#79 5 Reasons Why People Cheat

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A couple of weeks ago, I shared my thoughts on if “once a cheater, always a cheater” is true, and today I’m continuing the conversation around the reasons why people cheat in a relationship and getting curious around what’s driving these behaviours. For some people this may be a challenging episode to listen to, so please make sure you’re in the right mindset to listen.

WHAT WE’LL COVER:

• Wounds around worthiness

• Disconnection and loneliness

• Feeling like it’s the easy way out

• Being seen through rose coloured glasses

FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:

• Use the code JUNE50 for 50% off 3 masterclasses or the Higher Love Course -stephanierigg.com 

• Apply for my 6-month Homecoming Mastermind

• Download the free guide: Attachment 101

• Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment

• Visit my website

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Episode Transcript

0:00:00.09 → 0:00:34.30

You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship Coach Stephanie Rigg and I'm really glad you're here. It's hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking all about infidelity.

0:00:34.49 → 0:01:40.88

Now, this is a big topic and it's a really sensitive topic and for some people it's a really hard topic if you have been in the position of being cheated on or otherwise grappling with some sort of betrayal in your relationship. So I just want to say at the outset that for some people this might be a really challenging episode to listen to and so obviously be discerning and make sure that you are in the right state of mind. If you are someone who does struggle to talk and hear about this and might be challenged by what we're going to talk about today. So I'm going to be sharing five reasons why people might cheat in a relationship. And there are so many disclaimers that I want to add here, because I think that it's so important to understand that when we seek to get curious about why someone might do something like cheating in their relationship, that that curiosity is in no way intended to justify, to explain, to excuse behaviours that are harmful and that do amount to a breach of trust, do amount to a betrayal.

0:01:40.96 → 0:02:44.94

So letting both of those be true, right? Holding in one hand the curiosity while also allowing yourself to feel if you have been cheated on, allowing yourself to feel all of the things that you feel, because that's perfectly understandable and very human for that to be an extremely painful experience. So in no way is any discussion of reasons why someone might do this intended to excuse or explain away that behaviour, to justify it or make it okay. But I think that it's important for us to get curious because the simple fact of the matter is that cheating is really, really common, much more so than we'd like to believe, but it is very, very prevalent. And so I think we have to get curious around what's going on here, what's driving these behaviours and how can we seek to understand that and maybe seek to build relationships with ourselves and with others that don't fall prey to this.

0:02:44.99 → 0:03:38.70

And again, I'm choosing my words very carefully because in no way am I suggesting that if you've been in relationship or you are in relationship with someone where there's been infidelity, not suggesting it is your responsibility to improve the relationship single handedly so that your partner doesn't cheat, right? This is complex. That's why I am treading lightly because there's a lot in this, and particularly if you're someone who is more anxiously attached, there's a good chance that you are experiencing a lot of self blame and a lot of responsibility taking. If this has happened to you feeling like you should have done more or could have done something differently, or that it was your fault in some way if your partner cheated on you and feeling that urge to fix it and to close the gap between you. So that was a bit of a long intro, but it speaks to the delicacy and complexity of this topic.

0:03:38.76 → 0:04:24.99

So please know that I'm going to do my best to deal with this in a sensitive way while also asking the hard questions and delving a little into what can be under the surface. And my hope is that in doing so, we can depersonalise a little. Because as we'll see in today's discussion, none of these five reasons are because their partner is not good enough, or because their partner is not attractive, or their partner is insert whatever harmful thing you might have been telling yourself that makes this your fault. Right? In the vast majority of cases, I would say people cheat because of their own stuff, whether that's unmet needs or disconnection or shame or unworthiness or any of the other things we'll get into today.

0:04:25.14 → 0:05:05.74

I think it's very rare that it's as simple as, oh, I'm just not attracted to my partner, or oh, I just want a cheap thrill and so I'm going to go and have a fling with someone. I think those cases are really the minority. I think oftentimes there's much more complicated stuff going on on an individual level under the surface that drive people to these patterns. It's really very much a sign of our shadow working. So hopefully, even if it is hard to hear, it will help you to see that if you've been cheated on, if you've been in this situation, that a lot of it is not about you and probably mostly all of it is not about you.

0:05:05.79 → 0:05:58.22

So it might, at the very least, alleviate some of that self blame and shame and the low self worth that can flow from these situations. Before I dive into the meat of today's conversation, a couple of quick announcements. If you're listening to this, by the date that this is released, I will be in Italy running my first retreat, which is very, very exciting. Then I will be travelling around Italy for the month of June and I've decided while I'm away I will continue to have podcasts coming out, but I'm going to offer 50% off on all of my Master classes and my Higher Love course, which is my Breakup course. So if you use the code June 50 on my website on any of those three Master classes, or my Higher Love course, you can save 50% on those.

0:05:58.27 → 0:06:30.53

So that is as big a discount as I ever give. So, as a great opportunity over this next month while I am travelling, to get in on some of those programmes at a great price. So you can head to stephaniereg.com or via the link in the show notes and use the code June 50 to save 50% on any of those online products. Second quick announcement is just to share the featured review for today, which is I'm so grateful I found this podcast. As a therapist, it's been really helpful in deepening my understanding about attachment in a gentle and non shaming way.

0:06:30.65 → 0:06:47.61

The podcast is very relatable and easy to digest. Not only do I personally get so much from the podcast, but I can also recommend it to clients. Thanks so much for sharing your wisdom. Thank you for that beautiful review. I'm honoured that you are not only finding it personally helpful, but are able to share it with the people that you're working with.

0:06:47.65 → 0:07:06.55

That's beautiful to see the ripple effect of this work and to see it helping so many people. So thank you for your support. If that was your review, please send an email to podcast@stephanierigg.com. My team will set you up with free access to one of my master classes of your choice. Okay, let's dive into this conversation.

0:07:06.65 → 0:07:28.67

Five reasons why people might cheat in their relationship. Now, again, I know that I tend to go heavy on the disclaimers, but I think when they're important conversations like this, and heavy and sensitive conversations, it's important to frame them appropriately. This is not an exhaustive list of if you've been cheated on. It must have been one of these five reasons. It's not the only five reasons.

0:07:28.77 → 0:07:42.14

These are five reasons why people might cheat. Okay? So take all of that with all of the grains of salt, be discerning. As always, I will trust you to take what works, what is helpful from this and leave what doesn't. Okay?

0:07:42.27 → 0:08:30.67

The first reason why people cheat in their relationships is unworthiness. So this can show up in a lot of different ways. And I think that most of us have some level of unworthiness, some kind of wound around worthiness. If you listen to my previous episode with Vienna Farron, she talks about the worthiness wound as one of the key origin wounds and how we all have some level of worthiness wound. But for those who really struggle with extremely low self worth, there can be a sense of I don't feel that I am worthy of the relationship that I have, I don't feel deserving of the relationship that I have, I don't have any self respect, I hate myself or I don't like myself.

0:08:30.82 → 0:09:26.21

And so I may as well do this thing that maybe because it feels good, maybe because I get attention, maybe because I get validation, maybe because I just feel so thoroughly undeserving of the person I'm in relationship with. But that unworthiness wound can have a lot of tendrils or tentacles that come from it that can lead us to really behave in shadowy ways. So it can just lead us to kind of want to blow things up for ourselves, or maybe not to see the point in trying in relationships or to just do what feels fun and cheap and easy rather than what feels in integrity. And again, I think that can really come from a lack of self respect and a lack of self trust and self boundaries. All of these things that I think are symptoms of a fundamental sense of unworthiness.

0:09:26.79 → 0:10:13.71

So noticing that and really recognising, that an unworthiness wound. While that's not going to drive everyone to infidelity, it certainly can be a way that we can sabotage our relationships from a place of feeling like we don't deserve them, that we're not worthy of love. And whether that's trying to destroy what we have, or whether it's desperately seeking the cheap win of someone else's attention or validation, I think that unworthiness can definitely be a factor in driving people to infidelity in their relationships. Okay, the next one that I want to share is loneliness or disconnection. So this one's probably more relational than the others.

0:10:13.91 → 0:11:01.37

So in circumstances where we feel disconnected and I think that this probably is more true of more avoidant leaning people, that there can be this sense of I feel disconnected from you, I feel like you don't like me anyway, you're always angry at me, you're always upset with me. And so I feel kind of like you don't care anyway. I feel so far away from you, we're so unhappy I may as well cheat because our relationships kind of in the dust anyway. And so there can be these mental acrobatics that people do of you wouldn't care anyway. Our relationship is practically over.

0:11:01.49 → 0:11:33.27

It's all a sham anyway. We're going to break up. So I might as well just follow this thing. Whether it's again like a cheap one off or whether it's exploring a connection with someone new. I think that sense of the primary relationship being really frayed and disconnected that people can justify infidelity as not so much revenge, but a sense of someone being so indifferent towards them for such a long time.

0:11:33.31 → 0:12:21.99

And the immense loneliness that flows from that and the immense disconnection. And I think that loneliness within a relationship is very, very sad and very, very common, that people feel so much suffering because the person who is meant to be their source of safety and comfort, their rock, their stability, that source of companionship is actually the source of a lot of pain and disappointment and sadness and grief. And I think that the loneliness that flows from that can be so immense that we want to blame that person and we want to justify our own selfish behaviours by pointing to that and saying, well, what would you expect me to do? You haven't paid attention to me in years. Or, you never even care when I do this.

0:12:22.03 → 0:12:57.78

Or why would you care if I go and have an affair? With someone or cheat on you. So I think that that kind of story, that version of events is usually coming from a place of loneliness or disconnection. The next one that I want to share is sabotage. So for some people, and this can be conscious or not, for some people, they want out of the relationship or they feel so overwhelmed by the relationship, maybe they feel very triggered by it, maybe they struggle with avoidance and they can't bring themselves to actually end the relationship.

0:12:57.91 → 0:13:40.51

So they just try and torpedo it with behaviour that they think is going to be a non negotiable deal breaker for their partner. So they might sabotage the relationship by cheating, by doing something really reckless, by making a bad decision. And sometimes they can do this in a way that they feel like they're going to get caught and they almost want to get caught. Again, that might be conscious or not. But when we feel like we don't want to directly say to someone, I'm not happy, or I don't want to be with you, or any other thing that might make them very sad and upset and hurt, sometimes turning ourselves into the villain or into the bad guy feels like the easy way out.

0:13:40.63 → 0:14:28.94

Somewhat ironically, obviously, it's not a situation that we think of as pleasant or easy, but in a twisted way, sometimes making yourself into the villain feels like an easier option than just going to a partner and saying, I don't love you anymore, I'm not happy here, or I want out of this relationship. Sometimes leaning towards a big blow up that sort of takes the decision out of your hands and makes someone just so angry and furious that you've crossed a clear line and there's no turning back. Sometimes that allows us to bypass some of the messy stuff of just being vulnerable about how we're feeling in a situation. So that sabotage. And again, this can show up in a lot of different ways, a lot of different permutations and situations.

0:14:29.00 → 0:15:23.89

But I think that wanting out of the relationship and sabotaging it through infidelity as a way to really tip you over that clear line of a breach of trust that will hopefully remove a lot of the conversation and the negotiation that might otherwise happen. That is a strategy that some people can use and that can be one of the reasons that people might engage in infidelity the next reason why people might cheat. And I think that this is one that's really overlooked a lot of the time, is that they like who they get to be with the other person. So it's not so much about like, oh, this other person is so amazing and they're so attractive and they're so much better than my partner. It's this other person sees me with fresh eyes, this other person thinks I'm incredible, I'm not saddled with the baggage with this new person.

0:15:23.96 → 0:16:32.01

They don't feel frustrated with me, they aren't disappointed in me, they don't see me through the lens of a long term relationship with unmet needs and fights and conflict loops and all of those things that can lead a relationship to feel a bit heavy and exhausting sometimes. So there can be this sense of having a clean slate with another person, or even better than a clean slate, having that newness of when you first meet someone and connect with them. And you have such rose coloured classes. And so not only is it how good it feels to be attracted to someone in that way, but to have someone be attracted to you in that way, to be so excited about you, to think that you're incredible and really put you on a pedestal. If you've felt for a long time like your partner is only critical of you, or your partner doesn't see you in a very positive light or is consistently disappointed, then it can be very, very attractive to gravitate towards someone who does see you in that positive light.

0:16:32.08 → 0:17:49.13

So again, this is certainly not to suggest that it's the person who has been cheated on's, fault for driving someone to cheat on them. I don't think that that's a fair allocation of responsibility. But it can be a relational dynamic if the relationship has become really unloving or it's just not an atmosphere that has a lot of positive emotion and admiration and respect that's freely given and exchanged between partners, that the allure of someone who sees you with clean eyes and even rose coloured glasses can be very, very alluring for people related to that. One is not only do you get to present yourself anew with someone, but you might be able to experiment with new ways of expression that feel a bit vulnerable or edgy with your partner. I had an episode a little while ago with Vanessa and Xander Marin, she's a sex therapist and she was talking about a pattern that happens in virtually all long term relationships without effort to counter it, which is that our range of sexual expression tends to narrow a lot.

0:17:49.22 → 0:18:59.96

So while we might start being a little sexually adventurous with our partner and having a lot of sexual chemistry and intensity, not only does the chemistry and intensity tend to taper a little, which is normal, but what we do sexually or romantically, physically, we tend to get quite into a routine around that. And in a weird way, it feels much more vulnerable to try new things or to experiment, or to put yourself out there with your long term partner with whom you have these routines and these ways of being. It feels much more vulnerable to show those sides of you to express a fantasy or a desire or anything like that. Way more vulnerable to do that with a long term partner than it does to share with someone with whom you're having a one night stand. So I think that that other aspect of liking who you get to be with the other person or experimenting with who you get to be with the other person without the hangover of it being your partner and having to face them the next day and the next day and the next day.

0:19:00.09 → 0:19:46.21

That can be something that drives people to be really attracted to the idea of infidelity. And again, if we dig into that a little we can see that shame and embarrassment and self consciousness is really at the heart of that. So again, not about the partner but really about the individual and all of their shadowy stuff and all of their wounded parts that are using these strategies to keep themselves safe. So the last reason that I want to share is sometimes people will cheat to get their partner's attention. So it might be trying to almost as a last ditch effort to say like I'm here and I need you and why aren't you paying attention to me?

0:19:46.25 → 0:20:42.87

Why aren't you taking seriously all of these things that I'm saying when I say to you that I'm unhappy and that I'm lonely and that I need you and you're not here. It can almost be like raising the stakes or taking things up a notch by cheating. And that might be physical infidelity or it might be an emotional affair, but it can almost be a way of threatening a partner, saying like I have other options so don't take me for granted. So I would say this is probably more likely to be seen among anxiously attached people, this tendency to almost not so much mate switch, which is the evolutionary psychological term for this, but to try and make a partner jealous I suppose is essentially what it is. It's saying like don't get complacent around me.

0:20:42.99 → 0:21:27.57

And when they feel like they're not being taken seriously or being heard or being valued, then they might cheat or take steps towards that as a way to really raise the stakes and get their partner's attention to say, if you don't start taking me seriously, here's what I'm going to do. So you better start listening and paying attention. So that can definitely be a pattern. And as I said, that's more likely to happen around anxiously attached people. And the reason for that is simply that we can contrast a couple of these examples whereas the sabotage limb of this tends to be more for avoidant people, where the strategy is essentially to create distance.

0:21:27.73 → 0:22:17.08

I do this to increase the distance between us because that's what my avoidance strategies would have me do. This more anxious strategy which is cheating or being unfaithful or taking steps towards that to get someone's attention is actually not about creating distance, it's trying to narrow the gap. And again, that sounds crazy, right? It sounds like the opposite of what you would want to do but it's like I'm being unfaithful to try and save our relationship to try and get you to notice me, because I'm terrified that you don't notice me or that you don't care or that you are indifferent to what I do. And so it's ultimately a way to try and close that gap, but obviously not a very healthy or advisable strategy because it can do a lot of harm in the process.

0:22:17.95 → 0:23:07.42

So those were five reasons why people might cheat in a relationship. Just to recap, those were that they have an unworthiness wound and they feel undeserving of their relationship and so their shadow parts kind of grab the wheel and drive them to behave in really reckless ways from a place of not feeling worthy, not feeling deserving of good things. The second one was feeling lonely and disconnected and feeling like infidelity is either a stepping stone to breaking up or feeling like the relationship is dead in the water already. So what does it really matter? It's sort of this sense of despondency and having given up on the relationship and checked out, so it feels like cheating is kind of inconsequential.

0:23:07.53 → 0:24:02.32

The next one was sabotage. So when someone uses cheating as a way to blow up their relationship because they can't bring themselves to actually have the conversation directly and deal with someone's sadness or pleading or anything like that, so they really torpedo it in a way that means it's probably too far gone to salvage. The fourth one was they like who they get to be with the other person that allows them to experience a side of themselves or be seen in a certain way that they're missing in their relationship. And the last one was to make their partner jealous or to get their partner's attention, often as a last ditch way to try and save the relationship or to get their partner to notice them when they're feeling invisible or taken for granted. If you've enjoyed this episode, I hope that it has really been helpful.

0:24:02.38 → 0:25:05.33

And as I said at the start, I know it's a really tough conversation to have and brings up a lot of things for a lot of people, but it really is very common and so I'm hoping that it's at least given you a bit more perspective and curiosity. Again, not to excuse this behaviour, but to understand what might be driving it and what's going on under the hood that isn't simply, I'm not good enough, or they didn't love me, because often that is not at all the driver. And if you're listening to this, and you've been the person who has cheated, who's been unfaithful, who's breached a boundary, and you feel a lot of shame and guilt around that, I'm hoping that today's discussion, equally, has been supportive for you in understanding what some of the drivers might be, other than I'm a terrible person. Because I think we can beat ourselves up about this, when really, as I said, it's incredibly common, and most of the time it's just coming from a wounded place rather than being a cold, heartless person who is out to hurt people. Because I think that is a tiny minority of cases.

0:25:05.43 → 0:25:34.61

And the more that we can be compassionate towards ourselves, the more likely we are to be able to shift that pattern and make sure it doesn't happen in future relationships, rather than letting those shadow parts run the show. So if you've enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a five star rating or a review. It really does help so much. And a final reminder that you can get 50% off any of my Master classes on my course for the month of June on my website with the code June 50. All one word.

0:25:34.73 → 0:25:57.08

Thanks guys. I look forward to seeing you again soon. Take care. Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephaniergig.com and if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating.

0:25:57.14 → 0:26:01.42

It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon.

#78 Understanding Your Origin Wounds with Vienna Pharaon

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In today's episode, I'm joined by Vienna Pharaon. Vienna is a licensed marriage & family therapist, creator of the hugely successful @mindfulmft Instagram account, and recently published author of The Origins of You. Vienna has the gift of conveying complex and emotionally dense topics with such nuance. Today she joins me on the podcast to talk about origin wounds and how they impact patterns in relationships as adults and how we can honour our pain and experience.

Our relationships are deeply influenced by formative experiences and early interactions, shaping the ways we navigate intimacy, trust, and self-worth. My guest in this episode, Vienna Pharaon, explores this concept through what she calls "origin wounds," the unhealed hurts from our past that profoundly impact our adult lives. These origin wounds create patterns that often feel inescapable and may lead us to repeat the same relational struggles, even when we know they’re not serving us.

By understanding the origins of these wounds and their impact, we can begin to heal, creating the freedom to choose healthier behaviours and build fulfilling, lasting relationships. Below is a breakdown of the five origin wounds and how they affect our lives.

1. The Worthiness Wound

The worthiness wound develops when we experience conditional love as children. This might look like only receiving praise, love, or attention when we perform, achieve, or conform to others’ expectations. This experience often teaches us that we’re only lovable when we’re “good enough” in others' eyes. The internalised message becomes, "I’m only valuable if I meet certain standards," which can fuel lifelong patterns of perfectionism and people-pleasing.

In adulthood, those with a worthiness wound might struggle to express their needs or set boundaries, fearing that showing vulnerability or imperfection could lead to rejection. This wound can lead to exhaustion and resentment, as individuals often suppress their true selves to gain approval. Healing the worthiness wound involves recognising inherent value without the need for external validation and practising self-compassion.

2. The Belonging Wound

The belonging wound stems from feeling like we need to change ourselves to fit within our family system. Children with a belonging wound learn to sacrifice their authenticity in favour of fitting in, often absorbing the unspoken rule that “this is who we need you to be to belong here.” In families where conformity is highly valued, children may feel pressured to adopt certain beliefs, behaviours, or identities to maintain connection.

This wound often creates a deep need for external validation and approval. As adults, those with a belonging wound may feel caught between their desires and the need to conform to others’ expectations, fearing exclusion or rejection. This might lead to either conformity or rebelliousness, as people try to find ways to resolve their inner conflict. Healing involves allowing oneself to be fully authentic, realising that true belonging doesn’t require sacrificing one’s core self.

3. The Prioritisation Wound

A prioritisation wound arises when a child feels they are not important enough to be a priority. This may occur in families where parents are preoccupied with work, other siblings, or addiction. Even when the situation is understandable, the child perceives themselves as less important than the other demands on the parent’s time and energy.

In adulthood, the prioritisation wound often results in overgiving and self-sacrifice. People with this wound may try to prove their worth by prioritising others’ needs over their own. This frantic overgiving can lead to burnout and resentment, with a common thought pattern of “Why doesn’t anyone prioritise me as I prioritise them?” This wound calls for a shift in focus—learning to prioritise oneself first and setting boundaries around one’s time and energy.

4. The Trust Wound

The trust wound forms in environments marked by secrecy, broken promises, or inconsistency. When a child learns they cannot reliably depend on caregivers, they internalise a belief that the world and the people in it are untrustworthy. This experience may lead to hyper-vigilance and difficulty trusting others in adulthood.

As adults, those with a trust wound may gravitate towards emotionally unavailable partners or situations that recreate their early experiences of insecurity, as familiar pain feels deceptively safe. They may struggle with letting go of control, becoming overly focused on monitoring and “managing” relationships to prevent disappointment or betrayal. Healing the trust wound requires learning to trust oneself first, discerning which relationships are genuinely safe, and taking small steps towards building trust with others.

5. The Safety Wound

The safety wound often originates from environments where physical, emotional, or psychological safety was lacking. Experiences of abuse, neglect, or high conflict in childhood create an internal alarm system, making it difficult for individuals to feel secure or relax in relationships.

In adulthood, those with a safety wound may avoid vulnerability and intimacy, fearing that getting close to others will expose them to potential harm. They might have heightened reactivity in conflict situations or withdraw altogether as a form of self-protection. Healing the safety wound involves learning to self-soothe, set healthy boundaries, and create internal and external conditions for safety in relationships.

Healing the Origin Wounds

Each of these origin wounds shapes relational dynamics, often manifesting in behaviours that block connection and hinder intimacy. But by identifying and addressing these wounds, we can release the need for familiar, protective behaviours that no longer serve us. Healing origin wounds opens the door to greater internal peace, self-compassion, and balanced, fulfilling relationships. It allows us to replace the old, self-protective narratives with ones rooted in self-trust, genuine connection, and mutual respect.

These wounds are not a life sentence; they are an invitation to understand and care for our past selves so we can move forward with freedom and self-awareness. Through conscious healing, we can forge new paths in our relationships, choosing to love ourselves and others in ways that honour our authentic selves, rather than reenacting past pain.

FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:

• Download the free guide: Attachment 101

• Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment

• Visit my website

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You might also like…

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Episode Transcript

0:00:00.17 → 0:00:33.58

You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge, and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach Stephanie Rigg, and I'm really glad you're here. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment.

0:00:33.61 → 0:01:05.66

Today I'm joined by Vienna. Vienna, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. So you've just released a book, The Origins of you, which I am partway through, and I have to say, maybe like a few pages in. I was listening to the audiobook, but what I imagine would be a few pages into the introduction, and I was in tears, vouch for the fact that it's incredible. And your work, more broadly has been so insightful for me.

0:01:05.76 → 0:02:05.80

I was saying to my partner in advance of recording this that in the early days of my Instagram account a few years ago, before I had any confidence to share any original thought, I think my Instagram account was more or less a proxy fan account of yours. We share so much of your work because it is so profoundly insightful and you have such a gift for conveying really complex, emotionally dense and tender topics with such nuance and in a way that is so compassionate and really invites people, I suppose, to feel safe to turn towards those things in this work. So I love for people who are maybe not familiar with your work, although I suspect many people will be. You focus a lot on family systems and origin wounds. Can you give a little context for why that's so important and why that's kind of the lens and the starting point for your work with people?

0:02:06.97 → 0:02:14.31

Yeah. And thank you for that generous introduction. Yeah. Just taking that in. Thank you.

0:02:14.46 → 0:02:56.67

I came into this work unsurprisingly, as most therapists do, to resolve that which was unresolved in my own life. And I chuckle because I think sometimes we know it as therapists that that's why we're entering into this field of work, and other times we don't know. And I didn't really know it. I think I had taken an aptitude test when I was in 7th grade, and it said that I would either do something in sports or I would become a marriage therapist. And I got into psychology, and I was curious about relationships, and I got into this work not actually knowing that there was unresolved pain in my life.

0:02:56.87 → 0:03:28.73

We'll rewind a little bit. My parents went through a separation, nine year divorce process when I was in first grade. And when I look back on it now with perspective, it was highly conflictual, really hard to be around and witness. There was a lot of psychological abuse, manipulation, gaslighting, paranoia, emotional flooding, just high, high, high conflict. And I am an only child, so as a little tiny human in this system.

0:03:28.93 → 0:03:50.96

One of the things that I took on was believing that there wasn't space for me to not be okay. Because what I saw were the two adults in my life not being okay. And whether that was true or not didn't really matter. What mattered was that was my perspective as a tiny human existing in this environment. And so I started to fly under the radar.

0:03:51.02 → 0:04:22.47

I started to really present as a needless little girl. I was always okay, I was always fine, I was always unaffected. And that role that developed early on really came through with me into my adult years and relationships. And I continued to be this needless woman, was always fine, the cool girl persona, totally unaffected by things, boundaryless, et cetera, et cetera. And it's funny, when I started my graduate work, my parents divorced.

0:04:22.52 → 0:04:33.41

Didn't affect me, I promise. They're good friends now. We do holidays together. They can drive in the same car. I had all these explanations and reasons for why it did not affect me.

0:04:33.48 → 0:05:21.70

And what it eventually brought me to was that I had to hold that position in my life because not holding that position would require me to feel not holding that position would require me to make space for me to have not been okay. And that was a very overwhelming and confronting thing for me to be with for a long period of time. And there's a catalyst in my mid, late 20s that really brought me to the surrender, really brought me to my knees. It's like, oh, my gosh, I see that I have maintained this role forever my entire life, and there's no room for me to not be okay. There's no room for me to have an emotional experience.

0:05:22.39 → 0:05:58.60

This was still just the extension of what I had internalised and absorbed as a little girl. And that's a bit of my personal story. But professionally, I continued to come up against this, like people who would present with unwanted patterns in their adult lives where they weren't able to just make a behavioural shift. And what I kept finding was that it kept being tied to unresolved wounding that happened in their past. I take the lens of looking at our family of origin.

0:05:58.70 → 0:06:35.82

Obviously, there are plenty of other influences that affect us along the way. Media, society, coaches, teachers, past partners. There's plenty of influence that will contribute to this. But I look at our family of origin the first place, the first model, our first education on all of the things from communication to conflict to boundaries, to what love is, what love is not, what safety is, what safety is not, and so forth. And to look at how those frameworks are running the show today.

0:06:36.75 → 0:07:15.63

Yeah, and thank you for sharing that snippet of your story. That was really what impacted me when I was listening because it really struck very deeply. And I think my kind of inner child, my wounded little one, felt so seen by that story, because even though our circumstances are different, that was very much my pattern in my family system, as well as my parents relationship. They're still together now, but definitely went through pretty regular cycles of strain and, oh, we're going to get divorced. Oh, wait, no, we're not.

0:07:15.72 → 0:08:02.20

From when I was very young. And so, in addition to that piece, my sister struggled with her mental health and so there was really this experience of, like, why would I want to contribute to the tension and the drama and all of this stuff that's going on that feels so unsafe for me. My only priority in this system is to stabilise other people and to not contribute to all of that stuff that's going on. In my first therapy session a couple of years ago, I turned up and sat down and sort of proclaimed that I was low maintenance. I just had to figure out whether I needed to leave my relationship with my partner at the time, who was bringing up so much stuff like, yeah, I'm fine, it's just about him.

0:08:03.77 → 0:08:35.75

I can be the priority. Yeah. And you can imagine the raised eyebrow that I got plonking myself down in the therapy chair and declaring my low maintenance, saying, yeah, I've always been the low maintenance one. I'm pretty go with the flow. I don't really have much by way of needs, but I keep coming it up against these patterns and I can kind of look back on that and laugh at it now, but, yeah, I think it is, it's like the being fine is evidence of the wound.

0:08:35.80 → 0:09:03.11

And it's not to say that that's a bad thing, but it costs us, I think is a good way of looking at it. There was a line in your book, I was driving, listening to the audiobook and I had to pull over and write it in my notes. I think you're actually quoting I think it was Alexandra Solomon. You said, I'm going to butcher it like our wounds and our gifts are next door neighbours, or maybe vice versa. And I thought that was so beautiful, I actually used it as sort of a discussion point in my Mastermind programme this week.

0:09:03.23 → 0:09:54.34

But looking at it's not that these things are bad or wrong, it's that we've come up with strategies to keep ourselves safe and get our needs met from a very young age. And they are formative in moulding us and who we become and how we move about the world. So I think that it's a really compassionate lens to see ourselves in that light, rather than to feel like this is a pattern that I have to break because there's something wrong with me and seeing it as some sort of defect. Yeah, that's the reframe, right, is that our systems are brilliant systems. Our systems are incredibly clever and instead of being at odds with them instead of being in the shame, in the guilt, in the embarrassment, in the frustration, irritation, annoyance of oh, here we go again, right?

0:09:54.52 → 0:11:01.03

It's to replace that with the curiosity of what is this behaviour serving to be fine, which is something that you and I both can connect to, was part of the survival, was part of how we learned to navigate through the system at that time. And as you pointed out, if we continue to hold on to I am fine all the time, what that does is it decenters us, it makes it so that there's no space for us to have anything outside of being fine as something that can be prioritised. And all of the things that that affects is intimacy, connection, ability to actually communicate, ability to be in conflict in an authentic way. So we start to see how the things that allowed us to survive back in the day may be blocking many of the things that we crave and wish for. The quote about our pain and our gifts being next to our neighbours, it's a powerful message.

0:11:01.20 → 0:11:25.27

Most people will say well, I wouldn't be who I am today without what happened. That is true. The valid point and this fear that if we actually tune into what happened that that somehow means that it will eradicate our gifts. That somehow we will lose our edge. That somehow this piece, this part of ourselves that became exceptional at whatever the thing is.

0:11:25.34 → 0:12:27.65

So I became exceptional at following stories, at listening to the details, at never forgetting something. Because when you grow up in an environment where there is a lot of manipulation, where there's psychological abuse, where there's gaslighting for me, what that required of me was to scan my environment constantly, to look for what was true and what was not true. To remember every last thing that was said so that I couldn't be hoodwinked. And what that turned me into was a phenomenal therapist who remembers everything that people tells her, who can follow a story successfully. And the difference though, so that we do not have the intersection of trauma and gifts is that there is a shift at some point where our gifts are either motivated by the pain or by the trauma or by the wounding or they're motivated by the healing.

0:12:27.78 → 0:12:54.73

And when we can step into the awareness that I can still have this gift, even though I am tending to my pain. There's such a beautiful opening that happens there, and that feels so important for me to say out loud to your listeners. Because I think a lot of times people hold on to the story of, well, but I am who I am today. I'm proud of who this person is. And yes, be proud of who you are, absolutely.

0:12:54.90 → 0:13:19.03

And the gifts that you acquired through going through the hard things that you went through, those gifts will not be taken. But you do not need to hold on to the pain in the same way and be motivated and driven by that pain in order to still show up in the world today in this incredible way that you do. Yeah. Beautiful. I'm thinking it might be useful if we sort of took a step back.

0:13:19.07 → 0:13:53.69

And I know that a lot of people have a level of resistance around looking at family stuff and a level of kind of innate protectiveness over how their childhood played out. And again, I can relate to that. Up until a few years ago, I would have said, nothing to see here. And I know you talk about finding this balance of not overstating it, not understating it, not maximising or minimising, I think is the phrase you use. What would you say to people who do notice that kind of impulse to protect or defend their childhood and their parents?

0:13:53.87 → 0:14:05.33

Oh, yeah, right. Again, I know this one well. There's a lot of reasons why we want to steer clear of it. Sometimes we're afraid of what it is that we're going to find. It feels like it's going to be too overwhelming.

0:14:05.38 → 0:14:29.85

We don't want to go there. What's going to happen when I open up Pandora's box? We appreciate the relationships that we have with our family at this point. They're in an okay place, and the idea of going back in there and looking for something and exploring something might change the dynamics that we have today that we're happy with and feel like we can manage all right. Maybe other people have somebody deceased in their family.

0:14:29.94 → 0:15:22.66

And so the idea of exploring something and that person not being here to have conversation or for reconciliation, that can be a constraint. We hear people often say they did the best that they could with what they had, and there are tremendous narratives around that that will block us from going to that place. And sometimes we idealise what our childhood was. This was pretty good. We put ourselves on the I talk about the wound comparison in the book, where we sort of put ourselves on this spectrum where if somebody had it worse than we did, based on our own perspective and opinions about it, then we feel foolish or silly for, quote unquote, complaining about something when it was, overall a pretty good experience.

0:15:23.51 → 0:15:50.79

All of this part of this work is about holding multiple truths. I say it pretty early on in the book that this is not an act of throwing parents or caretakers or the adults in our lives under the bus. This isn't us going on a wild goose hunt. This is about being able to name and honour what our experiences are. And all of those things, all of those games that we can play with ourselves, the distractions, that's what they are.

0:15:50.83 → 0:16:08.56

They are distractions away from us, honouring our pain. It can be true that they did the best that they could with what they had. It can be true that their parents were way worse to them than they were to us. Right? I have endless stories of what it could sound like.

0:16:08.69 → 0:17:08.80

All of that can be true and it doesn't take away from what your experience was. And it's so important that we are able to honour what the experience was and put a period at the end of that sentence. And one of the questions that I ask in the book is what did you want most as a child and not get, well, I wanted to be prioritised more by my dad, but he was working so much and he was doing that because he was providing for the family. Well, that's really different than saying I want it to be a priority period to just hold there. Because the moment that we go into the explanation, even when the explanation is true, invalid, it moves us away from being able to honour our pain and begin to work with our pain and acknowledge it and witness it and grieve alongside of it.

0:17:08.90 → 0:18:11.38

And so absolutely I understand that turning towards this can be scary, can be overwhelming. Sometimes people are like, I don't want to go to therapy because I'm going to hate them, or the relationship is going to end, or I know that those are concerns for people. And we go at a pace that feels okay for the person, whether listening, reading, in therapy, because ultimately, at the end of the day, if we avoid being with our pain properly, our pain will find very clever ways of trying to bring us back to it. Yeah, that feels like a nice segue into this tendency that we have often subconsciously to gravitate towards people, situations, relationships that touch our wounds, that feel familiar, that recreate past patterns. Maybe not in a really obvious literal surface way, although sometimes why do we do that?

0:18:11.43 → 0:18:42.56

I think so many people at a conscious level go, I don't know why I keep doing the same thing when it's not in alignment with what I want. I want a healthy relationship with an available person and yet here I am, chasing after this person who is unsure about me and I'm trying to earn their attention and affection and prove myself and whatever else the pattern might be. Why is there such a magnetic pull to familiar pain? Yeah. Oh, I know.

0:18:42.61 → 0:19:28.41

Like I said, that irritation, that annoyance, that frustration with the self when we find ourselves right back at the thing that we said we wouldn't do, whether it's engaging in the conflict in the same way, to your point. Dating that emotionally unavailable person for the, umpteenth, time patterns, the unwanted patterns in our adult lives that we can't shake will point us to our origin pain. I want to ask the listener to take a moment to try to externalise pain for a moment. Like allow it to be a separate entity to exist outside of your body for a second. Maybe it looks a certain way to you, maybe it has a colour, a shape, whatever, but allow it to exist outside of your body for a second.

0:19:28.50 → 0:19:57.21

And I bet if your pain could talk this is what I think my pain sounded like. It was like, hey, I know that you would like to move on with life, and I know that you have goals for yourself, or who you want to date, or how you want to navigate this conflict differently, or the fact that you want to be able to set that boundary. I promise you that I am not trying to destroy your life. I promise you that I am not trying to ruin you or keep you stuck. I know that you want to get on with things.

0:19:57.28 → 0:20:31.64

I know that you want to have this new way of living, this desirable way of living, being in relationship, dating, et cetera. But if you just move on, if you just brute force your way through and try to change something, then you forget about me. And so I can't let you just abandon what the hurt or the harm has been. You can't just move on from me. That's why I keep bringing you back into the patterns, because that's the only way I can get you to pay attention to me.

0:20:32.33 → 0:21:06.13

And so if you could turn towards me, so that you could acknowledge me, just witness what we went through, so that we can just be in the grief of what that was, then I promise you I will loosen my grip. Then I promise that I will not have to keep bringing you back into the same patterns over and over and over again. But I promise that when I bring you into these patterns, it's just my way of trying to get you to pay attention to something that you haven't spent enough time with. Totally. I'm curious.

0:21:06.71 → 0:21:26.95

When is that an opportunity? And when is it prone to being retraumatizing or just a reenactment of old pain in a way that isn't productive or constructive? How do we know the difference? And how much of that is within our control versus circumstantial? Yeah, right.

0:21:27.10 → 0:22:33.31

I think part of it is about what the intention of it is, kind of going back into something that is painful. We don't have to remember all of the details, we don't have to necessarily even go back into a particular scenario to relive it. It's about honouring the pain, honouring the experience of not feeling good enough, of not feeling safe, of not feeling like it was okay for you to be authentic and still loved to the feeling and sensation of not being important enough to the people you wanted to be important to. The actual details are far less important than what it left you with. And to honour that you maybe did not feel safe, that you were not protected to honour that you did not feel good enough unless you were perfect, unless you were performing, unless you were pleasing, unless you were XYZ, whatever it is, that is what we're tending to.

0:22:33.46 → 0:23:26.16

And so, yeah, I think for folks who have trauma, complex trauma, doing this work alongside a trauma informed professional is incredibly encouraged. Because certainly this is not about just like going into reenactments to drum up some stuff and have it be super raw, but it is about getting intentional with witnessing the experiences in terms of the sensation, in terms of how it was internalised, in terms of what we were left with, because that is what is ruling our lives. Yeah. So in your book, you talk about these five origin wounds, and I don't know that we'll have time to go through each of them in turn, but they are worthiness. Belonging, safety, trust, I think you've got it all.

0:23:26.85 → 0:23:57.07

Maybe we could just start by talking through the worthiness wound, because I know that's where you start in the book, and I know that tends to be pretty universal to varying degrees and in different expressions, but I know that your take, and certainly my experience is that we all have some version of a worthiness wound. What does that look like? How can that manifest? And maybe what do we do with that once we realise that that lives within us? Yeah, right.

0:23:57.24 → 0:24:52.09

As I was writing the book and really working on this wound, I was struck by I really think that every single one of us rubs up against a worthiness wound at some point. And yes, as you said, some to a much more intense degree than others. But the worthiness wound is when you there's a lot of conditions around worthiness. So this idea that I am not good enough or valuable or deserving unless I am XYZ. So if I am perfect, if I am a pleaser, if I perform the way that you want me to, if I am the comic relief, if I get the straight A's, if I am a really strong athlete, that is the thing that gets me love, connection, attention, validation, praise, approval and so forth.

0:24:53.71 → 0:25:37.80

So oftentimes there is a condition there. So I usually say to the perfectionists, the pleasers, the performers out there, those are usually the folks who will have some version of this worthiness wound, present my worthiness wound. And I shared a little bit about that story of kind of flying under the radar, being this needless child feeling that there wasn't room for me to have feelings and not be okay. And one of the things that continued to contribute to that is my dad was phenomenal in so many ways, but one of the things that he did was if I behaved or acted out or said something that he didn't like that. He didn't agree with when I wasn't easy going.

0:25:38.49 → 0:26:27.96

What he would do as punishment was he would give me the silent treatment, sometimes for days or weeks on end. And so that really reminded me that when you're easygoing, when you don't have needs, when you're not difficult, then you get presence, love, connection, help support all of the things. But when you are difficult, then that's when it's taken from you. And I found myself in that space of that really reiterated the origin around that role that I had taken on as a kiddo. And it reminded me, yeah, don't speak out, don't express anything that's outside of the pretty little box because when you do, the thing that you want the most is withheld taken from you that there is a punishment that happens here.

0:26:28.33 → 0:26:58.21

And so, yeah, just again to encapsulate it, that worthiness wound comes when we grow up in an environment where we don't feel good enough, when we don't feel deserving, when we don't feel valuable. And sometimes it's the full stop. It doesn't matter what we do. And for other folks, it might be, unless you are perfect, unless you do what we require you to do. I can probably touch very quickly on each of the wounds just to at least high level give everyone a bit of a sense.

0:26:58.28 → 0:27:33.40

So the belonging wound is some people grow up in families where a family system will say something like, this is what we do in this family, this is what we believe, this is what we think. There's this emphasis as to be a part of us means this is what we do think, believe. And if you go against that, then you're on the outside. Dr. Gabar Mate talks about how when we're kids, when attachment is threatened, we will trade authenticity for it every time.

0:27:33.58 → 0:27:51.79

Makes a lot of sense. And authenticity and attachment are our lifelines, they're vital. But when we're kiddos, when we are really tiny, attachment is necessary. That is literally our survival. And so we will change who we are in order to fit in.

0:27:51.83 → 0:28:33.82

That's the first stop. Somewhere along the way, we might take a path of rebellion. So sometimes in those teenage years we're like, screw it, I believe this or I'm going to do the exact opposite of what a parent wants me to. But in those early, early years, we adapt to what the system requires of us so that we can quote, unquote, fit in. So often, if you felt like you were the black sheep, if you had differences that the family didn't understand or maybe shunned or rejected, those are oftentimes the experiences where a belonging wound might originate, the prioritisation wound, okay, this is when we didn't feel important enough in our family.

0:28:33.95 → 0:29:19.88

And so how might that manifest? Maybe a parent who is a workaholic, maybe there's a different type of addiction in the family system where that is the priority, a mental health challenge that takes up the space, the energy. You mentioned this earlier, a sibling, for example. I think you might have said mental health around that, but an illness of some sort where the attention and the priority is somewhere else, where it just takes that energy away from you and we can sit here and say, well, it makes good sense, or oh yeah, of course that needed to be the priority. But it doesn't change that you did not feel like you were important enough in that space.

0:29:20.06 → 0:29:57.41

I share a story in the prioritisation chapter about a client of mine who in the book I call Andre, and he has a single mom and he would talk about his mom with such love and adoration and respect. She would work multiple jobs, double shifts every day except for Sunday, where they would go to church together Sunday morning and then they would have brunch together afterwards. And he would sit here and he would say, I respect her. He could really rationalise how her working double shift was her way of prioritising him. He could find his way to that story.

0:29:57.58 → 0:30:41.62

But ultimately still what was at the core of it was that what he wanted most was to be a priority through time spent with her. And that was so hard for him to come to that space because he wanted to protect her, because he knew she was absolutely doing the best that she could. She was giving everything that she had. And it's scenarios like this that are incredibly heartbreaking because you can see how much love and respect and care that is there, but it doesn't change that a wound still exists. And I think that's an important reminder for the listener that wounds do not have to come from abusive, negligent, mal intended places.

0:30:41.76 → 0:31:33.35

Sometimes wounds are created because of the natural circumstances of life, and I think sometimes that is hard for us. It can be even harder when it's not so obvious to actually allow for and create space for there to be a wound there, when it isn't this blatant lack of respect or this blatant abuse that takes place. I was just going to ask, maybe you were going to sort of move to this is how does the prioritisation wound show up and shape us kind of behaviorally in the way that we relate to ourselves and others? Yeah, in a number of different ways. One of the ways might be that we, through patterns, will keep choosing people who do not prioritise us, where there are other things that are very important to them in their lives, where it doesn't need to be apples to apples.

0:31:33.43 → 0:32:03.41

Where if you grew up with someone with addiction in the family, that you necessarily partner with someone who is struggling with addiction. But you might choose someone who prioritises something else over you and that keeps bringing you back into the wound. You might be someone yourself who is a lot of times people with a prioritisation wound become over givers. They do everything to prioritise everyone else. To try to teach people, show them this is how I want to be prioritised.

0:32:04.63 → 0:32:36.21

What's the giggle for there? I relate to it. It's also been a discussion I've been having with the clients in my mastermind group. This tendency of the frantic over giving and deprioritizing ourselves prioritising others, but then this kind of bubbling resentment of what about me? And we have to look at the ways in which we participate in that dynamic and I think get really honest about not creating lots of space for ourselves.

0:32:36.31 → 0:33:08.50

Because that's the other side of the coin, right? When we've got this story that the loving thing to do is to neglect ourselves in favour of tending to others, then I think to the extent that other people don't reciprocate, we have the story of you don't care about me the way I care about you or as much as I care about you. So I think that whenever we notice those stories, it's a bit of a smoke signal for something deeper that we need to look at that's, right? Yeah, always a smoke signal. Right?

0:33:08.52 → 0:33:38.21

Because it just recreates. Why don't you care about me as much as I care about you? There's something familiar about that and that's in this book, the goal is what is familiar about what's happening when we have reactivity. That's a great indicator that there's an origin, you said it before. We're able to give advice that we can't take another indicator.

0:33:39.51 → 0:34:04.25

We say to our friends absolutely don't go back to your ex. If your ex is messaging, don't respond and then you're there responding yourself. It's not as easy when you're in the experience of it because that's your wounding, that's playing into the decision making rationally. We know the quote unquote right thing to do. We're able to give that advice, but we can't take it.

0:34:04.32 → 0:34:38.42

And so these are really good indicators that there is some irresolution around a particular wound that is showing up in that space. I think to your point about the prioritisation, it's like ultimately, of course, we want to be in relationships with people where there's reciprocity, where we do feel like we are important, that we matter, that we are valued. But you spoke to it so well, this tendency to actually wind up deprioritizing ourselves. So instead of coming to ourselves, first of what does it look like to actually prioritise me? We continue to outsource it.

0:34:38.47 → 0:34:56.33

If I give to these people, what I hope will happen is that they'll give to me. If I show you and model how great I am at prioritising you, then maybe you will be able to do that for me. And again, that's not a really good way to heal a wound.

0:34:58.59 → 0:35:44.30

That's a good way to just keep it going and keep it going and keep it going and to be able to go inwards and tend to that pain so that we don't have to keep finding these ways of reenactment, either through repetition or through opposition. That's really the goal here. And so in this origin healing practise of being able to identify what our wound or wounds are, number of people now at this point exactly. Have that one, have that one, have that one. It's like, yeah, we do have to find that appropriate way to be with this pain so that it doesn't have the same lock on us.

0:35:44.75 → 0:36:36.98

The trust wound unsurprising, where there's an experience of betrayal, deceit, lies. It might be something that happened to you or it might be something that you observed or witnessed. So obviously a really common one is if there was infidelity or an affair that took place in the family system, if there were family secrets that you were expected to keep, or if there was a family secret that was kept from you. Sometimes these are a bit more of the outrageous ones, but they still happen. Where maybe a family member gambles away an education fund or someone who takes out credit cards in your name as a child, and then kind of in the more day to day ones, where maybe there is a promise that is made over and over again that somebody doesn't actually follow through on.

0:36:37.16 → 0:37:19.31

And I'm not talking about, oh, a situation had to change. Of course we've got normal life stuff, but I'm talking about these commitments, these agreements, these promises that always fall through, that let us know that we can't trust the important people in our lives. And also one of the other ones is that we can sometimes hear, and usually this will come from an unresolved adult too, but someone might make sweeping generalisation statements. Never trust a man, never trust that there's some storyline that then gets imprinted in us and absorbed by us based on what the adults are telling us. And then the last one, of course, is the safety wound.

0:37:19.36 → 0:38:00.75

And when we're talking about the absence of safety, we are often talking about the presence of abuse. This is a really tender, raw chapter. I remind people to take very good care, of course, when we're reading it, but we have to name it and unfortunately, we have to talk about abuse when we are talking about the absence of safety. And so emotional, physical, sexual, psychological abuse, negligence, recklessness. But ultimately a safety origin wound is going to arise when you didn't feel like your well being was cared for, had concern for, was respected, honoured and protected by the adults in your life.

0:38:00.92 → 0:38:30.19

Yeah, thank you for that summary. I'm interested on the trust wound. Something that comes up for me like none of those kind of big dramatic headline ones, but certainly my memory of my family system was a lot of things being swept under the rug. Let's just collectively kind of pretend that things are fine. We'll sit down at the dinner table even though we know mom and dad aren't talking, and there's stuff going on and just kind of playing that game.

0:38:30.34 → 0:39:01.38

And I notice for myself that I have such a visceral response as an adult in my relationships to we're not talking about the things that are clearly going on here. I don't know if that's an expression of a trust wound or maybe something else, but that's certainly something for me. Yeah, right. I can't trust you to be able to have the hard conversation. It's not necessarily a family secret, but it kind of hangs out in that space, the unspoken hidden thing that is right here in front of us.

0:39:01.48 → 0:39:15.61

Right, exactly. The pretending. And I can't trust the people here to not pretend, to not hide. Can we just say the thing, bring the elephant into the room and let's expose them? Right.

0:39:15.65 → 0:39:47.11

It's like that's, that craving, because we don't have to go deep into it. But what did pretending and hiding lead to? Yeah, I think for me, it was probably even as a very young child. It's like, if I know what's going on, then I can shift into my fixer role and my peacekeeper role and I can go about tending to everyone. And I would go to my mum, then I'd go to my sister and I'd counsel and I'd try and kind of bring everyone back.

0:39:47.18 → 0:40:06.22

But if we weren't talking about it, I don't have enough information to do my job in the system. Which sounds crazy when we're talking about a six year old, but I think that was the thing. No, it doesn't. Right. You see how clever I mean, there's a lot of layers to what you just said.

0:40:06.35 → 0:40:36.08

I needed you to not hide and pretend so I could go into appointed manager. Right. We can see how much is caught and stuck in there. But to your point is that you wanted the adults to lead, you wanted the adults to take charge. You didn't want to be in that role, you did it because you had to.

0:40:36.18 → 0:41:01.91

But ultimately, what I hear you saying is that I needed the adults to be able to say what needed to be said and be responsible for what they needed to be responsible for, so that you didn't need to step into that role. And can I trust the people in my life now to do that? Or do I need to be hyper vigilant, constantly looking, scanning, trying to figure out what's brushed under the rug right? Now. Did I see it?

0:41:01.92 → 0:41:26.50

Did I not see it? What's being said, what's not being said, what's being pretended, what's not being pretended, what's being hidden, what's not being hidden without trusting that it requires you to be in a hypervigilant vigilant space of constantly scanning your environment. Can I trust you to be able to have the hard conversation with me? Can I trust you to be able to bring uncomfortable things forward? Can I trust you to be honest?

0:41:26.63 → 0:41:33.75

Whatever it is, fill in the blank. Right? Yeah. But that's how it can continue to show up present day. Yeah, absolutely.

0:41:33.87 → 0:42:23.27

It's like I have to be on the front foot and get ahead of it, because I can't trust that as and when things arise, they'll be spoken about openly and navigated in a mature way. I feel like it's my responsibility to spot the problem, name the problem, take courage of working through the problem and ultimately getting us to a resolution. Because I've taken that on as my role and I don't trust that that will happen in the absence of my leadership or my stewardship. And I think that in adult relationships, that can lead us to a lot of burnout and resentment, this sense of like, everything's my responsibility. And yet again, we see this theme of because I'm making everything my responsibility, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

0:42:23.43 → 0:42:53.82

It's like if I don't ever create space for someone to show up, or if I don't voice the need and voice the fear and explain it, I just go and do the thing, preempting that if I don't do it, no one will. We don't really create space for change. Yeah. And that's what I get into into the third part of the book. Because it's only so much to be able to identify our wounds and witness and grieve and be in the emotional component of this.

0:42:53.84 → 0:43:13.65

That's really important for us to move some of our pain. But then it's like, how do wounds get in the way when we're talking about healthy communication, navigating conflict. Well, navigating boundaries properly. Right. Because exactly.

0:43:13.74 → 0:43:56.35

To your point, if I don't shift anything about this, then I remain in this hyper vigilant space. I do not ever let someone bring something forward. I can't have a trusting relationship, whether it's with partner, friendship, whomever. It's like all of these things that actually block what I imagine that you or someone in a position like this would feel. And so to be able to see our part in blocking what it is that we're looking for and craving for, but instead of it being shame, blame, guilt, embarrassment, we're actually able to step into the compassion, the grace, the curiosity of OOH.

0:43:56.48 → 0:44:13.14

Yeah. My behaviours serve something. They're here for a reason. And when I can get curious about that, then I can make a shift. I remember I was in a I know you just had I imagine maybe his episode will come out before mine.

0:44:13.17 → 0:44:42.34

But you spoke to my husband earlier and I remember early on in our dating, there was a conflict that we got into. I have no idea what it was about, but what I do remember is that I was very committed to proving my point. I was very committed to being right and I was going in on it and he's like, okay, I got it. I understand. And I kept my favourite part about this is he told this story as well.

0:44:42.39 → 0:44:51.66

So I'm so interested to that's so funny, your versions of it. Okay, please. Let's see.

0:44:53.79 → 0:45:06.04

Yeah, you put me on notice and lol because my version clearly is going to be right. Naturally. Of course, naturally. So I keep going. He's like, I got it, I understand.

0:45:06.14 → 0:45:20.41

And I'm doubling down. I'm tripling down. I can't stop. And I have this out of body moment experience where I'm almost, like, looking in on myself, just continuing to go, and I'm like, stop. Like, enough.

0:45:20.50 → 0:45:37.31

This is not this is not attractive. Like, this is not good. And I remember once I finally stopped, there was a lot of shame and embarrassment that came in, if I'm being really honest. It was early on before we were even engaged. This behaviour is really unbecoming.

0:45:37.36 → 0:46:13.31

Like, I don't even know if this person is going to want to be with me. And certainly if I were to continue behaving this way, I don't think that he would want to be with me. But instead of just staying in the shame, I got really curious about what needing to be right served, what is that all about? And we'll link to what people already have heard and understood about my story. I already shared that I grew up in an environment where there was a lot of psychological manipulation, gaslighting and yeah, changing of stories.

0:46:13.47 → 0:47:02.32

And part of my survival, part of my safety, was that if I'm right, if I can prove my point, then I am safe. And if I am not right, then I am unsafe. And the moment that clicked in for me, there was so much softness, so much gentleness for myself, because I could see how this part of me needed to be right as a form of creating some type of protection and safety for myself. What I needed to do, however, was I needed the wise, adult, mature Vienna to actually step into her driver's seat, as opposed to the unhealed, unresolved, pained little girl who was like, this is not a safe environment. You have got to have it right.

0:47:02.37 → 0:47:24.23

You have got to prove your point. Otherwise it's not okay for you. And so to be able to step into this space of who is in front of me, it required some healing around that safety origin wound for me, but eventually that discernment of, okay, where am I now? What do I know to be true? Who am I with right now?

0:47:24.35 → 0:47:47.59

And how can I step away from the pain driving this behaviour versus my healing driving this behaviour? And easier said than done. Lots of layers and complexity to this, but I think that this is I hope that that offers something of just because I'm doing something that I feel ashamed of. Just because I'm doing something that I'm like. OOH.

0:47:47.61 → 0:48:12.33

I feel very embarrassed about this part of me when we can shift away from just existing in the shame and embarrassment and move towards the curiosity of what this is serving. Why is this here? What is this trying to protect me from? That's where the gifts are. And so, yeah, I would invite people to think about the things that they don't like about themselves, the things that they do that they're like, oh, this is not great.

0:48:12.40 → 0:48:33.83

I hate this. I wish I'd stopped doing this, and to actually become more curious about them, to see what it is that that behaviour might be attempting to protect. Yeah, totally. Beautifully said. The question that I know Dick Schwartz always asks around our parts, it's like, what is that part afraid would happen if it didn't do the thing?

0:48:34.00 → 0:49:02.22

In your case, what is it afraid would happen if I wasn't right or I didn't make sure that everyone was in agreement that I'm right? And we can get to the heart of, like, what's this really about? For me? Why does this feel so important and big and life or death? But, yeah, it's big work and it's messy work, but it's very rewarding and liberating work when we can have the courage to do it.

0:49:05.15 → 0:49:44.50

I'm glad that you said liberating. That's part of the subtitle of the book, how breaking Family Patterns Can Liberate the Way We Live in Love and very intentional about what the titles were. And that's right. I think in this work, there is an incredible liberation that takes place and that doing this work does change our relationships and our lives. My hope, my goal is that there is a much greater internal peace that actually takes place to live the life that you want, to have the relationships that you want.

0:49:44.55 → 0:50:07.52

Beautiful. Yes, of course. I think that's probably most people's goal, but this sense of internal peace, so profound, so powerful, so important. And when we begin to do this work, I think that leads us to that, to a sense of internal peace. Beautiful.

0:50:07.97 → 0:50:23.59

Vienna, thank you so much. This has been such a lovely conversation. If people want to go deeper with you and your work, where should they find you? Yeah, you can find me on Instagram. At @mindfulmft as in marriagefamilytherapy.

0:50:23.77 → 0:50:43.16

Viennaferon.com, NewYorkcouplescounseling.com. But almost all of my offerings are always in the bio of Instagram. But of course, the book, you can find that anywhere that books are sold. There's a lot of beautiful work there. And I'm always posting new offerings that we have going on.

0:50:43.95 → 0:51:00.89

Beautiful. And, yes, I echo all of that and certainly go out and buy the book and read the book or listen to the book. It is really profound and beautiful. And certainly, if you've enjoyed this conversation, you will love, love the origins of you. Thank you so much.

0:51:01.09 → 0:51:22.29

Thank you. Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at Stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much.

0:51:22.41 → 0:51:25.48

Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.