The goal in this episode is just to be aware and grieve that if you were never given that parenting love and care that you deserved as a child.And yes,that is a real grieving stage.It is.It is a loss that we cannot replace.We can't go back,and we need to grieve that part of that childhood.But it's still your responsibility to move forward and learn,grow and change.From these maladaptive habits into healthier ones,so that way you can have a healthy relationship with the least amount of stress.You want to be able to deal,manage these painful feelings of abandonment so that you don't feel overwhelmed and cause increased stress for your partner or in the relationship,and learn how to reestablish safety and connection.Through healthy co-regulation with your partner.Quick tip,what are the most important questions you need to ask yourself right before you decide to have a relationship with someone?Well,Stick around because this episode is for you.Tired of feeling misunderstood,frustrated,and emotionally disconnected when communicating with other people.This is conversations that work with Anita Sandoval,where you can learn how to maintain healthy conversations with the people who matter most.A podcast where you can gain confidence and get tips for having challenging day-to-day conversations that make you feel understood,validated,and heard here is your host,a licensed professional counselor,specializing in communication skills,strategies,and techniques.Anita Sandoval.Let's start the conversation.Welcome back to Conversations That Work,and this is episode number15,the Stress of Finding Mr.Wright and getting rid of Mr.Wrong.Some questions you can ask is,When you start implementing your boundaries and priorities for yourself,what was it like for you around this other person?What did you feel around them when you did?So,did you feel comfortable implementing your boundaries to them safe,or did you feel nervous,scared,intimidated that they might use something against you?Do you feel inferior or superior to them?Do you feel respected or disrespected around them?Do you feel validated,understood for your opinions,or ignored and dismissed?What do you want to feel around them?Have this in mind in a piece of paper,in your phone,on the notes right before you meet them.Or any person.You don't have to have a specific person in mind,but these are questions that you wanna ask yourself before you meet anyone and want to be able to connect with them.What are the warning signs that you have that gives up a clue that they're not a good person for you?Such as name calling,putting down,always canceling on you.These are things that you want to have in mind before you start connecting in a relationship.And you wanna ask yourself,how do we know who the right people are?How can we avoid that pattern of bad relationships that keep them stuck,that keep you stuck in that fear of rejection loop?If you're a person that continually falls in with toxic people,partners,Because you cannot see the warning signs.If you don't know where you're going,who you are,what your values and boundaries are,how do you know that the other person will too?You're gonna be led by somebody else's values and boundaries,relationship with people who do not know who they are or what they can and cannot do,and vice versa.It's like the blind leading the blind.So if you focus on how someone makes you feel,you are focused on how you feel,that doesn't tell you anything about the other person.If you tell them you value honesty,they agree with you.Oh yeah,I value honesty too.However,you do not elaborate or.Become specific on the intentional behaviors that encompass those values from your own point of view,then you will find out the hard way.In the long run,your partner will have no idea what those terms of values mean from your perspective,within your own behaviors,and see what value those behaviors align.That should give you.A quick compass.Whether it goes towards or against your values,you don't even have to tell them as long as you're true to who you are and know what your values are,that's how you can assess other people.Sign up for up to date information at www.anitasandoval.com some situations that might trigger.Negative emotions,thoughts,sensations of betrayal,abandonment,rejection issues.There may increase stress in relationships when somebody does not want to be intimate with you when they do not want to spend the night with you.When you say things such as,are we breaking up?I think we're breaking up.Do you want to break up with me or in friendships telling the other person,you don't wanna be my friend.Are we not friends when the other person has a different opinion as your own?And last but not least,when a loved one or someone you care about walks away from an argument,what contributes to the increase in stress in relationship?Lack of trust where one or both partners have difficulties in regulating their nervous system.Maybe in the past there was someone growing up without a regulating other adult presence in their life.This is where you grew up without having someone to help you learn how to calm your nervous system when you grew up expecting to be abandoned,mistreated.Left alone,not having anyone predictably to support you or be there for you.Unpredictable change causes the nervous system to become dysregulated.Dissociation is a short sense of self-soothing about avoiding the pain.Oh,forget about it.What are under the bridge?There's different types of dissociation.Some dissociation levels can be seen where sometimes you may feel like you're in a fog,like you're in a dream,like you're floating,like you're a robot.You're disconnected from your body,split apart,zoned out,numbed out stuff that you just can't remember.These are different types of dissociation and the main fears in relationships is being abandoned,betrayed,and they may be seen in gestures of reaching out that seems clinging or holding on.They may be known as needy behaviors.In the end,this person may feel a sense of loneliness,jaggedness.Blackness,emptiness,coldness in isolation.Avoid a hole in your stomach feeling sensation.So let's talk about the nervous system.How sometimes the nervous system gets damaged by betrayal.How can you overcome betrayal when it is programmed and conditioned in the nervous system?Some people like to call it the broken heart syndrome.It's together with abandonment and shame.It is a major threat to the nervous system because it strikes at the heart of one of our biggest human needs.Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs talks about bottom up.Our needs that need to be met is basic human survival needs,air,food,water,shelter.Then we have some stability.To make sure that we have some routine sense of safety.Then after that is love and belonging.It is not a want,it is a need to feel connected,loved,and belonged in a specific group.So specifically,abandonment,rejection,betrayal gives you a sense of lack of safety,an opportunity to functionally be able to regulate your nervous system with another person.It strays from connecting with the other person,and then it leaves a fear of isolation.Loneliness,that you cannot communicate with the other one,with the other person because of such betrayal.And then you have the lack of trust because of it.So what's the pattern?Well,isolation leaves,lack of communication.You're not able to regulate your emotions with the other person.It increases the fears,it increases the sense of,I'm not safe because I don't trust the other person.What does it result in?Your nervous system being stressed.Fight flight,freeze people,please,and appease.I'm not safe.I'm in danger.So then we have people then trying to please one another,but that really isn't a real sense of connection either.Oh,they're just doing it just to not get me mad.That level of response will reflect and it is dependent upon the experience a person has had been rejected,betrayed in the past,left out,isolated,especially within the early childhood years when the brain development was forming,needing those associations to be established.So if a child was abandoned at an early age,during childhood,That ability to co-regulate with parents,they're lacking so they can't move forward from that part of the development.They become stuck and therefore it just becomes underdeveloped and it results in the individual no longer having access to that capacity to process that they are safe.So think of it as the nervous system becoming stuck in the glitch on fight,flight,freeze,and this connection of being safe,connected to the other person.It's a biological need for humans.We need to be safe,connected to another to survive,and our nervous system are longing to be in connection with another nervous system.So when that need is not met,That if that emotion of fear remains stuck in that nervous system,so it becomes blocked even if you're entering new relationships.If you don't process and heal,you're still stuck in that jaded sense of emotion.You're bringing the baggage with you to other relationships,different faces,different places,same experiences.Connect with Anita on Facebook,facebook.com/conversations at work.So what happens?They put walls up.You can't be rejected,betrayed by someone who you are not attached to.But what happens is you lose yourself and you really don't connect.How do you avoid that from happening?Well,there's no guarantees in life,but a strategy you can do is trying not to connect right away with someone.Try to get to know their behaviors and their values.So try not to attach so quickly to a new person.Take out the person you're interested in possibly creating a relationship with,and ask normal questions and understand what is being said to them.And on how to read between the lines.Assess what the person's answers really say about them.How does this person problem solve?Yeah.When everything's going well,you'll love everybody and you'll like everybody.But when the going gets tough,how does this person react or act?How does this person deal with difficult situations or difficult people?Are they value aligned with their behaviors and are able to establish boundaries with other people in their own life?Or are they pushovers?Are they wishy washy type of people?What does their activities and relationships with others reveal about their value system?Do they smoke?Do they do drugs?Do they lie?Do their friends do that?When someone tells you,oh,it was just a one-time thing,more than likely that isn't true because it,for someone to do it nonchalantly,it has to be a habit.In order for it to be a habit,you would have had to do it consecutively at least66times.66for66days at least.So if they did it nonchalantly,like it was a routine thing,it was not the first time they did it.So what does it mean that they're likely to do or not do when they're faced with a challenge?What does it tell you about where their strengths are and where their vulnerabilities are?You want to pick up on these major points before you begin to invest your time in life with a person and before you get attached,and then it makes it harder to let go.Ask yourself,evaluate the experiences that you have with this individual,not the story in your head,not the justifications,not the excuses of how they made you feel experiences,but their actions on what they did with you,with others,with people around them.What did it feel to be around them?What did you feel when they,there was a conflicting view of opinions.What kind of sense of self did you get with him?Not a sense of we,but self within I Or was he just going along with the flow with whatever you said.Did they even have their own opinion?What are your values and priorities?Always remember your own values and priorities.Conversations that work with Anita Sandoval,making challenging conversations easy.I mentioned co-regulation earlier in this episode.Co-regulation is defined as a warm,responsive interaction.It provides support,coaching,modeling for children that need to understand,express,and modulate their thoughts,feelings,and behaviors.We weren't given that sometimes growing up I wasn't.I had to learn how to support myself,how to find people who could be able to model that for me.The main difference between co-regulation and self-regulation,co-regulation requires two or more people to achieve a calm state.While self-regulation is when the individual regulates their own behavior.You want to be able to first co-regulate with someone that part of the body mind was not given when you were born.Cuz co-regulation and the brain association wi it begins when mothers have children.There's this book,by Dr.Sues called,who's my,who's my mama.And with the baby llama,I think trying to find,are you my mother?Are you my mother?Because they're just wanting to connect.That's how we were as children,and unfortunately we weren't given that.Not everybody.Some that were great.You were lucky,and that's amazing.But the ones that weren't,don't worry because just because you didn't learn,that doesn't mean that you'll never be able to learn.The only difference is you're gonna have to learn this with other people,but you wanna be able to pick people that know how to self-regulate.That way they can be able to co-regulate with you when there is an offer of connection.Many people tend to go into one extreme or the other when they don't know how to co-regulate.They either respond too intensely or they just shut down.It creates confusion on the other end.So in relationships,either they move into a stuck stress response and become very needy because they're stuck wanting to connect with the other person,clingy and neediness.Or then they turn around,just shut down and say,you know what?Before you leave me,I'm gonna leave you and just become cold as they so to speak.They won't return your messages.They'll just have a blank face,barely even talk.That is how lack of co-regulation looks like and self-regulation,betrayal,abandonment,rejection,growing up,different relationships.It messes with the nervous system such for safety,so it leaves it exposed to real danger in sight threats,and it creates a habit of high risk situations in order to avoid feeling abandonment.What did I just say?What that means is you're always searching for safety.So then when you leave one relationship,cuz it was unhealthy,you try to find another one because you want to feel safe.You don't wanna feel this abandonment feeling.You can't handle this emotion.You dissociate,you can't co-regulate.So you just go from one relationship to another to avoid feeling this pain of betrayal,abandonment,rejection,loneliness.So a quick strategy for this.When it comes to symptoms of needing clingy behaviors or shutdown,instead of looking out on what is wrong,you look within and notice how your nervous system just focus on the nervous system.How is it disregulated in my dissociating?How do I feel around these triggers of rejection?Learn how to regulate the nervous system.Try to do this on your own.In order to manage the triggers and be able to have healthy connection with people,it's not about how others are making you feel.This is your nervous system,your thoughts,your emotions.You wanna be able to empower yourself to be able to calm your nervous system.How do you recondition the nervous system?So that you can be able to connect better with others.Think of this as a seesaw.You have to find the right balance.You don't wanna go from one extreme with no boundaries,no values.Allow any and everyone that is unhealthy come into your life.But then you don't wanna shut down and don't let anyone in because we need human connection,love,belonging.You need to find the middle ground sometimes the action of what is taken within the behaviors.In response of what you're going to be abandoned,betrayed,jaded,left these body sensations,they creep up.So then when you start going into fight flight mode and you start having thoughts such as,well,I don't need you.I was fine before I met you,I'll be fine.Now I can do this all on my own.I don't need you thinking that we don't need love and belonging.We do,but we don't wanna be treated unhealthy either.If you're gonna leave me,then I'm gonna leave and abandon you first.Shut down.They give you the cold shoulder.They avoid.They go away.They're out of there before they can be abandoned themselves though.That's how it affects relationships.Go from one end of being needy to the other end of just shutting down.What does shut down look like?Chin up in arrogance.Arms crossed Turn cheek.You turn off the search for connection,you become an island,so to speak,because you're always expecting abandonment,betrayal to be hurt,and it decreases any attempts to reach out to others.The main goal is to reestablish safety and connection through healthy co-regulation.Get someone you trust a photo,a plush animal.Come up with small past present triggers of change that might put the nervous system in distress.Such as a change in doctor's appointment,unexpected traffic jam,airplane time delay.This last week we had,I had a flat tire.He just said,low pressure.I was like,oh my gosh,I have to go work.I have a flat tire,was fixed.But then when I went from one to another again,and I heard the air coming out of the.The tire.And I'm like,it just got fixed.Oh my gosh,what am I gonna do?And luckily,my husband was nearby and he went and the patch had fallen off and they fixed it again.I,I was able to regulate my nervous system.Yes,it was stressful,but I was still able to manage to problem solve.And this takes time and effort.You wanna reassure the situation with some type of behavioral.Reassurance.Use soft tone of voice,slow speech,everything is going to be okay.You wanna have those words of reassurance.I'm here for you and sometimes we can self-talk.Studies show those are very healthy.I'm here for you.We can be able to overcome this situation.You talk yourself through this,have some words of compassion and validation.Know that we've done this before,we can do it again.Keep in mind that a person who grew up in a,in an unstable home environment with unstable relationships,yes,there's some thoughts,behaviors,emotions that contribute to these issues of feeling safe and sense of stability.We have this worry that someone will leave on the other spectrum with that same issue.Thoughts of.I'm not going to get into a relationship and it's not safe.I'm gonna protect myself,going to live my own life,so I don't ever have to find myself ever being that hurt.Start creating fences,walls of defense,mechanisms around yourself.These are things that you created during your childhood because it was unsafe.If you're an adult and you are in a safe environment,know that these things creep up.Doesn't make it real,it just makes it programming.These are stuck experiences that were not processed.Knowing the strategies you've heard before,if you create that safety plan,talk yourself.Know your values,your boundaries.Ask those questions to get to know people.These thoughts that might creep up,unhelpful thoughts.You can challenge them,some characteristics with these type of people.You're fine being social,you aggressively seek connection or you avoid it altogether.You go from one extreme to the other.You need time alone to refuel the nervous system.People who need so much time with others that the moment they do not know what their plans are,there is a sense of weathering.They go into a down spiral of negative momentum with thoughts of,I'm not wanted and I'm not loved cuz nobody's calling me.Nobody wants to do anything.You're making it circumstantial that you have to have people around to define who you are.The idea of any time without any active plans,with experience of loneliness,feeling sensations,thoughts,those are some of the characteristics.With people who,have not been able to process the betrayal.Rejection issues,the idea of any time without active plans,loneliness,there's difference.Loneliness is where you don't plan it.You can have a alone time.Being alone intentionally is something that you're fine with.It was a planned isolation.Be unplanned.Isolation creates a sense of instability and increases your nervous system.The moment you didn't have a say and you find yourself alone.That sense of abandonment just comes crashing in,and the goal is to come into awareness on how the past was affecting the present sense of safety with triggers of uncertainty,deal with these painful feelings of abandonment.Where you won't be overwhelmed.Walk into this pain of fear while staying present and regulated.When you are triggered with such triggers,feel them without dissociating or zoning out.A strategy is the body scan.You wanna feel the body sensations that are associated with the past events,not the present.Learn to feel more connected by using a body as an anchor for your attention.The purpose of the body scan is to have an introduction to sensing and feeling rather than thinking.And during the exercise you wanna imagine,put attention on a spotlight that illuminates different parts of the body.As you shift your focus,have the light shine on a particular part.Notice that feeling that comes up.Is it warm,tingling sensation,or nothing at all?Don't think about it.Just feel it.Find a position that feels comfortable,but wakeful,don't fall asleep on me either.Sitting down.You can also stand up,sensing the contact with the surface that's supporting you.Let your hands and arms rest gently.Let your shoulders be soft.Start by bringing awareness to breathing.Notice the sensations as you breathe in and notice the body inflating,expanding.And notice the sensations as you breathe out.And just follow the breath.Notice the body rising as you breathe in,falling as you breathe out.And whenever your mind wanders,see if you can just gently bring it back and just focus on your breath.And you wanna bring your awareness down to your feet.Feel the souls of your feet,the contact with the ground.Notice where they're warm,cold,tingling.Do they feel the same or different from one foot to the other.Feeling aware of the whole of your feet,from the tops of your feet to the contact of your toes.Move awareness to your legs,your ankles.Notice the parts of your legs,whether they feel cool or warm.Just be curious and let your mind wander.Let go of the legs and go to your lower back.Let it arise.How heavy is it of the pushing down?Of the gravity,notice,the temperature,the tingling sensations,or nothing at all.Going from your back.Go to your shoulders.Be aware of your chest,your tummy,your ribs,your abdomen,what sensations are coming up,reconnecting and feeling the sensations in the front of your body,the movement of your breath,the rising and falling of the sensations.Letting go of the arms,moving awareness to your neck,your face,the whole of your head.Notice the tiny muscles around your eyes,your jaws,your neck,and expand your awareness to include the whole of your body from the top of your head down to your toes,feeling the sensations throughout the body.Take a moment and just notice how it was to sense and feel your body.Rather than thinking about it and now that this is something you can practice,bring into your daily life,perhaps moments in your day to sense contact with your seat,the movement of your breath,and just how your body is feeling.And I will leave you with this quote.Sometimes you don't need to hear their excuses or what they have to say for themselves.Because their actions already spoke the truth.Until our next conversation,stay safe and be well.Thank you for listening to Conversations at Work with Anita Sandoval.Know someone who needs help in having healthy conversations.Share this episode and make sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next one until our next conversation.