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

[Music] In this video, I'll be revealing why you keep going back to someone who leaves you feeling empty, confused and never quite good enough. And why that pull you feel towards them usually has nothing to do with love and is in fact triggered by something much deeper. Through working with a lot of women who were trapped in the cycle for years, I've discovered that the women who feel the most addicted to emotionally unavailable and inconsistent men are usually some of the most self-aware, most emotionally intelligent and most empathic women in the room, trust me. Which is why today I'm making this video for you. To show you why most women feel like they can never just walk away, why simply knowing your worth and all the things you hear online will never be enough to actually break the cycle that you're in, and how to transform your identity and finally be met with the treatment you deserve and the devotion you deserve. Oh, and by the way, I've just opened the doors to my new transformation five week cohort, the unbothered woman. If you want my help on achieving this transformation and becoming the woman you've always dreamed to be, who never questions her worth and just feels good about herself, then you will find the links in the video below and I'll tell you more about it later. Anyway, let's get into this video. Why does it feel like love when it actually isn't and when it hurts so much and it's not actually a pleasant feeling in the end because a lot of the time what you're feeling isn't love, it's a cycle that you're trapped into the hot and cold cycle closeness, then distance, it's connection and then it's silence from him, it's effort, a lot of efforts, love bombing and then it's nothing and from the outside it's obvious. But from the inside you feel very lost, it feels very rare and exciting and it feels like chemistry, it feels like I've never felt this before and all these butterflies and the reason it feels so intense is the contrast. It's the contrast, the high feels high because the low was so low that you're finally feeling the relief of it. When something is steady, it feels calm and when something is inconsistent, it feels consuming because you're chasing the steadiness and we've been taught consuming is passion, consuming is romance. It means that something special is going on, we see it on TV and movies, but intensity is not a love language, a lot of the time is just instability in the relationship and here's the real mechanism that is at play when this is happening. When he pulls away, your nervous system goes on alert, something is wrong, you start scanning for signals, you start reading the meaning into everything and past text messages, you start trying to get back the version of him you felt safe with, you're trying to cling on for something he was. Then finally he comes back and you feel this wave of relief, you're like, oh my god, he's back and you're in your best behavior and you call the relief love, not the actual relationship and the relief is your body finally exhaling, it's not proof of a soulmate or it's not proof of anything, it's just proof of you holding your breath and finally get a relief. That's why it's addictive, it's not because it's extraordinary and amazing, it's because you're going through a stress cycle by darling and I want to add a small detail that a lot of women miss. Your brain doesn't only get dopamine when something good happens, like we're always taught. It actually gets dopamine in anticipation of something good happening. So the addiction isn't only when he texts you, it's the waiting, it's the hoping, it's the maybe, it's the maybe he'll change, it's the mental rehearsal of how good it was and how good you can have it. The loop is the actual hook to him, not the relationship, it's the same reason slot machines work, you don't keep playing it because you win every single time, you keep playing because you win sometimes and that is why they're addictive. In consistency training trains your nervous system to stay on standby, always ready, always watching and always trying to adjust your movements and behaviors for him to react accordingly. And this is why it's so hard to recognize from the inside because a part of you is addicted to it, the intensity feels like the evidence you need for it being special. You think if this, if I feel so much, it must mean something like we're having this epic romance or something like that, but feelings aren't always true. They are not the truth, sometimes they're simply an activation in your body. Women confuse activation with depth in a relationship all the time. A deep relationship is something that is steady, it feels, something like something you can actually relax in, right? A long-term relationship activation feels like I can't eat, I can't focus, I can't sleep, my friend is talking to me, I can't hear her talking. How many times have you found yourself in a place like that where you are thinking about this one thing and you cannot focus on anything else? That's not depth, that's your system trying to restore safety within that moment. Now here's where the mind starts protecting the cycle. The good moments become headlines to you and the bad moments just become something that you, they're like footnotes. You build a story around his potential. He disappears and you explain it with him being busy and being so important or having this amazing job. He gives you a good moment after that and it resets the whole school board with him being amazing. And the sentence that keeps women stuck in these kind of cycles is when it's good, it is so good. I've heard that one so many times, despite a bullshit relationship, which sound dramatic and it usually means when my body finally gets relief, it feels amazing, because of the relief, not because of the guy. And that's not love, baby. That's a nervous system coming down from stress. And here's the line I want you to remember upon listening to this, there's a difference between love and needing something to survive or someone to survive. And your nervous system will blur the line if you don't understand what's actually happening to you in that moment. Because when a person or like a man is inconsistent, your body doesn't interpret it as he's unsure, he doesn't like me. Your body actually interprets it as I'm not safe, so I need to seek the safety that he's not giving me. Now, I want to separate two things that get confused all the time, because I think it will help. Seeing the good in someone versus needing them is very different, because you can absolutely see someone's potential. I see everyone's potential all the time. You can see their amazing nature, you can see their traumas and how they had a hard life. You can see the parts of them that are beautiful and completely understand them. And that's not the problem. I see people like that all the time. I'm an empath. The problem is when your nervous system starts treating this person like a life source and you start depending on them and outsourcing your sanity. And how do you know that that line's been crossed? Well, here are the signs. Number one, his mood starts dictating your mood when he's not happy, you're not happy. If he's warm and kind to you, you're okay. And if he's off, your whole day is off and you're like seeing the micro signals of how he's off, you can be in the middle of something really important, work, kids, life, whatever. And one short message of him being unhappy about something can completely drop your mood. That's a sign of you outsourcing your nervous system to him. Number two, his consistency starts dictating your self-worth. If he's consistent, you feel amazing about yourself and everything. If he pulls back, you immediately start questioning like, am I good enough as a person? Even if you don't recognize it. What did I do? Was I too much? Was I too cold? Did I say the wrong thing? Did I say the right thing? I see all my DMs. Have you guys asked me exactly those questions just because he is a bit upset. It's like your confidence is controlled by remote control that he's holding. Number three is his attention starts to dictate whether you feel okay about yourself and your body as in. You can't fully relax unless you know where you stand with him and if he wants to be with you and how much he wants to be with you. And that's not romance, that's actually a sign of codependence even. And I want to be really clear, this is not about you being a weak person. It is about how you've trained your nervous system and how you've allowed it to be trained because what happens in these dynamics is your body starts outsourcing safety to that person. So you seek to keep them in equilibrium and happy. You stop generating safety and depending on your own self and you start seeking it from him and his approval. And when he gives you warmth, you feel safe and when he goes quiet, you feel threatened and like you have a tiger chasing you. And it's just biology is not dramatic. It feels dramatic that you can't even really tell your friends about it. And it happens gradually, it's like a system you build. No one wakes up one day and thinks, "I'd love to build my emotional stability around Jacob over there." That would be really great. No one thinks that. It builds in tiny little moments where you reinforce it, like a period of closeness, then distance, then relief when he returns. And then round and round in circles again in this anxiety loop, then a hit of reassurance from him. "Oh, that feels good. Now I can feel okay about myself. Now I feel attractive and pretty again over and over again." And your nervous system learns that relief comes from him, not from you. So your body starts tracking him like a survival cue, like you're out in the jungle and he is the source of water. That's why when he goes quiet, you don't just feel sad, like normally sad. You feel like you are dying. That stomach drop and that anxiety is like a survival thing that hidden heat in your chest that just comes up. It's a body thing if you really think about it, that urge to check your phone, like it's a compulsion, that weird restlessness where you can't settle or even focus on someone else talking. It's the clearest sign that it's moved beyond a relationship of like him, don't like him, and into your nervous system integration. part of you and it's dangerous, frankly, and this is where women's start saying things like, "I swear I can feel something is off." Everything comes about feelings in their body because the relationship is controlling that. And sometimes yes, something can be off, but often what's off is not something. It's your body's living in uncertainty and uncertainty keeps your system in this overdrive. Because if you don't know where you stand, your system doesn't know when it can rest and when it can recuperate. You're always on alert and vigilance. So I want you to understand that you don't just miss him. You miss the regulation that you can feel by yourself. You will start chasing the version of yourself that felt calm in the past and the only way you know how to access that version of her who's calm and happy is his reassurance. And that's why you can't detach from him because you're missing your old calm, happy self. It's not him that you're missing or him that you're chasing. Now let's talk about why inconsistency is more addictive than someone who actually shows up for you in a super reliable. 'Cause logically it makes no sense, right? Like you'd want the person who's reliable if someone's consistent, kind, clear, amazing. You'd feel more attached, right? That's the obvious thing to think, but the reality is consistency creates a calm in you and consistency creates obsession that is how you get people obsessed with you. And that's not a personality flaw. That's just neuroscience. That's all that is. It's a concept called variable reward. That's what it's called. It's the same mechanism behind slot machines and rats who get a bit of sh-- - Okay, I've been wearing Skims cotton on repeat lately and I genuinely cannot go back. You guys know, if you listen to this podcast, that's all I wear. I'm very particular about basics. I want them to feel good, hold their shape and actually look put together. The cotton jersey scoop neck cami has become my non-negotiable. It is soft, it is flattering and it's just the right amount of stretch without feeling super tight, which makes me feel yuck. And it holds its shape wash after wash. That is genuinely rare. I've got little kids so they're always getting things dirty. Whether I'm at home running errands or layering it under something, I just feel like it works every time. It's such a no-brainer. I feel like I can wear it and not think too much about it, right? It's not taking up my brain power, guys. Skims cotton has solved the basic problem for me completely. It's just done, okay? Shop Skims cotton and all my favorite pieces at skims.com. After you place your order, though, be sure to let them know I sent you. Select podcasts in the survey and be sure to select my show in the drop down menu that follows. Thank you so much. And let's get back into the show. - Sugar, then they don't. If you pull the lever and one every single time, you would get bored of the slot machine. That's not how addiction is built. And if you pull the lever and never one, you'd walk away because there is no game, but if you win sometimes, and you never know when you're gonna win, then your brain locks in because uncertainty keeps you engaged. If you're a mammal, if you're a human, that's what happens. So when you're dealing with a man who's a walking slot machine, sometimes warm, sometimes distant, sometimes he calls you and sometimes he makes plans. And sometimes he disappears and acts like he doesn't know that you even exist and that you're annoying for wanting basic communication, then you're addicted like you would be to a slot machine. Sometimes he's obsessed, sometimes he's cold. It is actually genius. He's not doing this on purpose, but it's genius. That inconsistency actually trains you to stay on high alert and zoned in on him. You start scanning everything about him, not in an obvious way, but just in a, he's the source for you. In all the most subtle ways, you read his tone, you become like this walking encyclopedia on his mood, so there's responses, his reactions. I was there in my early 20s, it is exhausting monitoring someone so closely and you think that you're obsessed with him and what he wants and does, but actually you're obsessed with making yourself feel okay. You become basically like a walking translator of his moods and it's super exhausting. It's tiring even thinking about how I used to feel about it. 'Cause your body's trying to predict something that's unpredictable. If you can't predict him, you can't prevent the pain you feel of the unpredictable and you can't get ahead of it to stay safe, right? That's why your nervous system is doing this, is trying to keep you safe by tracking him. And this is why the addiction doesn't live in the high itself. It lives in the anticipation of the high and the low and the mood swings in the spaces in between. It's the maybe, it's the waiting, it's the mental rehearsing. I know you've been checking your phone because you're bored looking at it every time it flashes it might be him because you're trying to find a resolution but the resolution is him. The resolution is not him and your brain hates unfinished business on unfinished neurological connections. So you keep reaching for the one thing that seems like it closes the loop of your anxiety. I reply, assign, adjust your pigeon with a note, a good morning, anything that tells you where you stand with this guy because now you're relying on him. When you finally get it, you feel like a rush, don't you? You feel like, oh, relief. And that's how you know it's in your body and not in a reality because your system finally got a moment of safety. It's like a drug high. Then the cycle repeats again and over and over again until it becomes normal but you wonder why you can't have someone normal and safe because you don't get that cycle and that reinforcement. You're just living with this constant background noise of checking someone's feelings and moods and always adjusting and always calibrating and trying to say the right thing in order to provoke the right reaction but the reality is you can't because this is just how this person conducts themselves and so the loop or pee. And that's why women end up feeling tired in a way that sleep doesn't even fix. You're like physiologically, psychologically tired. It's a nervous system tiredness and it's a burnout. It's exhaustion of constantly reading the room, reading someone else's face 'cause we're not built to do that on a long, on a long-term basis when it's just this one person and he is what I want you to hear after having said all of this that the man isn't addictive because he is special. Yeah, he's addictive because your nervous system has been trained to chase the payouts. He is not that amazing and that cool, when you look at a photo of him after you break up you will understand what I mean. It's not love even though you keep calling it that. It's actually a conditioning that's occurred and it could happen to anybody. When you're constantly trying to stabilize inside an unstable dynamic, your nervous system basically becomes the relationship manager and that's exhausting. You're not just dating him. You are like managing him. You're running the whole relationship. You're managing your own anxiety and you're trying to manage his inconsistency at the same time and when he pulls away you start analyzing like adjusting, anticipating things. You're very like on everything. You start doing little invisible jobs all day. You should text him first. Should you wait if he's not coming? Should I be chill that he said that even though I've had my feelings? Should I ask him where he's going? Do I talk too much? Do I not talk enough? I like to busy, okay? No, I won't be busy. You know, I'll message him now. And what does that do in your body? He keeps you in a low level fight or flight. Can you live like this long term? I would not say that it's this love. I would say it's going to lead you to some form of panic attack. But that constant something might happen state is not good for you. The body never relaxes because relaxation requires a feeling of safety and safety requires a feeling of consistency that you're not going to get from him. So when things are fine, you're still bracing because you're used to something going wrong. And this is where women start noticing symptoms that don't sound romantic at all. Like actual symptoms, like racing thoughts, not no abilities, concentrate, no ability to focus on a show you love or you read the same paragraph three times at work, you get brain fog, you get forgetful, you're scattered, you feel like you've got too many tabs open at the same time and you feel tired, but wired and you can't sleep. And this is like a background fear, not always obvious but it's there and you are snappy. Like you're waiting for the other shoot to drop because it usually does. Like something good is happening and you can't truly enjoy it because you don't trust that it will last. I know you've had that feeling before. And over time, this is serious. Part of being in something like this is deserregulation starts to feel normal. You forget what calm feels like, being on your own, you forget what it feels like to be with someone where your nervous system isn't constantly trying to solve a riddle and you start thinking calm means I don't care. Calm means boring and neutral. I know you do because you message me when actually calm is your baseline of feeling safe. And this is the moment that really traps a lot of you, I'd say. So why does leaving feeling possible even when you know that the relationship's hurting you? Because by the time most women reach that point, it's not a relationship anymore really is it. It's like a system that you're indoctrinated in. It's a routine, it's a mental habit, it's changed your whole identity, it's changed the whole way your body works. And the longer you stay in a cycle like that, the more your life starts organizing itself around the cycle. Not because you're like pathetic or you've done something the wrong, but you've adapted to the way that it is. You start adapting to his moods and his availability and uncertainty and all of those things. And that is why leaving doesn't feel like losing him in the relationship. It feels like losing you. It feels like losing the version of yourself who was in something, the version of you who had a storyline like a future and a purpose and a hope of basically managing his emotions. It feels like you're losing your routine and your baseline. The little things you don't even realize you've built like checking your phone when you wake up for his message or wondering what he's doing at night or reading into his patterns and moods or waiting for weekends or making yourself available just in case he is on Saturday. He will know a lot of times he doesn't want to spend time with you and the hardest one. It feels like losing the future that you attach to him. Not the future that's actually happening, but the future that you are hoping will happen. The future where you finally see that he can choose you properly. That was what you were banking on, right? The version where he becomes consistent and the version where his good side comes up because that's why you keep doing it. When people say just leave, they're missing the point. You can't just leave because what you're grieving isn't the man, you're grieving the fantasy you built that allows you to survive the reality that you're living in. Now here's the other layer. Your nervous system will resist leaving, not because it wants you to be in pain, but because it wants what's familiar and what you've trained it to understand. This is the part that people find it hard to admit. Familiar can feel safe even though it's not. Your system knows this cycle. It knows the rhythms and the routines, the anxiety and the waiting and then the relief. It's exactly a pattern and then a reset and then it begins again. It's a terrible rhythm, but it's a predictable one that you know. So in the unpredictability of the race, you still get the predictability of the cycle. So when you think about leaving, your body doesn't interpret it as freedom from the cycle. Your body interprets it as basically the unknown. How are you going to regulate if you can't do it through him? And as for this regulated nervous system unknown, it feels very dangerous. That's why you can be sitting there fully aware saying he doesn't treat me well, he doesn't want to spend time with me. He doesn't even like me most days. This isn't what I want. I deserve better. All the things that women say and still feel completely unable to leave the dynamic because your mind is talking, but your body is panicking. How am I going to have a new cycle and regulate my own emotions? And then we add the thought pattern that keeps women changed to this whole relationship is, but I've already invested so much time, emotional energy, so much emotional labor, so much forgiveness, so much trying to make it work that you resent the fact that you would have to give up all of that investment. And this is where the sunk cost becomes an emotional trap because your brain starts treating leaving as wasting time in the past, wasting years. I've wasted my years on him. Don't women say that all the time, wasting your investment basically. So now you stay longer to justify the time you've already given up. But the truth is that staying doesn't protect your investment, staying only increases the cost of the long-term investment. And I know that that's things and it sucks, but it's the thing that's going to free you because you don't get your time back babe. Time is the one asset that you cannot make. You can't make more time. You can get your life back by leaving the pattern today. And this is where the identity piece really comes in because a lot of people, their real fear isn't what if I lose the relationship. It's what if I leave and I still feel the same emptiness that I have in it. What if I leave and it proves that I am faulty and nobody wants me? What if I leave and I'm then just alone. And that's why it feels truly impossible to leave that dynamic. Not because you don't know about it because you do. Just leave him is not the line because your nervous system has learnt that he equals safety in those tiny moments and your identity has wrapped itself around the hope that this will finally work out that there will be more better moments than there are cold tough moments. Let's quickly talk about why the know your worth doesn't break the cycle. They say know your worth and walk away because worth in itself is a concept. And concepts live in your head and not in your nervous system. It's two different places. Your nervous system doesn't speak in concepts. It speaks in patterns, sensations, and what feels safe and what feels threatening. So you can be the most intelligent girl in the room. Okay, but you can read all the books. You can watch all the videos. You can understand all the attachment styles. Margarita, what book do you recommend? You can even be the friend who gives everyone an amazing advice. Yeah. And still find yourself going back to the stupid relationship that you're in, that he doesn't want you back because you can, your mind can know something while your body is bonded to something else. And that's the part that you are missing that it's not about knowing more. You're not staying because you don't know better. You are staying because your body has learned a pattern that you're in. So if knowing your worth isn't enough, then what are we actually going to do to break the cycle? We need like an identity level change. And I know that phrase gets strung around online a lot. So let me make it real for you and land the plane. In sight says, into the situation, I deserve better. Identity says, I don't accept this. And those sound really similar in theory until you're actually triggered because under pressure, you don't live by what you know. You live by what your nervous system has been trained to tolerate. That's why a lot of you can have all the insights in the world and still go back to the moment that you feel the drop in the moment of that trigger, like him not replying to you or something. So an identity level change is not you sitting there and deciding from today, I'm a new woman. That's cute. I like that for you, but that's not what's going to get you over the threshold. Identity changes when your body learns a new definition of what is safety. When your body's nervous system stops treating his attention, like oxygen, when you don't longer need his consistency to feel okay. And that doesn't happen through one dramatic breakthrough or argument or something. It happens through repetition. Just the way you learn to rely on him, you need to learn to rely on you through regulation. Okay. You don't wake up one day just unbothered and not caring about him. You build the feeling of being unbothered. You build it in the same way you build a muscle consistently through repetition by doing the work, not just one day because what you're really doing is training your system, you're teaching your body that silence from him is not danger. Uncertainty is not an emergency. Not being chosen by him is not a threat to my identity. It does not change who I am. And when that training starts landing, something really interesting starts to happen to you. The old dynamic stops feeling so spicy and like love, it starts feeling like annoying noise. That's that's the shift. You start seeing his behaviors as what they are. And you're not thinking, oh, I'm just trying to be strong, but genuinely, I don't want this in consistent person. It doesn't feel so good anymore. The push-pull cycle starts to feel cheap and annoying. The hot and cold starts to feel like honestly like a headache and you stop romanticising it. When the feeling of safety comes from within you, you stop calling whatever he's doing, passion, and start seeing it as if like a friend was doing it. You'd be like this person's in consistent. Yeah. And that's how you know that identity has changed when his behaviors look exactly as his behaviors and not romanticized because you don't need willpower to avoid something you no longer crave. Now, what does the woman look like on the other side of this whole idea? Because a lot of women ask that question. They think if I stop chasing him, if I'll become cold and if I stop start focusing on myself, will I become avoidant and not caring and mean and just horrible? No, you won't. You can still feel deeply and be an amazing person, but it doesn't mean that you're a desperate person. You can be warm and feminine and lovely and amazing and everyone's best friend and still be open to hanging out with him, but you can regulate yourself emotionally. So you can experience like an attraction with someone without a spiral. You can choose someone without losing yourself and you can be excited without meaning anything bigger than that. But the biggest difference that you would see is you can see the good in someone and the potential in someone without needing them. And that is what we started with because if you stop confusing the intensity and the depth with the reality of the relationship, that's really liberating. A genuine connection, it feels steady and yes, it feels boring for a person who's used to the mood swings of the opposite, but it doesn't hijack your day. It actually allows you to do so much more with your day. It allows you to stay on your purpose and on your mission and all these things that you can do when you're not negotiating for basics. And yeah, I'm going to say it plainly, a genuine connection does not turn your nervous system into a hostage situation. So how does a person who self-regulated act? Well, she doesn't observe behavior all the time and calculate it. She doesn't argue within consistency and try and make someone hang out with her. She doesn't send paragraphs trying to convince a man to treat her properly. You don't do that. She simply becomes unavailable to dynamics that require her to abandon her self and her nervous system and her safety. That's the technical version of the unboded woman. You're not numb, you're not detached, you're not cold in that way. You're just self-lead and you are your own safety so that you can clearly see someone from the side and how they act. If you want to really dive into it more, the unbuttored woman is available, as I said, sorry, it's mentioned it again, I'm just very super excited. The thing that I want you to understand the most at the end of it all is if you can rely on yourself for your own emotional regulation, you can actually see someone clearly and if you've been on my socials before, you probably have heard the whole American Idol Simon Cowell thing that I've talked about. And that is you want to be the one that they're auditioning for as opposed to the other way around. When you're in this anxiety loop and you are always trying to make sure that he's okay in order for you to feel safe so that you can feel calm in your nervous system, you're always looking for him to choose you. So you're auditioning for him. When you can become your own place of safety through systems that I talk about in the master class, you can then see who he truly is, see who he is truly presenting in front of you and you get to be the judge. Okay. Now, the biggest shift isn't even your relationship with men when it comes to this. It's the relationship with yourself because once this cycle of addiction is broken, you can rebuild safety from the inside out with your own self without outsourcing it to someone else, which is the most dangerous thing you can do. You can be grounded and safe within yourself and you can actually start to value yourself and have that relationship with yourself where you can rely on yourself and back yourself even when it comes to friends, work and all aspects of your life because you will feel a sense of groundedness that is not your power given away to someone else. And that's the biggest lesson in emotional sovereignty. Before you click off, I need you to hear this one last thing. This addiction has nothing to do with you being stupid or not self-aware or not evolved, not for anything like that. Some of the smartest, most emotionally intelligent people, I've ever met have been stuck in these cycles, so it's not you because it doesn't live in your mind. It lives in your nervous system. That's two very different things. Okay. And the good news is your nervous system isn't permanent. It's patent and it can be changed, which means it is flexible and it can be retrained. You can break this cycle, not by forcing yourself to be stronger or all those things, but by becoming regulated enough that the chaos stops feeling like love and becoming your own safe space. And if you want my help with that, as I said, I can help you without on March 20th when we joined the unbothered women together. We even have a WhatsApp group. What are we? Anyway, guys, this has been amazing to talk with you. Thanks for watching or listening, and I'll see you on the next one. Bye, good bye.