symptoms that don't sound romantic at all like actual symptoms like racing thoughts not no abilities concentrate no ability

18:51to focus on a show you love or you read the same paragraph three times at work you get brain fog you get forget for your scattered you feel like you've got too many tabs open at the same time and you feel tired but wired and you can't sleep and this is like a background fear not always obvious but it's there and you are snappy like you're waiting for the other shoot to drop because it usually does like something good is happening and you can't truly like enjoy it because you don't trust that it will last I know you've had that feeling before and over time it's scariest part of being in something like this is dysregulation starts to feel normal you forget what calm feels like being on your own you forget what it feels like to be with someone where your nervous system isn't constantly trying to solve a riddle and you start thinking calm means I don't care calm means boring and neutral I know you do because you message me when actually calm is your baseline of feeling safe and this is the moment that really traps a lot of you I'd say

19:58so why does leaving feeling possible even when you know that the relationship's hurting you because by the time most women reach that point it's not a relationship anymore really is it it's like a system that you're indoctrinated and it's a routine it's a mental habit it's changed your whole identity it's changed the whole way your body works and the longer you stay in a cycle like that the more your life starts organizing itself around the cycle not because you're like pathetic or you've done something the wrong but you've adapted to the way that it is you start adapting to his moods and his availability and uncertainty and all of those things and that is why leaving doesn't feel like losing him in the relationship it feels like losing you it feels like losing the version of yourself who was in something the version of you who had a storyline like a future and a purpose and a hope of basically managing his emotions it feels like you're losing your routine and your baseline the little things you don't even realize you've built like checking your phone when you wake up for his message you're wondering what he's doing at night

20:59or reading into his patterns and moods or waiting for weekends or making yourself available just in case he is on Saturday you will know a lot of times he doesn't want to spend time with you and the hardest one it feels like losing the future that you attached to him not the future that's actually happening but the future that you are hoping will happen the future where you finally see that he can choose you properly that was soup what you were banking on right the version where he becomes consistent and the version where his good side comes up because that's why you keep doing it so when people say just leave they're missing the point you can't just leave because what you're grieving isn't the man you're grieving the fantasy you built that allows you to survive the reality that you're living in now here's the other layer your nervous system will resist leaving not because it wants you to be in pain but because it wants what's familiar and what you've trained it to understand this is the part that people

22:02find it hard to admit familiar can feel safe even though it's not your system knows this cycle it knows the rhythms and the routines the anxiety and the waiting and then the relief it's exactly a pattern and then a reset and then it begins again it's a terrible rhythm but it's a predictable one that you know so in the unpredictability of the race you still get the predictability of the cycle so when you think about leaving your body doesn't interpret it as freedom from the cycle your body interprets it as basically the unknown how are you going to regulate if you can't do it through him and as for a dysregulated nervous system unknown it feels very dangerous that's why you can be sitting there fully aware saying he doesn't treat me well he doesn't want to spend time with me he doesn't even like me most days this isn't what I want I deserve better all the things that women say and still feel completely unable to leave the dynamic because your mind is talking but your body's panicking like how am I going to have a new cycle and regulate my own emotions

23:07and then we add the thought pattern that keeps women changed to this whole relationship is but I've already invested so much so much time emotional energy so much emotional labor so much forgiveness so much trying to make it work that you resent the fact that you would have to give up all of that investment and this is where the sunk cost becomes an emotional trap because your brain starts treating leaving as wasting time in the past wasting years I've wasted my years on him don't women say that all the time wasting your investment basically so now you stay longer to justify the time you've already given up but the truth is that staying doesn't protect your investment staying only increases the cost of the long-term investment and I know that that things and it sucks but it's the thing that's going to free you because you don't get your time back babe time is the one asset that you cannot make you can't make more time you can get your life back by leaving the pattern today and this is where the identity piece really comes in because

24:13a lot of people their real fear isn't what if I lose the relationship it's what if I leave and I still feel the same emptiness that I have in it what if I leave and it proves that I am faulty and nobody wants me what if I leave and I'm then just alone and that's why it feels truly impossible to leave that dynamic not because you don't know better because you do just leave him is not the line because your nervous system has learned that he equals safety in those tiny moments and your identity has wrapped itself around the hope that this will finally work out that they will be more better moments than there are cold tough moments let's quickly talk about why the know your worth doesn't break the cycle you know they say know your worth and walk away because worth in itself is a concept and concepts live in your head and not in your nervous system it's two different places your nervous system doesn't speak in concepts it speaks in patterns and sensations and what feels safe and what feels threatening so you can be the most intelligent girl in the room

25:17okay but you can read all the books you can watch all the videos you can understand all the attachment styles margarita what book do you recommend you can even be the friend who gives everyone an amazing advice yeah and still find yourself going back to the stupid relationship that you're in that he doesn't want you back because you can your mind can know something while your body is bonded to something else and that's the part that you are missing that it's not about knowing more you're not staying because you don't know better you are staying because your body has learned a pattern that you're in so if knowing your worth isn't enough then what are we actually going to do to break the cycle we need like an identity level change and I know that phrase gets strung around online a lot so let me make it real for you and land the plane insight says into the situation I deserve better identity says I don't accept this and those sound really similar in theory until you're actually triggered because under pressure you don't live by what

26:20you know you live by what your nervous system has been trained to tolerate that's why a lot of you can have all the insights in the world and still go back to the moment that you feel the drop in the moment of that trigger like him not replying to you or something so an identity level change is not you sitting there and deciding from today I'm a new woman that's cute I like that for you but that's not what's going to get you over the threshold identity changes when your body learns a new definition of what is safety when your body's nervous system stops treating his attention like oxygen when you don't longer need his consistency to feel okay and that doesn't happen through one dramatic breakthrough or argument or something it happens through repetition just the way you learn to rely on him you need to learn to rely on you through regulation okay you don't wake up one day just unbothered and not caring about him you build the feeling of being unbothered you build it in the same way you build a muscle consistently through repetition by doing the work

27:24not just one day because what you're really doing is training your system you're teaching your body that silence from him is not danger uncertainty is not an emergency not being chosen by him is not a threat to my identity does not change who I am and when that training starts landing something really interesting starts to happen to you the old dynamic stops feeling so spicy and like love it starts feeling like annoying noise that's that's the shift you start seeing his behaviors as what they are and you're not thinking oh I'm just trying to be strong but genuinely I don't want this inconsistent person it doesn't feel so good anymore the push for cycle starts to feel cheap and annoying the hot and cold starts to feel like honestly like a headache and you stop romanticizing it when the feeling of safety comes from within you you stop calling whatever he's doing passion and start seeing it as if like a friend was doing it you'd be like this person's

28:25inconsistent yeah and that's how you know that identity has changed when his behaviors look exactly as behaviors and not romanticized because you don't need well power to avoid something you no longer crave now what does the woman look like on the other side of this whole idea because a lot of women ask that question they think if I stop chasing him if I'll become cold and if I stop start focusing on myself will I become avoidant and not caring and mean and just horrible no you you can still feel deeply and be an amazing person but it doesn't mean that you're a desperate person you can be warm and feminine and lovely and amazing and everyone's best friend and still be open to hanging out with him but you can regulate yourself emotionally so you can experience like an attraction with someone without a spiral you can choose someone without losing yourself and you can be excited without it meaning anything bigger than that but the biggest difference that you would see is you can see the good in someone and the potential in someone without needing

29:30them and that is what we started with because if you stop confusing the intensity and the depth with the reality of the relationship that's really liberating and genuine connection it feels steady and yes it feels boring for a person who's used to the mood swings of the opposite but it doesn't hijack your day it actually allows you to do so much more with your day it allows you to stay on your purpose and on your mission and all these things that you can do when you're not negotiating for basics and yeah I'm going to say it plainly a genuine connection does not turn your nervous system into a hostage situation so how does a pastor and who's self-regulated act while she doesn't observe behavior all the time and calculate it she doesn't argue within consistency and try and make someone hang out with her she doesn't send paragraphs trying to convince a man to treat her properly you don't do that she simply becomes unavailable to dynamics that require her to abandon herself and her nervous system and her safety that's the technical version of the unbothered woman you're not numb you're not detached you're not cold in that way

30:35you're just self-led and you are your own safety so that you can clearly see someone from the side and how they act if you want to really dive into it more the unbothered woman's available as I said sorry I mentioned it again I'm just very super excited the thing that I want you to understand the most at the end of it all is if you can rely on yourself for your own emotional regulation you can actually see someone clearly and if you've been on my socials before you probably have heard the whole American idol Simon Cowell thing that I've talked about and that is you want to be the one that they're auditioning for as opposed to the other way around when you're in this anxiety loop and you are always trying to make sure that he's okay in order for you to feel safe so that you can feel calm in your nervous system you're always looking for him to choose you so you're auditioning for him when you can become your own place of safety through systems that I talk about in the master class you can then see who he truly truly is see who he is truly presenting in front of you and you get to be the judge okay now

31:36the biggest shift isn't even your relationship with men when it comes to this it's the relationship with yourself because once this cycle of addiction is broken you can rebuild safety from the inside out with your own self without outsourcing it to someone else which is the most dangerous thing you can do you can be grounded and safe within yourself and you can actually start to value yourself and have that relationship with yourself where you can rely on yourself and back yourself even when it comes to friends work and in all aspects of your life because you will feel a sense of groundedness that is not your power given away to someone else and that's the biggest lesson in emotional sovereignty before you click off I need you to hear this one last thing this addiction has nothing to do with you being stupid or not self aware or not evolved enough or anything like that some of the smartest most emotionally intelligent people I've ever met have been stuck in these cycles so it's not you because it doesn't live in your mind it lives in your nervous system that's

32:38two very different things okay and the good news is your nervous system isn't permanent it's patented and it can be changed which means it is flexible and it can be retrained you can break this cycle not by forcing yourself to be stronger or all those things but by becoming regulated enough that the chaos stops feeling like love and becoming your own safe space and if you want my help for that as I said I can help you with that on March 20th when we joined the unbothered women together we even have a WhatsApp group what are we anyway guys this has been amazing to talk with you thanks for watching or listening and I'll see you on the next one bye gorgeous hey it's howie mandel and I am inviting you to witness history as me and my how we do it gaming team take on gilly to king and wallow 267's million dollars gaming in an epic global gaming league video game showdown four rounds multiple games one winner plus a halftime performance by

33:39multi platinum artist travi mccoi watch all the action and see who wins and advances to the championship match against neo right now at global gaming league dot com that's global gaming league dot com everybody games bring incredible sound into every corner of your home with the new wind sound smart speaker get high resolution audio with a 1.8 inch touchscreen smart control and modern design in one powerful speaker for just $299 from quiet mornings to lively family gatherings wind sound makes every moment sound better and feel better too create a home filled with sound you love ready to upgrade your sound shop now at amazon and search wind sound that's w-i-i-m-s-o-u-n-d