Life Is Love School

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If you are new to boundary setting, you can expect that people who don’t like your boundaries will test you to see if you mean business. Thye may use manipulations such as guilt-tripping, giving you the silent treatment, anger, etc., to get you to take back your boundaries.  

If you have people-pleasing tendencies and can’t stand the discomfort, you might end up caving to their demands and putting their priority ahead of your own. The worst part is, knowing you cave easily, once you “do them a solid,” they’ll know that your boundaries are negotiable, and they will keep hounding you again and again.  

In this episode, I cover common techniques boundary-pushers use so you are prepared. I’ll follow that with specific mindsets and techniques you can use to stay strong amidst their onslaught.  

Boundary setting is tough at the start because people will try to test you, but the sooner you establish yourself as a firm boundary holder, the sooner people will stop testing you.  At the end of the day: you get to decide how other people treat you, and you have more power to stop people from pushing your boundaries than you think you do.  

This question originally came up in our women-only coaching group. If you like to learn skills like this that will help you better navigate life’s challenges, love to have you join us!

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Have you had to deal with people communicate by “not communicating?”

I’m talking about people who stonewall, disappear, or ignore you when you want to talk to them to solve issues or get closure. People like this can be incredibly frustrating to deal with because non of your ninja communication skills work when they won’t even come to the table. Dealing with evaders is especially hard for you if you’ve suffered abandonment and neglect growing up; their non-responsiveness can evoke the familiar feeling of being unloved and unvalued.

In this episode, I give you 3 straightforward, simple, effective strategies to deal with people like this. And yes, it has everything to do with having and holding strong boundaries!

This question originally came up in our women-only coaching group. If you like to learn skills like this that will help you better navigate life’s challenges, love to have you join us!

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Most people who suffer PTSD also have trauma triggers. One of mine was seeing men with furrowed brows. My heart rate would surge, my palms would sweat, and I want to run, even though I know my fear is irrational.

Sounds familiar?

Per Wikipedia:

Because triggers are so scary and unpleasant, many of us want to run as far away from them as we can, but the more we try to avoid a trigger, the bigger and scarier the trigger gets. Research shows that avoidance of triggers increases the likelihood that the affected person will develop a disabling level of PTSD.

On top of it, many of us “run” through unhealthy means. We might try to numb out by using drugs, alcohol, binge eating, or we might try to distract ourselves through engaging in social media, playing video games, watching TV, overworking, or overexercises. The list goes on.

Avoiding irrational fear makes the fear bigger over time because the brain learns to associate avoidance with safety. If you heed what the fear tells you and run away from what makes you anxious, for example, a dog, a social situation, and nothing bad happens (which is the case, of course, since the fear was irrational), the brain starts to associate safety with your avoidance and the fear gains ground. As the fear eats away more and more of your freedom, your life gets smaller and smaller.

To counter irrational fear, you must do the opposite by gradually training yourself to sit with the discomfort and allow yourself to get closer to what you fear.

In this episode, I share how what research tells us about trigger formation and how you can practice removing triggers in the safety of your own home.

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In our women-only coaching group, we share our personal experiences with triggers, how it impacts us, and what helps us get better. The ladies tell me that sharing their experience with a safe group is in itself healing, and they enjoy learning from others who have encountered similar challenges.

Connect with fellow survivors and access free resources:  

Connect with fellow survivors and access free resources:  

In this episode, I answer the question, "I went through my boyfriend's phone and found that he’s cheating on me, what should I do?"  

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I answer the question: I'm Anxiously Attached, and my boyfriend is Avoidantly Attached. We've been together for about a year or so. Recently he told me that he's feeling overwhelmed. He just got a new job, and he said that he's having a hard time making it all work and feels like taking a break from our relationship between his boys, work, and me. I am devastated. He's the first guy I fell in love with in a long time, but I also know that Avoidants need more space than us Anxious types. Should I say to him, "I understand how you feel, but please make up your mind, so I'm not left wondering what's going on?" I hope this doesn't push him further away, but the not knowing is killing me, and I don't know what I'll do in the meantime.   

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Have you ever relied so much on a therapist you felt like you couldn’t handle life without him/her?

I did. I found her during my divorce when I was experiencing major depression. I remember walking into her office feeling lousy and walking out feeling lighter. I saw her regularly, sometimes twice a week, for over a year. I needed her so much, I almost decided against moving across states for a promotion.

I didn’t realize it then, but this phenomenon actually points to something wrong with how therapy is delivered. My therapist did the best she knew how. However, now that I know what actually works to heal my own trauma, I believe most mental health professionals could do a better job helping their patients.

In this 9 min episode broadcasted initially live in our private Facebook group, I dive into this topic. I also give you a mini-challenge to heal your inner child.

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In this episode, I answer this question from a Life Is Love School member:

I feel like I walk around the world with no skin on. I am easily triggered by people, but in retrospect, it usually turns out that I’ve made the wrong assumptions. How do I stop taking everything so personally?

This question is great because so many of us walk around the world preoccupied with what other people think of us. If this is an issue you also struggle with, you will find the tools I share in this episode super useful.

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Did you ever wonder how successful and confident people get sucked into narcissistic relationships?

Theresa Rozyla was in her mid-twenties when she met the man who became her husband. She was beautiful, bright, and held a job she loved as a corporate marketing person for Dufry.

They were happy for the first few years, but then slowly, the put-downs came. It started with the occasional comment about her physical appearance, but it escalated to daily put-downs of how she is inadequate as a person. He drained their joint account and limited her contacts with friends and family.

Terri knew that something isn’t right, but like so many abused victims, she felt trapped, so she stayed.

Until one fateful night, when her ex was in a drug-laden, drunken stupor, their verbal fight escalated to physical, and in a moment of immense pain, she heard a voice from within her speak.

Hear Terri’s story, how she mustered the courage to leave, and how she found her identity again after losing it in this twelve-year abusive marriage.  

About Our Guest: Theresa Rozyla is a Mindset and Performance Coach. As a Speaker, Yoga Therapist, NLP Practitioner, and Certified Integrative Nutrition Coach, she has helped hundreds of people rewire themselves to remove mental blocks, taking them from pain to progress to success, starting with herself. She shares her compelling stories of tenacity and courage to draw people in to look at the bigger picture of their own lives, encouraging them to aspire to be the person that they want to be from deep within their soul space.

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Do you live with chronic back or neck pain?

Did your doctor tell you that this is “all part of getting older” and that there’s nothing they can do?

Do you ever wonder why people with similar back and neck degeneration experience drastically different pain levels, some not at all?

Do you ever wonder why so many childhood trauma victims suffer from chronic, debilitating pain?

Studies worldwide have shown that the presence of early trauma appears to confer a two- to three-fold risk of later development of chronic pain. 

Our guest, Rose Barnes-Covenant, is a Pain Recovery Coach with a Master’s in Public Health. Rose suffered severe back pain, a condition she thought was a life sentence until she read about Neuro-circuit pain and how her early childhood trauma likely set her up to experience pain more severely. She learned all about the brain-body connection, and from there, how to retrain her brain to process pain differently.

Rose grew up with a depressed mother who struggled with chronic low back pain and an emotionally unstable and unpredictable father. The emotional neglect made Rose feel unloved, invalidated, and unsafe. To cope, she put a lot of pressure on herself to be perfect. To protect herself, her brain became hyper-vigilant, constantly scanning for what might go wrong next. This hypervigilance eventually manifested in physical pain signals, where her brain was sending her severe physical pain to try to keep her safe. As anxiety and fear wove into the chronic pain, it became a self-perpetuating cycle and Rose was stuck in a cycle of constant back pain for over 6 years.

In this episode, Rose shares in great detail how she worked through her pain by changing how she perceives and processes pain. If you are tired of dealing with persistent pain and are ready for a better solution, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.

About Our Guest: Rose Barnes-Covernant is a Pain Recovery Coach with a Master’s in Public Health, trained in Mind-Body Syndrome, life coaching, and meditation. You can find Rose on Instagram and Facebook.

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Review Our Podcasts: Like all Life Is Love School episodes, we aim to deliver you useful information in a short amount of time, so you can apply what you’ve learned to reap the benefits immediately. If you like our podcasts, please leave us a review on Apple Podcast and send me an email with a screenshot of your review to get a copy of Life Is Love School's "How to build self-love habits " guide, complete with a streak tracker to help you build healthy habits in the new year! Please click here for instructions on how to leave a review.