Chrissy Heals From Childhood Trauma and Builds Healthy Relationships

<cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>0:06</time> <p>Welcome to 90834. It&#39;s the weekly podcast where guests share the biggest lessons they&#39;ve learned in therapy. In each episode, i&#39;ll pose two questions What were you looking to resolve by going to therapy, and what did you really end up getting out of therapy? I&#39;m Shannon Miller, a licensed clinical social worker and private practice who has the privilege of spending every day watching the therapeutic process lead to unexpected and beautiful places. Today it is my pleasure to welcome Chrissy. She&#39;s a 32 year old Chinese American woman living in the Bay area of San Francisco. Her therapeutic process has been off and on over the last 14 years. Chrissy went into therapy because her frequent bouts of crying made her think she was broken, but through the years she began to learn how growing up with a narcissistic mother and a father with schizophrenia shaped that belief and she was not in fact broken. What led up to you going to therapy? Why did you originally start therapy? What were you looking to get out of it? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>1:08</time> <p>So it&#39;s a bit of a story. I was 18. No, i was 19, and I just had my first year of college in Hawaii, and then my aunt had convinced me to move home. It wasn&#39;t a great experience. After all these years I realized that my home life was very traumatic, making it hard sometimes to leave. So when I left I was like, well, this isn&#39;t home, it&#39;s not comfort, it&#39;s not what I know. So I moved back home, but it wasn&#39;t the same as when I left when I was 18. I would get in my car and I just start crying. And you have to understand that in my household and in my childhood I didn&#39;t cry. So I thought I was breaking. I thought my family, my mom&#39;s, asian, american, and there were never emotions. I just thought the world was ending. So I didn&#39;t understand it. I didn&#39;t understand what this emotion was. I didn&#39;t understand what was happening in the body. Like I was just like, but I was just crying all the time. Like my body was having this physical reaction to being back in that home life. But I couldn&#39;t figure out what was going on. I was like okay, i need help, i need support, because this is just unmanageable. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>2:13</time> <p>Can I ask? you grew up in a family where emotions weren&#39;t allowed or crying wasn&#39;t allowed. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>2:20</time> <p>Neither, neither My mom. She is Chinese American and she just we didn&#39;t have emotions. I never learned it. I didn&#39;t understand what was going on, which is a lot of my part of probably the first five or six years of therapy were just understanding emotions and understanding what they were and understanding having you know how to feel them. But even now I still struggle with them And I still struggle with naming them. You know how men are like, very they have a hard time with their emotions. I was kind of had that journey where it&#39;s like I could never express, i could never cry, i just had to be quiet in the house and I just had to be at a site because it was just such a traumatic environment. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>3:03</time> <p>But I can imagine. I can imagine actually the amount of bravery and stepping out of your comfort zone. It was to even attempt therapy and address emotions. If they were never accepted, it seems like it would be quite a stretch for you to say I have to go to therapy. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>3:22</time> <p>It wasn&#39;t, i was, so I didn&#39;t know what was going on, right? So you have to understand. The first 18 years they&#39;re I just didn&#39;t feel. It sounds weird, but I didn&#39;t. When I was having such a physical reaction, it wasn&#39;t. Oh, this is an emotion. I was just like I&#39;m, I think. I thought I was breaking. I thought I was dying. I was like I can&#39;t cry, i can&#39;t do this, there&#39;s something wrong with me. So I reached out for help because I thought there was something physically wrong with me. I thought like, okay, place me in a mental institution. My dad&#39;s schizophrenic, i&#39;ll lead up to that. And so I grew up seeing that and I was like, well, maybe I&#39;m crazy too. That&#39;s what all this crying is. So that was like my conclusion with it. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>4:07</time> <p>Okay, Yeah. So then you start therapy and sort of walk us through, I mean, 14 years of therapy. there&#39;s a lot of things to be covered there. So start walking us through what happened once you started therapy. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>4:20</time> <p>I broke as a human being, like everything that I had known up until that point, you know, for the first 18 or 19 years. All of a sudden I&#39;m trying to change it. All of a sudden there&#39;s this different stuff. They&#39;re like you know, you could have emotion And I&#39;m like, no, i can&#39;t. I just I just have to keep going in life. I just have to keep going And, like I said, probably the first half of those 14 years we&#39;re just learning emotions and just learning that I can have them and it&#39;s okay to have them. And even now I don&#39;t always feel safe having emotions And I just become very numb and I&#39;m just like just keep going through life, just don&#39;t feel. But I&#39;ve learned I&#39;m actually a very emotional person. So they tend to, they fight with each other. You know that conditioning of don&#39;t feel, don&#39;t have any emotions, basically be a human. My mom was narcissistically abusive. She&#39;s a narcissist and my dad gets a phrenic. So it was like even now I&#39;m still unpacking it all. But now I think I have a better tool, set of coping skills and I can now separate, like what was their messaging to me and then what&#39;s my messaging to me? </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>5:34</time> <p>Can I ask how did your therapists teach you to relate to your emotions, to identify them, to feel them, to relate to them? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>5:45</time> <p>Honestly, i think it&#39;s like gave me a safe space to feel what I was feeling and to help me understand why I was feeling what I was feeling. Like if there was something at work like I wasn&#39;t being treated right, i was like I&#39;m angry, i&#39;m crying, i&#39;m upset, and maybe I didn&#39;t even say these things. But I&#39;d be like if this person like anger was very common in my household, so getting angry was I knew that really well I&#39;d be like F-diss. I would just be so angry And they gave me this safe space to really unpack it, or they&#39;d help me unpack it Like do you think there&#39;s anything behind that anger? For probably a year I&#39;d be like no, i&#39;m just angry And I just go in and I&#39;d ran. But they gave me that space to just be that. And then if one day I broke down crying, it was like okay, it&#39;s safe for us to understand what&#39;s really going on here. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>6:39</time> <p>So is there safety and time that you started to understand that anger is the secondary emotion to sadness. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>6:48</time> <p>Exactly, There&#39;s a lot of sadness, like 19 years of just suppressed sadness, So it takes time right to get through it all and to really see where that anger is coming from. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>7:02</time> <p>Okay, so you started to connect with your emotions more and understand them, identify them, give yourself permission to feel them. What happens next? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>7:13</time> <p>So it&#39;s a slow journey, like I said. So the first six or seven years I start doing little things that I actually wanna do, right, cause in my household I was the peacekeeper, cause my dad was schizophrenic, i would take care of him. My mom was a narcissist, so I just do what she needed, so she was happy. And then I&#39;d help manage that relationship because I&#39;d wake up they&#39;d be throwing and yelling things at each other And I&#39;m actually like, oh, so very sensitive. So I&#39;d be like, oh my God, this can&#39;t be happening, like my parents can&#39;t be fighting, i&#39;m gonna wake up and fix it. So I&#39;d wake up before school and like fix a relationship every day, clean up broken dishes, manage money, pack lunches, like do it all. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>7:59</time> <p>Are you an only child or do you have siblings? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>8:02</time> <p>No, I&#39;m the youngest of three. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>8:04</time> <p>What roles did your siblings play in this dynamic? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>8:08</time> <p>My brother. He didn&#39;t care, he was very selfish, everything was about him. I think because my dad was schizophrenic, he didn&#39;t have a good, strong role model, so I think for him he was very lost. My sister she got out of the house as much as she could. She got a lot of friends. I think for me, when I came along and just naturally who I am, i&#39;m more of a homebody, i&#39;m more of a family person And I&#39;m like wait, this is my mom and dad. Like this can&#39;t possibly be happening. I have to fix this. This is my job. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>8:38</time> <p>This is now my role. So it sounds like even your sensitivity at that time pulled you into more of a caretaking role, because that&#39;s how you could bring homeostasis back to your system. What&#39;s through caretaking of them, exactly Okay. So you were parentified very early on. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>8:56</time> <p>Yeah, very early on, Yeah, And now I&#39;m 32. And really within the past year is the first time I&#39;ve actually ever started asking myself what do you want? So, even within the 14 years of therapy, it&#39;s taken me 12 to 13 years to kind of let go of all of that, figure out emotions and finally get to a place of what I would like to call healthy parenting, Like even for me. I&#39;m still like you know, when they say you have to repair and you&#39;re in a child, I&#39;m like it&#39;s really hard when I don&#39;t know what that looks like. All I&#39;ve ever known is to be mean to myself. That&#39;s all I&#39;ve ever had. So I&#39;m still also really learning what is a healthy parenting for me? </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>9:37</time> <p>Tell me more about that. Learning to reparent your inner child? Yeah, because often when we bring that up, people are like oh, please, come on. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>9:46</time> <p>Well, i think it&#39;s just all about how I talk to myself. So I think it&#39;s somebody&#39;s inner motivation. And as a child and when I grew up with, even in early adulthood, my mother was always very negative to me And she had four sisters, and so that&#39;s mostly who I grew up around. We&#39;re all five of them And they all always. I was always bullied as a youngest one to many ways, and also my sister bullied me as well, and it would always be you&#39;re so dumb, you&#39;re not smart enough, you&#39;re so fat. I remember one time I bought tight jeans because tight jeans are popular. I think this must have been in the 2000s And my aunt would just be like your ass is so big in it, you&#39;re so fat, you should never wear those type of clothes. So I&#39;ve never, i&#39;ve never known what it&#39;s like for someone to say you&#39;re beautiful and be like okay, like I would always like no, someone would say that. Or like I&#39;m like no, i&#39;m horrible, i&#39;m bad. So I couldn&#39;t say those things to myself. I literally didn&#39;t know how to. The pandemic actually made it worse. So I was like. I was like kind of on an upward hill. I was on a good journey and the pandemic happened and I reverted to the worst version of myself And I finally, within the past six months, have crawled out of it. I, because I finally got to a point where I&#39;m like, okay, i don&#39;t have to necessarily say anything nice to myself, but I can accept myself for being who I am, right. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>11:22</time> <p>Who are? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>11:22</time> <p>you? Yeah, that&#39;s a great question, i don&#39;t know. But I don&#39;t have to be beautiful, i don&#39;t have to be ugly, i&#39;m just like I&#39;m just, i just am And I&#39;m like, okay, that&#39;s progress for me, right. And so, finally, to one point, at a point where I&#39;m like, hey, i look really nice right now And I&#39;m like, yeah, i like what I&#39;m wearing, i like how I&#39;m feeling I&#39;ve been working out. I&#39;m like, yeah, this feels good. And you have to understand that for a long time that felt so ego, you know, so ego driven. In the house I grew up in, it was like you can&#39;t say anything nice to me, you can&#39;t give me compliments. Even when I&#39;m with my sister and someone&#39;s like, oh, you know your sister, she&#39;s really fun, or I love her sense of style, she&#39;d be like, ew, no, you&#39;re not, you can&#39;t have those things. And my mom would be like, yeah, chrissy&#39;s just so extra and so much She&#39;s just. And they just like they kind of tag team with each other, even to this day. And so it&#39;s to a point where I&#39;ve been like, okay, i have to remove myself from these people to heal And to have a life that I actually want. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>12:23</time> <p>That&#39;s a really good point is, as you&#39;re moving through this process and you&#39;re healing sounds like one wound at a time your relationships outside of the therapeutic setting have to be evolving and changing. Can you speak a little bit to that? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>12:38</time> <p>Well, of course, within the past 14 years, what happened is bad relationships. When you have no self-worth, you tend to attract people. Majority of them have been narcissists, everything&#39;s about them. And I think over the past couple of years, as I just hit such a low with the pandemic, i was like I no longer have it in me to take care of anyone else, cause I was literally just I&#39;m so depressed and I couldn&#39;t do anything. I couldn&#39;t go outside, i couldn&#39;t do anything. It just really messed with me mentally. I&#39;ve always had an avoidant attachment style. The pandemic changed to an anxious, avoidant attachment style, which is a special version of how cause like, first you&#39;re anxious and like no, no, no, no, please love me, and then it&#39;s like actually I&#39;m going to avoid you And it was like it was very. That just made it horrible. Actually, in August of 2022, i did a big break up with a man who was also narcissistic, and then I hit a special low after that And within the past seven months, i&#39;ve had probably the best rebuild I&#39;ve ever had And within that seven months of rebuild, i&#39;ve told friends you know, hey, you can&#39;t talk to me that way. That&#39;s not okay. Hey, i need space from you because you&#39;re actually not supporting me right now And I know that I&#39;m going through a lot And if that&#39;s too much I&#39;m okay with letting you go. I told my family members like I&#39;m not going to any more dinners, this doesn&#39;t serve me. Oh, you&#39;re so selfish And I&#39;m just like, okay, cool, like I just no longer have an emotional reaction to when people say, oh, you&#39;re selfish or you&#39;re too sensitive, cause I finally feel I&#39;m getting a sense of how to take care of me. But all my relationships, especially within the past year, have blown up because I&#39;ve changed and I&#39;ve evolved And I realize I have boundaries and I need to be treated a special way. It ordered for me to flourish, cause naturally so much of me. It gives and it gives and it gives, but I don&#39;t get anything back. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>14:34</time> <p>So if in the last year your relationships have all sort of imploded, that has to come with its own emotional load on you as well. Like healing doesn&#39;t really sound like fun. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>14:47</time> <p>It&#39;s not, it&#39;s horrible. I wish there&#39;s some ugly stages to it, but I am on a good upper bump, which makes me realize it was worth it, like I just bought my own house, right? I&#39;m finally in a job where they&#39;re like hey, chrissy, we want you to be the CMO, we want you here. We have a mentor who&#39;s like hey, you&#39;re doing really good. Let me give you tips. I&#39;ve wanted this for like the past four years. So when all these things start coming, like hey, you&#39;re being recognized at work, they want you to step up, you have your own place to live, the money is here. It&#39;s like, oh my God, it&#39;s worth it. And that&#39;s a thing, though, of like you told me a year ago and I&#39;d be like, uh-uh, it&#39;s not worth it. But now you get to the other side and you&#39;re like, oh my God, i&#39;m having the things that I&#39;ve always wanted. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>15:38</time> <p>I&#39;m blown away. I&#39;m just sitting here kind of grinning ear to ear. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>15:41</time> <p>Nobody can see me, but that&#39;s what I&#39;m doing That&#39;s fantastic. Yeah. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>15:46</time> <p>So as you shed the old relationships, there&#39;s kind of a lull then before we pick up new relationships. Yeah, Friends, romantic intimate, all that sort of stuff. How did you navigate that time Not? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>16:00</time> <p>well, not well. I was so depressed. I look at that version of me and I honestly still have grief or sadness towards her. I&#39;m like what happened? Who did I become? Because I lost All of my grit, resilience and ambition, like I just let all this pain and all this sadness just come and just like take me. I couldn&#39;t find a job, i couldn&#39;t make any money, i couldn&#39;t leave my house. I became so chronically depressed Well, i wouldn&#39;t say chronic And I did one thing that normally pulls me out, which is I went traveling. So normally. I went to Europe, i was like I love Europe. I had no money. I was like I fit, i&#39;m in such a horrible space, i don&#39;t even care about money right now, because I just knew. I was in such a bad lull, such a bad depression. So I went to Europe, but even being in Paris and walking the streets of Paris, it couldn&#39;t pull me out. I was like no, i want to stay in bed. So I went to Paris for a month and I got very, very sick. I think my body completely shut down. So I was like I&#39;m not doing anything in Paris. This is my first week of Paris And I was just staying in this bed all day And I was like OK, this isn&#39;t working. I&#39;m just going to book my travel and tineries, so I&#39;m moving every three days. So I kind of shocked the system out of it. That made it worse. I ended up getting very, very sick I think what was COVID. And then I was. I had this itinerary, though is like, oh, but you have to move every three days. So then I was out of money. And then I was like I&#39;m not getting better, i&#39;m not healing my body, he&#39;s not healing. I&#39;m like, at this point, i just want to go home. And I was like listen, i&#39;m not getting in on the airplane like this. It&#39;s not fair to everybody, it&#39;s actually not fair to me. I don&#39;t think, with the pressure, my ears are going to be OK. And so, finally, i just I think I ended up in Brussels And I just holed it down at this hotel for a week And I kept going. And even when I went home after a month of traveling, i was still not me. It takes time and it takes baby steps. And I was like I&#39;m having trouble now financially, i&#39;m not getting back on my feet. And I was like OK, so what&#39;s the one thing I need to do? And I was like I need to get a job. But when you&#39;re trying to get a job and you completely hate yourself and you&#39;ve gone through a breakup and that&#39;s completely effective to your worth, it&#39;s very hard to be like, oh yeah, hire me. And so it took me another four months to finally get a job And that kind of. And I chose one too that wasn&#39;t remote, that was back in the office, because I need something to pull me out of this Excellent. Excellent. I need people And not my family. And I couldn&#39;t really tell my friends because I was so ashamed of where I was at. So I was like I&#39;m getting off a shop, It&#39;s weird, but that really helped heal me. That really helped pull me out of it. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>18:50</time> <p>When you had started, you said that you did something unusual, which was the traveling. Was that part of looking back on it now? was that part of the healing process, Or what purpose did that month serve for you in? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>19:01</time> <p>hindsight. Well, now here&#39;s what has changed. Because that travel didn&#39;t heal me And typically I left home. I moved to Hawaii at 18. And then I went travel in Spain And I moved to Texas. I went traveling around the world for two years. So typically, traveling it&#39;s like my fleeing, and that fleeing typically heals me, it helps me move forward, it helps me get space for my family. So when this time it didn&#39;t pull me out, that sense of adventure wasn&#39;t strong enough to pull me out of where I was at, i was like something has changed, because normally me just landing in a new place, it kind of it lights a fire. I&#39;m like, oh, i&#39;m OK, i&#39;m doing what I know how to do. I realized then that the coping skills have changed And what I didn&#39;t need to do was travel. At that point What I needed to do was sit at home for a month and be sad and not try and shock my body anymore, because it&#39;s done being shocked. Does it need to be shocked to be alive? It actually needs rest, it actually needs care. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>20:06</time> <p>And it needs love. Were you still going to therapy all through this time? Yes, i was. Yeah, have you had the same therapist over the 14 years? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>20:14</time> <p>No, no, but it&#39;s always evolved And it&#39;s always changed depending on where I&#39;m at, depending on financial standpoint, and also there&#39;s different types of therapy, and sometimes it&#39;s talking it out, and sometimes it&#39;s moving the body, and sometimes it&#39;s art therapy, and so at any given point in my life, i tried to reevaluate. After six months, i&#39;m like is this working for me? </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>20:42</time> <p>So, if I can ask, what kind of therapy are you engaging in now? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>20:46</time> <p>Now I&#39;m doing more of a somatic therapy, so moving more emotions through the body, Because I overthink And I&#39;m always here And I&#39;m like. I do believe trauma is stored in the body. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>21:00</time> <p>And you&#39;ve read the book. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>21:01</time> <p>The body keeps the score. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>21:02</time> <p>Yes, I have OK. Ok, what&#39;s your big takeaway from your therapeutic process? You have an amazing story, but if you reflect back over the last 14 years of it, what&#39;s the thing that sticks with you? Was there a moment that a therapist said something to you that you were like fuck me, like that&#39;s it right there? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>21:26</time> <p>It&#39;s hard to say No, because I think for me it&#39;s always been. I&#39;m always learning a little bit and a little bit and a little bit, so there&#39;s not one big takeaway. I think the biggest thing that I have learned in this cliche and sometimes I curse at it is that healing is a journey And for me not to pause my life for the healing right, because there&#39;s so many different areas of life. There&#39;s career, there&#39;s finances, there&#39;s social, maybe it&#39;s adventure at one point, at any one given point in time. I don&#39;t have to completely stop my life to heal. Healing happens in the background And it&#39;s always happening And in fact going after something I&#39;m interested in in that moment. It helps me heal that trauma. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>22:14</time> <p>I like that healing&#39;s always running in the background. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>22:17</time> <p>That&#39;s what I like to think of it. Like if your computer, it&#39;s always kind of its own motor. If you&#39;re aware of it and if you care about it, it will happen. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>22:27</time> <p>Yeah, i like that, and can I ask what&#39;s your relationship now like with your mom, your dad, basically your whole family of origin, as you&#39;re healing, cause you&#39;d mentioned earlier, like there&#39;s new boundaries in place, they&#39;re not liking them. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>22:40</time> <p>Yeah. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>22:41</time> <p>That&#39;s gotta be really hard because, i mean, i&#39;m sure it kicks up all the original emotions from childhood in those moments And, while you can hold the boundary, that takes a lot of work. So tell me about that relationship. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>22:54</time> <p>Yeah, so my dad even though he&#39;s schizophrenic, cause because I took care of him I was his caretaker me and him always have the strongest emotional connection, cause he&#39;s much more caring than my mom And so, like, if you&#39;re sad, he&#39;ll be like Hey, are you okay? Like he would ask those questions. My mom would never ask those questions. So I remember when I went to go travel back in 2017, i quit my job to travel the world And I was in therapy for probably six months and I was like I can&#39;t do it, i can&#39;t leave my dad. I was still living in the Bay Area and living near him And I was like I can&#39;t do it, it&#39;s, it&#39;s mean to him. I have to be there for him, i have to take care of him. So here I was, 25, 26, still being like I have to, i have to take care of him. And whenever I&#39;d go see him, i&#39;d buy him coffee or he&#39;d like oh, i peed my pants, so I&#39;d buy him a new pair of sweats. Like cause my mom she kind of neglects him, cause she hates him for being mentally ill, even though they still live together. So I would go in and I was still doing peacekeeper, you know, even at 25 or 26. So now I don&#39;t even know if it&#39;s unfortunate, but I really just don&#39;t go see him. And when he calls me, i check in and I&#39;m like, hey, can I handle this right now? Like, what do I have going on? Do I have an in me to talk to him and tell him what&#39;s reality and what&#39;s not? Cause he&#39;ll call me and be like, hey, someone&#39;s chasing me, there&#39;s people in the house And I&#39;m like, hey, man, do I have that in me To like bring him back down to reality? And more often than not I&#39;m saying I just don&#39;t have it. I&#39;m still learning how to dream. I&#39;m still learning how to let go of things. I&#39;m still learning so many things for myself. That relationship has a lot more space. I&#39;ll occasionally go see him, but talking like once every six months now. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>24:37</time> <p>And with your mom, with my mom. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>24:42</time> <p>Oh, narcissists hate when you pull away. Oh the trauma from that. Okay, whatever you say, you&#39;re right. And when I started saying no to her, she&#39;d be like, well, you owe me money, you owe me money for that. One time I bought you dinner. Well, you owe me money for this. Well, you owe me money for that. So now that I emotionally separated, she now uses as money as a way to bond somehow or keep ties with me, and that&#39;s well, that&#39;s kind of hard because I&#39;m not rich And so I. You know, i think for me again it&#39;s just a lot more space And it&#39;s like you know what? I&#39;m not gonna call her when I have a question. Well, i never really called her about questions in life, but naturally I&#39;m like, oh, i wanna bring the people I love into my life. Like that&#39;s just who I am right. Like I&#39;m like, oh, i wanna tell them about this or oh, i wanna invite them on this trip. I&#39;m going on And now I don&#39;t. I don&#39;t call her when I&#39;m going on a trip and I don&#39;t reach out to her. And one time when I went to Paris, she goes you left and you went to Paris without me And I was like what? I just didn&#39;t respond. I was like you don&#39;t even know what&#39;s going on with me. I&#39;m just not gonna respond to that. So I think it&#39;s, and it&#39;s really hard, because when I originally started separating, there&#39;s this inner child yelling and screaming, going no, but who&#39;s gonna love me? Cause I hadn&#39;t fully figured out how to love me. She&#39;s like oh, i can&#39;t lose this connection, i can&#39;t lose this attachment. And I said, hey, chrissy, look how much suffering you have been in over the past couple of years. And I use the men. I like to use men as the symptom, not the cause. I think my parents are the cause, the men are the symptom. I was like how many months were you depressed about this ma&#39;am? And I was like 16 months. It took me 16 months to get over like a three month situation ship, to be honest. And so I&#39;m like how much suffering did you go through? And this is a cause. It&#39;s not gonna help you to keep holding on, you&#39;re gonna just be in more suffering. And so when I began to look at it like that, i was like oh, i don&#39;t wanna suffer anymore, i don&#39;t wanna be depressed over a man for 16 months. Like that&#39;s crazy, that&#39;s a lot of life. That&#39;s my youth. This is my best years. I wanna enjoy them. So it&#39;s a slow process. It&#39;s kind of like a breakup. It&#39;s a very slow breakup. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>27:16</time> <p>And final thoughts where would you like your healing to take you next? </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>27:21</time> <p>Oh, that&#39;s a good question. In my previous relationships or with myself. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>27:28</time> <p>You tell me. </p> <cite>Speaker 2:</cite> <time>27:29</time> <p>You know, my biggest regret in my 20s is not believing in myself more. So, as I look to my 30s and it&#39;s a new birthday I would like to believe in myself more, and that&#39;s what I would like the healing to help with. </p> <cite>Speaker 1:</cite> <time>27:43</time> <p>Thank, you for sharing with us. It&#39;s a beautiful story of resilience and recovery and continual healing. Like you said, healing runs in the background And I think you did a beautiful job of explaining how your healing is always running in the background. Thank you, chrissy, for taking time out of your 32nd birthday to share your story with us. I greatly appreciate it. If you are a listener, enjoy this episode and would like to listen more, you can go over to appriciotexpattherapycom and click on podcast, where you&#39;ll find all of our episodes. Next week we&#39;re talking to Sandy, a 25-year-old woman in Minnesota who began therapy because she says things were going all wrong. In today&#39;s fast-paced and transient world, taking care of your mental health has never been more important. Appricity expat therapy is your gateway to healing and self-discovery from the comfort of your home. With appricity, licensed therapists are just a click away. Experience the convenience and flexibility of online therapy sessions tailored to your unique needs as an expat. There is no cumbersome intake process or long waiting periods. We are a small private practice dedicated to helping you. Our compassionate therapists provide a confidential and supportive environment where you can explore your thoughts, emotions and concerns, all without stepping foot outside your door, whether you&#39;re dealing with depression, anxiety or just need someone to talk to? appricity has therapists for you. Visit appricityxpattherapy to learn more about our therapists and schedule your first online therapy session today. </p>