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I titled today's episode, Leaving the Pack. So there comes a moment when the life you built stops fitting. When the safety you've clung to starts feeling more like a cage than comfort. And yet, leaving the familiar, leaving the pack, it feels terrifying. Because somewhere deep in our biology, safety equals survival.

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Welcome back to the Unfolding Podcast. I'm your host and friend, Yvonne Wink. And today we're talking about the moment you know you have to step away from the pack, from the relationship, the system, or the version of you that no longer fits. And how your brain, your body, and your nervous system will fight you every single step of the way. It'll actually even convince you to stay right where you are. Even when staying is keeping you small. Even when staying is breaking you.

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Until you realize it's not sabotage, it's survival.

Okay, I want to go down a little journey today with you. So let's go back in time. We're going to take it all the way back, like thousands of years back. okay, technically millions, millions of years back, but I want to take us back to cave woman times. Yeah, I said that. And if you're a man listening, cool. Well, great. First of all, I want to thank you. You know what? I wish I could high five you, but I'm air high fiving you right now.

So by now you've realized that you probably need this or well, your significant other has suggested very, very strong suggestion that you listen to this. Okay. But either way, on behalf of myself and women all over, we want to thank you. We're happy you're here. So for today, I'm using the word cave woman because well,

I can. Okay. What I want to do is talk a bit about the cave woman brain. Okay. Put on your thinking caps. We're going, we're back in school. As you all know, we were pack creatures. Okay. This is how it all started. Pack was life. It actually meant life. So everything depended on belonging, food, shelter. safety, communion and connection. If you left the pack, you died. Simple. You could not survive outside the cave outside the pack because back then the lion, the threat was really outside the cave and it was absolutely trying to kill us. Now.

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Well, the lion looks different.

It looks like chronic stress. It's a job loss. A breakup. Old outdated beliefs that need an upgrade.

partner silence.

heaviness. How will I feed my family this week, and the crippling fear of starting that new business adventure or publishing that new podcast.

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Your brain doesn't know the difference. What happens is it just screams, danger, danger, danger, stay small. Don't get kicked out of the pack because the brain's primary purpose isn't happiness or fulfillment. It's not stepping into your power and discovering your purpose in this lifetime. Your brain's primary purpose, it's survival.

The amygdala scans for threat constantly. is constant, right? For threats signals. What happens is it signals the autonomic nervous system and boom, what happens? Your survival responses kick right in. Fight, flight, freeze and fawn. Those survival responses that we talked about a few episodes back. Yeah, that was. So what happens is familiar equals safe. Even if it's painful.

And that's why sometimes we stay in unfulfilling jobs, loveless or even toxic relationships and friendships that, you know, sure, while they're familiar, they also drain us. Because familiar pain feels safer than unfamiliar peace.

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I once heard someone say, the nervous system will always choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven. Boom. That thing knocked me off my feet. The nervous system will always choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven. Do you ever wonder why you just can't get that kickstart?

Right? You just, you keep procrastinating and, making excuses for why you don't start, why you can't start, why right now isn't the time. Well, I'm glad you asked. Here we go. Maybe what was I talking about again? Ah, okay. Here we go. So, okay. Oh, I was talking about the nervous system. We'll always choose familiar hell over unfamiliar heaven. I love that. So for years, that's exactly what I was doing.

I was choosing a familiar hell.

I told myself it was love, but really it was the fear of exile.

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So in my upcoming book, "Traumatized by a narcissist? If so, you may be entitled to compensation." There's a chapter that I talk about when I explained how the mask first slipped. he came in like a tidal wave, pummeling in. It was intense, intoxicating. He was confident. Within weeks.

My days were booked, my nights spoken for, my weekends planned. Trips were arranged and us was declared.

He said the line that would echo for years. Weeks in. I'm not dating anyone else. It's just you.

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It felt like devotion. Like fate.

See, after years of feeling invisible in my marriage, this attention felt like oxygen.

way he looked at me. He looked at me as if I were the rarest thing in the room.

And I breathed him in like air after suffocation. I, I mistook that rush for safety. There's something called the starvation effect. So when you've been emotionally neglected, your nervous system becomes super uber hypersensitive to scraps of attention, anything. So it's like being dehydrated in the desert, even one little drop of water feels like a flood. So what looks like falling in love is often your brain clinging to the relief of finally being seen.

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Because weeks in, his mask slipped.

We were talking politics, everyone's favorite subject, a lighthearted comment on my end or so I thought. What I didn't know at this point, I didn't understand his drinking patterns yet. And he switched up quick. He screamed at me. You don't know anything. You're so bleep ignorant.

I'll keep it light for now. You'll have to read the book for the full quote. Now I'm a lot of things, but ignorant isn't one of them. But here's the thing. It wasn't just the words. It was the sun drop in temperature, like, like a freezer door opening, just all the warmth sucked out of the room and my nervous system froze.

That was my first step onto the minefield. And I didn't know it then, but there were many more hidden, unpredictable, each one sharper than the last.

So here's a little medicine moment, testing boundaries.

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See the insult is never about the insult. Listen clearly. It's data collection, right? They're learning what you'll tolerate. Push back hard. Guess what? They recalibrate. Let it slide because you're tired, grieving. You're just trying to keep the peace. They learned something else about you. You'll bend, and I bent. Not because I didn't know better, but because I was already bleeding from other wounds.

Then came the little jabs, right? The joke about my looks, jokes at my expense, a smirk while mentioning another woman. And then the drunken rages, the name calling, the reminders that my entire world had imploded. My family was fractured and that he was the only one left standing. The only one who had been there for me. Everyone in my life had abandoned me except him.

And certainly no one else would ever put up with all that he had. And I believed him.

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Here's a term to know, intermittent reinforcement. I want to break this down a little bit. what that is is it's a cycle of unpredictable rewards mixed with punishment. Okay. So it's the most powerful form of conditioning. So your brain bonds harder when love is inconsistent than when it's steady. It's not chemistry, it's captivity.

So I stayed. Not because I was weak, but because my nervous system had been hijacked. Each new crack in the mask, I just simply explained away. he was tired. He didn't really mean that. He was drinking all day. He just needs to get some rest. He apologized. He really did apologize. And I think this one feels genuine this time.

The mask doesn't slip just once. It slides slowly and deliberately. And that was when my body learned a dangerous equation. His silence felt like punishment and his return felt like oxygen.

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I remember the first time I experienced his rage. It lasted hours. Screaming, cursing, accusing, threatening. And then, between the storms, that gentle version of him, softly saying, I'm really sorry, Yvonne. I'll never do that again.

That's the real hook.

The cruelty keeps you off balance, it's the tiny rare moments of softness that actually lock you in. mean, you tell yourself that's who he really is that right there. But by the time the mask fully cracks, I was convinced that at that point he was both the poison and the cure.

That's how the mask works. doesn't shatter all at once. It fractures piece by piece until one day you realize the face staring back at you was never real.

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It wasn't just betrayal. Check this out. It was biology. My body was screaming, run, get out of here. But my brain whispered, stay.

Stay because it's familiar. Stay because you're scared. You can't survive out there. Stay because starting over at this age sounds exhausting. And it is. It said stay because people, they might talk. Because leaving meant standing alone. Leaving meant risking rejection, ridicule, silence. It meant I would be alone. Leaving meant facing the question, who am I without him?

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When the mask first slips, it's tempting to excuse it. Quickly come up with something, right? He was, was tired or he was drinking. But the truth is the first insult, the first jab, the first scream fest, the first moment of cold cruelty, that's data. You don't need months of evidence. Believe the first fracture. Trust what your body felt in that moment.

The The drop in your stomach. The feeling you wanted out of the pack, but felt caged also.

None of that was drama. That's your intuition. That was your body saying, attention.

There's this sacred, painful moment where your soul, it gets louder than your fear. Not the moment I lost him, the moment I found me. That's when I walked away. I didn't just leave him, leave his house, leave his safety. I left my old identity, the people pleaser, the rescuer, the Captain Save-A-Ho The I'm fine girl who smiled while quietly dying inside. It took several hundred thousand times, but I finally walked. Literally, I walked away and I kept walking and I kept walking through airports, across oceans, into Bali and Thailand and Portugal. Every country became a metaphor for retraining my nervous system, teaching it that aloneness is not danger, it's discovery. And that stillness isn't punishment, it's peace. So travel became my exposure therapy. Every new smell, new face, getting lost in new cities and countries.

It was like a rep in the gym of rewiring. When I'd panic, I'd breathe. I'd practice my box breathing, the five, four, three, two, one grounding, even stepping outside and letting the cold air hit my skin. Each was my way of telling my body we're safe now.

When I'd feel lonely, I'd talk to strangers. When I'd feel unworthy, I'd journal and journal and journal. I just began scribbling until those pages were bleeding with my truth.

Each moment became an opportunity to show my nervous system. We are safe now. We got this. We can handle this. That's neuroplasticity in real time, right there. Your brain's ability to rewire through new experiences. And the wild part, when I stopped looking for that in other people, that peace, that

I started creating it within myself. And then when that happened, my anxiety softened, my confidence grew. I didn't need someone to save me. I already had come home to me. And that's, I guess that's what I'm trying to say about when I say healing isn't loneliness. It feels like that, but really what it is is it's coming home to yourself.

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What I had rehearsed alone on airplanes is what I now get to practice with people every day. These days, that's the work I get to do, guiding people home to themselves. Whether it's addiction, anxiety, heartbreak, depression.

What I see again and again is this. People aren't broken. They're paused. You ever feel like that? Their nervous systems are overloaded and their stories are stuck in survival mode.

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And the moment we teach the body that it's safe, even just safe enough, people transform.

I've seen someone who swore they'd never love again, start smiling at strangers and someone who thought they'd never trust again, finally start trusting themselves one decision at a time. Someone else who believed their joy was gone for good started laughing in their kitchens again.

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And even someone who thought it was too late to begin. I've seen them launch new businesses, new dreams, new adventures. And we all called it freedom.

It's not magic, it's biology and self-compassion working together.

Because when you regulate, I, every time I say regulate, you just think of that song. Okay. Let me get back to this. What was I talking about again? Okay. Every time we regulate our nervous system, the emotional brain softens, the rational brain comes back online and suddenly the truth gets louder than the fear.

And that's where psychology meets the See, once your body feels safe, your mind can finally start to listen. You begin to notice the pattern behind the pain. How, how a single thought, one single thought can shape the way you feel. How that feeling then influences what you do and how those actions quietly create the life you live.

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Your thoughts create your feelings. Your feelings create your actions and your actions create your life. So if you want to change your life, just start by noticing the thought loop after you help your body feel safe enough to listen. So let's pause right here together, just for a sec. Just place your hand on your heart. I want you to just breathe in.

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When you feel fear, regulate before you reframe. Okay. Because here's what I need you to know. You can't think your way out of a body that feels unsafe. So before you try to think your way forward, which I believe is very impactful, very positive, very much needed, right? Thinking our way forward. But before that practice this slight pause.

First, notice the thought, right? Don't fight it. Just notice what am I feeling right now? What's this thought? Then name the feeling, right? Notice the thought, then name the feeling. What is it? Fear, shame, grief, unworthiness? I don't know. Whatever it is, name the feeling and then regulate.

Breathe, tap, move. This is just you connecting with yourself.

Sometimes when we hear information like this, the mind runs with it. wants to fix, to analyze, to understand it all. Right. But what, what real healing doesn't it real healing doesn't happen in our minds. It happens in our bodies. There are so many ways to come back home to yourself. It could be anything from taking a few deep breaths, right? Or maybe it's grounding through movement, music, a nice walk outside, a hike, anything, moving your body, or simply placing your hand over your heart, like we just did earlier and reminding yourself, I'm safe now.

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whatever it looks like, regulation isn't about perfection. It's about remembering. Remembering that safety lives inside you.

Now peace is something that you can return to over and over and over again.

Each time you do this, it's a love letter to your nervous system.

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Here's your own folding.

Let's talk real life here. All right. Maybe your pack isn't a toxic relationship. Maybe it's your career. Maybe it's that friend group you've outgrown or the longing for a new brand new pack. One that feels more aligned with who you are, who you are right now, who you're becoming.

Maybe it feels a little less judgmental.

Maybe it's a version of you that once fit, but now it just feels too small. That knot in your stomach before logging on to work. That's data. That Sunday dread, and not because your team lost again. That's a sign.

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That one friend who trains you every time you see them. That's your body saying to you, we're not safe here.

Sometimes, okay, listen to these next few thoughts of mine, just with an open heart. Sometimes healing means walking away. And sometimes it means staying, but standing differently.

Either way, the goal is peace. And peace starts the moment you stop outsourcing your worth.

I used to think peace would come when he changed or when people finally saw the truth or when I had more, more, more, more, more, more money, more success, more proof that I mattered. But peace didn't show up in my bank account. It showed up in my body. The first time I said no more and meant it.

And yes, it's funny how life humbles you. When I first left, swore I'd never date again. And now, well, I can spot a red flag before he even orders an appetizer. That's growth, baby. That's growth. So if you're standing at your edge right now, contemplating leaving the pack, wondering if you can rebuild

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If you can start over, finally say yes to that adventure that's been on your heart for years. Or go alone. Please hear me. You can.

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And here's the beauty. You won't be alone for long because the moment you choose truth, guess what? A new pack will find you. And this time it's built on love, authenticity and peace. Step into your light. Step into your power. Doubt your fear first before you doubt your truth. Show up messy, complicated, not knowing anything like I did when I started this podcast.

But you've got this friend, the right people will find you. I know that because they're finding me. They're supporting me. They're loving me and cheering me on. You're not broken, frozen, lost. You're not crazy. You're just remembering who you are.

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Here's our integration practice. Place your hand over your heart and repeat after me.

I choose truth over belonging. I choose peace over patterns. I am safe in my becoming. I trust myself because sometimes leaving the pack isn't abandonment, it's evolution.

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Your unfolding might look different than mine. Maybe yours is staying sober. Maybe it's finally saying enough.

But no matter what it looks like, it's sacred.

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Here's your suggested journal prompt for the week. So excited about this one. What would freedom look like if I trusted myself to leave? Ooh, that was a good one. I'm going leave you with something that no one told me. So I'm going to tell you how hard it is to rewire your brain to allow amazing things to happen after experiencing so much trauma or so much pain or so much difficulty. But it's possible. Learn to trust yourself. I promise you the blessings exist. Good people exists. Real, pure love exists and a more fulfilling life exists.

Keep softening and allow it to happen. And I'll keep this work coming your way to support you in any way I possibly can. I'm your host and friend, Yvonne Wink. Thank you for listening to The Unfolding. Until next time, keep choosing yourself, keep breathing, and keep walking home.

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