Stop Giving Away The INNER POWER You Need to Heal Your Trauma

if you're going to heal from the trauma of the past you're going to need to get your power back and what I mean by that is the life force that is generally drained and suppressed by trauma that gives you energy and focus each day to get up and take care of yourself now when I say power I don't necessarily mean power over other people I want to talk about power as the inner resource inside where you know your next right action and you have the strength and confidence to actually take that action because it takes

power to get up in the morning it takes power to take a shower to brush your teeth to get to work on time right it takes power to get a job and it takes power to leave a job that no longer works for you it takes power to learn something new right to create something to to develop yourself to be ready for a new job maybe and it takes power to hold your ground and stay regulated around difficult people so this is really what empowerment is it's not something other people give you like I empowered

these people it's not really something that can be given it's something that rises up within yourself through consistent positive actions in in the atmosphere of your basic good self but power is also something that you can make Stronger by steering clear of things that drain your power so the trouble with cptsd is it's really common for people to lose their power and a lot of trauma-driven behaviors do that they feel like a great idea but they drain you in the end so let's talk about cptsd behaviors that take away your power I'll tell you a

bunch of them and then we'll go back through and I'll tell you how you get back your power from each of those tendencies that people with cptsd have some you'll have some of these not all of them so let's talk about the cptsd behaviors that take away your power and I'll tell you a whole list of possibilities and you can see if any of them ring true for you but after I go through them I'll go back and I'll talk about how to take your power back if that's your tendency okay so number one the

way people with trauma sometimes lose their power is believing that someone is coming to save you and you know this doesn't just come from Disney movies it's just coded in there it is an old childhood memory and if you were not protected and people did not come to your Aid when you needed it when you were a kid you may have kind of gotten stuck with your Hope just kind of flying out of you all the time you know sooner or later somebody's going to show me the boundaries of what's Happening Here they're going to

tell me how you're supposed to navigate this and one of the hardest things about growing up and then as you get older it's this hard realization that comes when you grow up sometimes gradually sometimes it takes a long time that nobody's coming that sometimes people can help you when you need help but mainly evolving your life and becoming who you really are is something you're gonna do all right number two this is a tendency that can drain your power is believing that someone who hasn't apologized to you must apologize and they got to do it

right or you're never going to heal that's a really self-destructive belief and it drains your power it's basically taking all your power and giving putting it in the hands of somebody else you know with this idea like and I I totally believe you that they probably owe you an apology but it doesn't have to mean that you don't heal and to believe that anything can stop you from healing is to give away your power your power depends on you you know just having a basic mindset of like anything is possible I know healing is possible

I'm gonna get to work on it I'm gonna do the best I can and if things don't work I'll change course a little bit and I'll keep finding what does work that is a positive attitude that's you know basically all any of us has all right number three for things that drain your power and it's trying to get approval from people who are mean to you or don't care about you and I know you have people like this in your life we all do if you have cptsd they're probably they probably starts with parents there's

relatives there's you know people you knew all your life there's this weird way that when you're not treated like you're a real person like a real child who has real needs when you're a kid like the whole world conspires to treat you like that sometimes not the whole world but you're gonna keep finding a pattern with that but if you dance around thinking that it's getting the approval that's going to solve the problem and you're abandoning yourself betraying yourself losing yourself trying to get somebody to like you it drains your power it drains your power

at a certain point you need to approve of yourself and to do that is sometimes going to be a project because to approve of ourselves for real means you do things that are that you feel good about you've cleaned up messes that you don't feel good about so we'll talk about that when we come back through all right number four the thing that drains your power is avoiding conflict now I know I sometimes advise people avoid conflict don't go to a family holiday and get into it with people about politics or what happened in the

past like that will ruin your day and everybody who's there including the innocent parties who were just hoping to have a holiday dinner with everybody there's kids in extended families who are in the same position you were in as a kid and if you could remember what it feels like when people are fighting so there are so many good reasons to avoid conflict but at a certain point you need to stand up and actually have the conflict and speak up for yourself or it begins to drain your power all right number five the opposite of

avoiding conflict is fighting everyone just fighting everyone about everything and I don't know I've been that person before and it's exhausting it feels like a crusade it feels like it's just happening to you and you know you have no choice but you you do have a choice about who you fight with and if you're fighting with everyone you're probably going to drain all your power before you actually resolve anything you know I I totally understand the spirit of fighting everyone it's like standing up for yourself you know standing up for what's true not allowing abuse

and yes you don't want to do those things but if it's just like across the board what ends up happening is you lose so much power you can't take sane action you can't see what's really happening so you neither want to avoid conflict or fight everyone there's this Middle Ground number six is using intoxicating drugs to cope with dysregulation now those might be prescribed we might be talking about alcohol which is you know it's not illegal it's just intoxicating and and so are street drugs obviously but a lot of people will say I'm self-medicating you

know with alcohol or weed or what have you and self-medicating I just think that's a nice way of saying using it's just everybody's self-medicating when they use drugs and alcohol when there's not like an underlying addiction it's you know we call it recreational but it's always like on a Continuum right from the first part of the continuing it's like it starts fun and then it turns into you know self-medication and trying to deal with feelings so I just bring this up so that you can ask yourself you know are you using the term self-medication or

are you using drugs out of some belief I hear this a lot people are like yeah you know they smoke weed every day quite a lot saying it helps with regulation and I would just say do whatever you have to do to keep yourself alive but in the long run if you're going to learn to re-regulate it's not going to work with intoxicants that's just not generally the pattern for people the ideal state for you is to be able to go oh I'm getting dysregulated and then to have tools to be able to pull it

back in to be able to pull that back in if you have a tendency to get neurologically dysregulated you feel overwhelmed discombobulated clumsy can't get your words out spacing out you might be having dysregulation from from complex PTSD it's really normal for people who had a traumatic childhood and I teach people how to overcome that I'll put a link up above here where you can download I have a download called signs of dysregulation and emergency measures to re-regulate and you can get that by clicking that but stay with me here um if you're using drugs

to re-regulate it's a temporary fix it's probably not re-regulating you that well and when you do learn to re-regulate even a little bit even if you haven't mastered it every day all day and nobody has right everybody gets dysregulated sometimes but with cptsd we just want to be better at re-regulating we want to notice it's happening we want to get re-regulated faster the seventh thing that can drain your power from complex PTSD is putting yourself down where you are having this negative self-talk that inner critic going oh I'm such an idiot you know oh I

know this is or you know you're talking to people and you're like excuse me I know this is stupid but can I ask a question you're putting yourself down and it's just it's a natural instinct that comes with the fawning there's four trauma reactions fight flight freeze Fawn and fawning is when you're like excuse me I'm sorry and putting oneself down is sort of the equivalent of when a dog who's like nervous and jittery and you go to pet them and they go boom they roll over on their back you don't want to be like

that you want to stay in your strength you want to stay in your power all right number eight is overspending uh credit cards uh going into debt that is a way that you lose your power a person who has a lot of debt has very few choices like you have to stay in some job that you have because to spend two months looking for a different one would throw you so far off financially that you can't even do it so overspending and debting are two things that take the power away that you could really do

so much more with that power for healing all right nine under spending yes the opposite is not good either you drain your power and I always say if you want to know if you're under spending go look in your underwear drawer are they decent would you be okay if somebody had to go in your room and pack for you does your underwear drawer reflect your basic socioeconomic level or or is everything shabby and yucky and assuming no one's ever going to see it you might be under spending sometimes taking care of yourself means having appropriate

things not lavish things but appropriate all right number 11 is avoiding your own intellectual growth avoiding learning learning is so important and you're going to need to learn to heal so when you're avoiding that when you're you know doing waste of time things like um you know drinking watching TV I love TV I love TV there's a place for it but when you're doing that instead of doing the learning that would help you heal it's a problem number 12 staying friends with people who drain your energy who diminish you who put you down who take

a lot from you but don't give back I this is so common for us but it drains your power and it starts to affect how you see yourself who you see yourself as being what you think is possible for you all right number 13 getting into romantic relationships with people who cannot or will not go the distance with you so if you're taking all your love and all that sort of powerful potent life force of wanting to be in a relationship very precious energy that you have right possibly even having children this is like a

very important power and energy that you have and if you're just taking it and just you know giving it to somebody who doesn't care about you you'll know if you're doing it right but if you're doing that your power is just draining away and you don't even have that to attract someone appropriate or to give to somebody who happens to show up you won't even recognize good people who show up when you're completely drained by you know obsessing on someone unavailable or staying in a relationship that's not good for you all right number 14 is

neglecting yourself if you're not taking care of your health if you're not taking care of your hygiene this is really common right your appearance like is your hair brushed in the back you know in the back and after the I'm not talking about pandemic times here and I saw this once on a new girl where she goes I'm going to shave my legs even on the back back of the legs too and I laughed so hard because I was like yeah that's a level of self-care that I had to graduate to and so you know

we don't just do this for appearances of having hygiene but we actually take care of ourselves so we'll talk about that in a minute all right number 15 draining your power is doing too much over functioning this is where you just feel like you know I do everything for everybody I you go to potlucks with way more than other people bring to the potluck you uh keep your life incredibly busy you're pursuing multiple degrees and jobs all at the same time and you know the signs because you're very stressed out and exhausted all the time

um I think doing things an accomplishment and taking action is super wonderful but there is a line there's a line where it begins to drain your power all right 16 doing too little getting paralyzed from taking action avoiding action altogether just getting into deep procrastination oh it feels so bad to do that drains your power 17 is blaming blaming other people for your problems and uh they're you know you undoubtedly have problems that are caused by other people but there can be this way where that becomes a deep rumination it's a rumination that gets into

your bones and you think about it all the time and you're like you know if only this thing hadn't happened in 1981 everything would be different for me and what that puts you into is somewhere other than right here other than right here looking at your problems and what can be done about them losing power number 18 is cutting people out of your life instead of healing relationships when healing is possible and desirable so we've all encountered people who sort of cut and run when the going feels a little bit tense they are flears they

are avoidant and that might be you too a lot of us kind of Swing both ways on that like if somebody's fleeing from you maybe you cling if they're smothering you you flee you know it's all really common with cptsd but our power builds up when we can stay and deepen relationships and strengthen them so if you're sabotaging all of that I have no doubt you're losing opportunities and personal power okay my last two have to do with not dealing with the problems in your life and one way to do that is to stay too

busy running around all the time overfilling your calendar you know oh I'm so stressed I'm so busy the other way you can do that is by being too involved too consumed with other people's problems such as if you're in a relationship with somebody who has an addiction or who's an alcoholic or who's doing something terrible with the money and you're just constantly consumed in this and you're tired and drained and walking around with circles under your eyes because of what you've been going through at home consumed with somebody else's problem there is a way to

take your power back from that so let's talk about that let's go back through the list that I just gave you and talk about how you can retrieve your power and build it up instead as you heal your trauma with the belief that someone is going to come and save you I want you to just tell yourself right now that is a beautiful fantasy and I am hereby going to step up and save myself it's the best thing so one part of my life where I've had to do this is you know crappy childhood fairy

it's a company and it's a company I love running but I don't know if I do it the best way all the time and I used to have this fantasy that if I could just find the right consultant they would come in and go I see exactly what you're doing right I see exactly what you're doing wrong do this change this change that and everything would get easy and better and um and it never worked and I tried and tried with some different things and different functions and what I had to learn is it's actually

going to have to be me like it's my company and if something is wrong I'm going to need to do the research to understand why and I'm going to have to come up with the solution to fix it and I can hire team and I can have people help me but it's always going to be that the buck stops with me I'm going to have to see it I'm the person who cares the most about it and so it is with our lives so if you find yourself thinking if I could just find the right

person if I just had you know fifty thousand dollars more all my problems would be solved no it's probably some very specific problems would be solved you know to do with money or to do with now you're with somebody and when you go to the wedding you have a date but it does not solve all your problems and in the end it's you who's always going to be facing get this a never-ending Fountain of problems like we're human problems come at us problems Bubble Up From Within and so the strongest safest route you can take

is just to be very like ride the surfboard of life and just know you're gonna have to spot your own problems you're going to have to be responsive to them and try to embrace that it's actually the Great Adventure of life is what it is with cptsd it can feel like oh I'm broken there's no point or this is too overwhelming but that's a terrible attitude things problems will pile up if you can't come and save yourself and save yourself it's sort of an exaggerated term every once in a while actually you do need to

save yourself out of a dangerous situation but saving yourself from a life of mediocrity a life of quiet desperation a life of isolation to cope with your triggers that's worth saving yourself and you can do that you can do that and it's going to come from you the second thing is instead of believing that someone has to apologize for you to heal just accept that they are never going to apologize if they do it'll be this incredible surprise but you'll find out then it doesn't fix you you don't need it to heal and the thing

is most people never apologize or if they do it's a flimsy apology it doesn't really speak to the thing that hurt you so your post-traumatic growth has to do with how you sort of take that thing that happened to you and you're able to you know compartmentalize it a little bit be like yes this happened but it's not my whole identity I'm not sitting there like a like a like with a festering wound that only some other person like the person who hurt you oh my gosh you can't even like if they couldn't be kind

to you in the first place are they really going to help you recover are they really going to say the words that you need I have such great news you don't need them and sometimes when you can sort of relax that Demand on people or that expectation it does create a little bit more gentleness in space where maybe they would give it a try sometime but I'm telling you you probably won't be satisfied because people who hurt others it takes a lot of denial to live with oneself that's what I'm just saying occasionally people do

the work where they really get it and they can say they're sorry and they they've been thinking about how that must have affected you and how lovely that they do that and I think there's a really great connection that can grow with people as a result of that and it might prompt you to sort of go oh yeah that really wasn't my fault but often it does it doesn't bring the perfect like Island Landing of perfect ease that we were hoping for that comes from the healing that you can do whether anybody else takes responsibility

for their actions or not the third one what to do to get your power back is instead of dancing around trying to get approval from people who were never going to give it to you anyway just stop dancing just kind of go about your business and just release them that little invisible rubber band that you have on them like come on approve of me let me know I'm okay that you love me you can finally just like you don't even have to let it snap just release it and you might just be surprised that there's

a little more space for people to come towards you I'm not making any promises I mean the people who traumatized you here's if they traumatized you when you were a kid your beautiful child's imagination probably dressed them up a little bit and gave them a little bit more potential than they actually have to take responsibility for what they did and treat you right I'm sorry to say it but if you can just accept that that's often the case and go ahead and heal anyway then anything that they come towards you with any positive thing that

they can contribute it's great you know that's just nice it's just like a cherry on top the fourth thing instead of avoiding conflict do your footwork so that you can have conversations about what's bothering you if someone's going to hurt you if you speak up step away from them never try to work things out with people who you think could physically hurt you or who are out to emotionally abuse you there is no point if you're worried that someone will abandon you if you speak up okay here's my radical advice let them if people are

prepared to abandon you because you need to talk about what's bothering you it's going to be this incredible dance to hold on to them and make them stay it's a drain of your power if you have to use your life force to try to keep somebody attached to you if you're worried somebody will criticize you just prepare yourself to hear it if you haven't heard of my front porch concept all right think of yourself of your heart your feelings your mind it's this is your house and out here you have a front porch and so

if people want to talk to you and you're not really sure if they're safe or what their motives are you can say oh fine come on just picture them talking to you on your front porch and so you bring your attention out to the porch and go sure what have you got to say and then they say it and you decide am I going to let this what they said or let this person like into the house do I let it into my heart or do I just consider it out here and go and where

I have the option to go yes I reject that you can say you reject it to them or you can just go all right well thank you for your feedback bye you don't have to get into it with anybody because the next one the fifth thing if you've been fighting everyone there's avoiding conflict uh and there's coming to the porch for the conflict and then there's running off the porch and getting out there and fighting with everyone well that probably means you have confusion about boundaries what you can ask for from people what it means

when you don't get what you ask for what what people's intentions are when things feel disappointing that is something that can get so messy when you're still like you got some unhealed trauma wounds there but fighting drains you so you speaking up is good fighting drains you just big messy conflicts some of it can't be avoided it's life it's part of having relationships but if you grew up in a household where there was violence or there was you know horrible animosity then sometimes there's this really bad well that opens up when you get into you

know trying to State what you need or listen to somebody else's criticisms and it can get so tough and I really recommend that you learn some techniques for staying regulated when you are trying to communicate things that are a little bit fraud or triggering for you to stay regulated you can take that I'll put the link in here again to the signs of dysregulation and emergency measures to re-regulate and at the end of this I'll also tell you about my free course where you can learn the techniques that I use every day it's called The

Daily practice all right uh fighting is a drain speaking up for yourself is empowering taking a bunch of random criticism is a drain being able to hear criticism on your front porch can be empowering and it can be enlightening you get to have a choice about what comes out and what comes in and I know how hard it is when you have all that neurological dysregulation and emotional dysregulation from cptsd but that's what we do at crappy childhood fairy we learn how to master that so everything becomes possible the sixth thing was instead of using

intoxicating substances to cope with dysregulation you can learn healthy ways to re-regulate this again is where my daily practice comes in handy it's very calming and soothing and you must have a way to calm yourself and to soothe yourself I'm not saying that like hey lady calm down nobody wants to hear that I certainly don't but everybody needs to find ease and comfort especially an emotional distress and if you've sought help for your complex PTSD symptoms even if you didn't have a name for you know what is wrong with me you've probably met with the

thing where people are just like calm down you know think of this not that say this not that but it's all just such a jumble when it's going on so this technique the daily practice it's a way of putting in writing what you're fearful and resentful thoughts are and those are just like you know when you're dysregulated when you're in a conflict with somebody you get them on paper you ask for them to be removed or release them depending on you know how you see the nature of reality and then you go into you just

rest in meditation for 20 minutes and let your brain recompose itself and I'm telling you you will be amazed what a difference it can make just to do this easy thing that takes nothing more than a pen and paper and some 20 minutes 30 minutes you can't always do it in the middle of a conversation but the more you can teach yourself to step away when conversations get intense like that the better and you can take a minute and this when I had been doing these techniques for three years was when I was finally able

to let go of my two pack a day smoking habit and I was definitely using cigarettes to stay regulated and to try to handle the intensity of things coming up I had to have as they say in a a sufficient substitute right if your thing is alcohol or drugs definitely learning how to have that ease and comfort and get those thoughts out of your head is such a great I know people who do just that to get clean and sober maybe you have another technique but you can use that together just to always have you

know you have your pen you have your paper you always have a way to just calm down and a lot of people will be like take a deep breath I just want to tell you taking deep breaths has never been enough for me when when my cptsd symptoms are upon me I always felt like that was just like a little bit light it's a good thing but it's not enough when when the full thing's going on when you're in bull in a china shop State of Mind Right the seventh thing instead of putting yourself down

to other people remember I talked about that putting yourself down and fawning just focus on letting go of what other people think when you're working on yourself you will have a much better sense of when you're doing something you don't feel good or dignified or proud of and when you actually are okay when you have confusion about whether you're being a good person and keeping it together you're going to find yourself paranoid that other people are judging you all the time and the fact of the matter is they are you know all those sayings like

it doesn't matter what other people think but actually if you're like being very rude or cruel or something and other people are going wow she's really rude and cruel they would have a point we don't say that enough and there's so much like on Instagram it's like oh it's you know other people's criticism is always wrong it's like not so sometimes they're right and cptsd involves some difficult behaviors but putting yourself down is never productive so working on yourself which you can do you can do it with the daily practice people do it in my

membership program they do it in 12-step programs they do it with therapists you can work on stuff where you're kind of undermining yourself or getting into self-defeating behavior and every time you resolve one of those problems you're it's like your head comes up you feel good and then you you don't have that urge to put yourself down to other people and the fawning Instinct the fawning Instinct you know comes from a childhood thing of like if I'm nice to you Mommy will you please not be mean to me will you please not leave and it

comes from that right so you when you heal your trauma when you heal your fundamental security part of which is to feel good about your own ability to solve your problems your own ability to take responsibility for how you treat other people like that feels good it feels really good and less insecurity is there and more security that you know what if somebody's just like won't give me a break I'm I'm truly doing my best here and they're just endlessly criticizing me it's just like here's what you do just let them go you don't even

have to push them away you can but you don't even have to just release that hope that they're going to come around and like you or approve of you you need to approve of yourself and if you think oh gosh this criticism is about to come let me preempt it I'll put myself down first it's not going to work anyway it doesn't make them see what's so great about you it tends to you know they get a little bit of agreement for if they were actually thinking something bad about you now I know sometimes we

project that they're think that people are thinking something bad about us which is another reason not to just jump in there and go I know you're probably seeing what a liar I am or something and then they'd be like I hadn't really thought of it but maybe yeah so don't give them that just work on yourself work on yourself and do your best to be a person you feel good about all right in the first round we talked about overspending spending beyond your means going into debt using credit cards to death so instead of doing

that here's what you can do you can begin keeping track of your spending and your bills what you owe what you spend and what you earn now I'm telling you this is something that when you're in the middle of kind of dysfunction around this stuff you are thinking oh I just can't look I don't want to face it it feels so good to face it it can be really fun to start making a plan to go over you know here's what happened here's what my goals are here's what I'm trying to save you are not

alone if you have debt You Are Not Alone it is so common for people to end up in debt especially if you grew up with trauma because first of all the trauma causes poverty you may have grown grown up with sort of like poverty thinking and then it causes difficulty being in situations with other people and being able to you know be be good with other people is so much how we earn money very few people have figured out how to do that without actually interfacing with other people having cptsd can interfere with learning and

because you know it's hard to pay attention so you might be working with a few deficits and you are not alone and it's okay and you don't have to be ashamed but it's just time to start putting it together here so one thing people I know um who have struggled around money and debt is they there's a 12-step program called Debtors Anonymous and they have this thing that people do called a pressure relief group I haven't done this myself but I had friends who did it and I always thought gosh that's brilliant like everything should

have that where a few people get together every week and they are really open with each other about what they owe they bring their receipts they talk about it like bring it out of secrecy and out into the open you can do this with any kind of behavior like overeating or an addiction or anything that's starting to take you out of your you know operating in your own best interest is just bring it to the light of day with the support of other people so I think that I've heard nothing but good things about that

12-step Fellowship debtor is anonymous you can check it out you probably know exactly what to do you make a budget you pay down debts you could do a snowball pay down or an avalanche pay down and you can research all of that I really like Dave Ramsey's book I found that helpful when I got out of debt 10 years ago it's hard to do when you're only thinking about your money sometimes so it starts to become like a daily habit and it's crazy how much when you can sort of put your positive attention on a

problem every day and just sort of set aside time to deal with it things just start to turn around like magic I remember I started to do things like um be careful about what gas station I went to I used to just go to whichever one was convenient but then I was like you know it probably doesn't break the bank if I spend three dollars more on a on gas this week petrol for those of you in Britain it probably doesn't make such a big difference but I'm going to do it I'm going to do

the Thrifty thing I'm just going to keep doing the Thrifty thing and I got better about shopping and cooking at home and I even would stop and pick up pennies when I saw them on the ground and pennies are really not going to change my budget but it was just the principle of the whole thing the mindset of me getting into I'm not going to let money just leak out of me because that's what I'm teaching you here do not let your power drain out of you and the money that you have in your possession

that you are not leaking out all over the place is part of your power it's part of your ability to make choices in the world all right the ninth thing is if you're an under spender if you're not taking care of yourself if your underwear drawer is shameful and you really hope nobody ever looks in there before you can get in there and throw out all those ripped awful old undies and replace them with something new that fits you that's appropriate that you like that you feel good in right and by the way yes it's

possible to be both an overspender and an underspender to be you know hemorrhaging money out on vacations or trying to help somebody else and then in your own drawers having shabby things and things that are not suitable for a person you know in your place in life your age you're more or less socioeconomic level do you have a decent pair of shoes that aren't stained do you have something nice to wear if you were to go to a dinner party so many of us with cptsd don't have that and I think it got a lot

worse during the pandemic when it just became possible to slump around and maybe because of not feeling great about your body you just don't have the right things to wear so I'm just going to say if that's resonating for you you can get your power back by taking appropriate care of yourself remember I said nobody's coming to save you people aren't going to come and just buy you a new wardrobe or tell you what to wear like a little time and effort has to go into this and I'll be honest with you I am somebody

who hates shopping I get very triggered in department stores it gets overwhelming within an hour I don't know what it is the sounds the smells the pressure the old be it growing up poor memory of having to find exactly the right one thing that would have to suffice for all purposes and getting like I can't I can't find one thing and if I buy one thing and it doesn't work for this I won't have anything I just have this like old stuff that comes up so how I take care of myself around that is I

always shop alone I drink a lot of water I pause I sit down I take a break and I get out of there I just don't try to do it all at once I will have a tendency sometimes to go here I'll just get two years of stuff at one store where I've just found a couple of things that fit and I'll get all the colors and get that yeah that's one way it's one way but like doing it that way is not really taking care of myself and another part of your life to look

at in terms of are you spending the right amount of money is betting is your bedding suitable is it clean and comfortable for you is it the right temperature for you so I've been very poor before and had to use you know just a dirty old sleeping bag for a long period of time and so I totally understand that sometimes that's how it is but if you're in a certain place where you could have those things but you don't bother to do it for yourself it's possible that you're under spending and it's a way that

you're expressing low self-esteem and sort of telegraphing to the world if they ever you know either keeping them out of your personal space you don't invite people over right that's a that's unempowerment disempowerment to do that but yeah just shutting out parts of your life because you don't have the power to kind of meet life at a good place at a good level like wearing a nice I don't know this shirt I bought this shirt last year at a department store I remember and I remember I almost bought like four colors of it because I

just like this shirt it's comfortable it looks okay but I only bought one and I thought to myself if I really love the shirt I can buy another one all right we talked about under earning and if you're under earning if you're not making enough money then I cannot say enough about how important it is to have money all right A lot of people and I think it's only people who have unlimited amounts of money they're just like hey money's not really the important things they have no idea what it's like not to have enough

to eat I do have I do know and I know what it's like not to have dental care I know what it's like to have to stay in a bad relationship just to have somewhere to live and I never ever want to be in that place again I'm so grateful to be able to earn a fundamental amount of money that means I have choices about where I am and today I'm happily married and so of course we live together and it's a great situation I am all about those saving for my retirement I'm all about

saving for us so that we have a suitable place to live throughout our lives and helping my kids through college and remember I'm somebody who only got got out of debt 10 years ago so I'm very focused on that and that's a way I take care of myself and the signs that I'm not taking care of myself is a sense of dread and worry and so sometimes maybe things are okay but I haven't come to peace around it and so I'm worried and or I'm thinking about what other people have and I don't have that

much you know I still don't have the material stuff that I had always thought I'd have in life I'm not there yet but with a little luck I think I might get there in my lifetime but I also because I've grown up poor and because I use my daily practice I have a lot of confidence that I can make a pretty good go of my circumstances wherever I end up I don't want to be homeless I don't want to ever be stuck somewhere where I don't want to be and so I take very good care

of my earning for people with cptsd one way it's done is you're not going for the opportunities that you you know you're not working in a job that would pay enough so I see a lot of people who are working in low-pay jobs and then resentful all their lives that those jobs don't pay enough but they don't pay enough for anybody they don't pay the level that you would like to be earning and then staying in the job staying angry and like this is not fair and one example of this is Teachers right my mom

was a teacher some of the great people in my life were teachers but as we know teachers don't get paid very much and we know that going in so what I sort of have to say to people is taking care of yourself means being very clear with yourself about how much you need to be earning and if it's more than a teacher makes then being a teacher may not be a good career for you you need to go into something that pays better now a lot of careers also require research if you're not earning what

you think you should earn and the other way this can happen it's like you don't go for the type of job or career or you're in the career but you resentfully um you know just get made Invisible by people you don't get offered raises or anything as you may have heard this is very common for women asking for arrays it feels too confrontational for many people it was something I had a hard time doing but you know what I got a raise I haven't had a job with an employer for a long time but I

did I did Consulting and in many situations I had to raise my rates over time and the hardest part of that was the inner job of just deciding that I was worth it and that I would work hard enough to continue to be worth it that I would deliver work worth that it was easier for my clients to accept pay Rises you know an increase of rates from me than it was for me to prepare that self so it's an inner job and you do that by doing the research by dressing the part by doing

learning the skills that are needed um I can't tell you I know a lot of people who are software Engineers I live in I live in you know the northern part of Silicon Valley a lot of people are software engineers and in some environments where software Engineers work there's a huge culture of learning and people are always learning new things and they're being Cutting Edge and you know that tends to be a workplace culture that's really going to go somewhere and innovate but other places end up with a workplace culture and I'm just picking on

tech people here but this happens in all professions and people don't learn new things they're just very protected and defended and like you know we've always has always done it this way we don't do that oh that's just somebody's opinion about some new thing and they want to keep everything the same well in technology that doesn't tend to do very well in all careers it pays to read about your industry it pays to learn about what interests you and it pays to learn about things that are completely different than the work you do because sometimes

getting outside of the work you do and learning about something stimulates your imagination so that you can contribute positively and if you're going to increase your income then contributing positively to the workplace to the teamwork to whatever is going on there is the number one thing that you're going to be able to do you're going to need to be able to do that it doesn't automatically get you arrays you have to be good and then you have to ask for the money that that it warrants and if then if that can't happen there you need

to have the guts to move on and find a new job which also takes research and preparation and all that stuff but Power this is just I just wanted to talk a little bit more deeply about earning money um so often people who are in an abusive relationship and especially if they have children feel like they cannot leave because they neglected their ability to make money and neglect is a hard word a lot of people stayed home to care for kids but now now they must get out there needs to be a way out I

see nothing wrong with living in a shelter getting welfare whatever you have to do to get out of an abusive situation but ideally of course no one wants to stay stuck there for long it's an act of personal growth to learn things and take action in a direction towards where you're trying to go which ideally is doing work that is Meaningful to you and making enough money to live decently very important to be able to live decently studies show that Beyond living decently like more money doesn't necessarily increase happiness enough money that you have choices

and you you have sovereignty over your own life you live where you would like to live I don't live in a mansion I might like to live in a bigger house but I live in a safe place that's what I mean another reason I want to give you for learning more you know I talked about learning and neglecting your learning if you've been neglecting your learning one reason to really get into it is not only does it help it put you in a more powerful position to do the kind of work at a level of

pay that's more suitable for you but it makes you more alive and it makes you a more interesting person it activates something in your brain when you're learning either reading a book that's challenging or taking a course if it's online if it's not I do I'll admit and I know some people have bought my course and they're like I'm sorry I never actually took it and I'm like I understand I've done that too but but to actually engage in learning to actually engage in learning it makes you more powerful more interesting it costs some of

your free time it might cost some of the time that you would otherwise spend socializing and socializing is important too but I promise you when you when you increase your learning it will dial up the quality of how you spend your time it will dial up the quality of how you spend your time and it will increase the wonderfulness of the people who are drawn to you and want to hang out with you we're up to like the 12th thing here if you've been staying friends with people who drain you and making you feel bad

it's time to talk to those friends about how you feel um or if you're ready to let them go you don't even have to tell them how you feel you can just let them go when you feel better about yourself your relationships will tend to evolve the people who were never going to sort of come along and be respectful and kind and supportive of you they will fade away they often will fade away angrily they don't like something oh you think you're so great they will but they will sort of take themselves out the good

people in your life they might be there now they might be people you're soon to meet but they will come to you they will be drawn to you because they match you they are also at a level of growth and growing that is similar to yours they won't resent your growth they will like it they will want what you're doing in your life to be a good influence on them and likewise they will be a good influence on you the 13th thing if you've been spending good years of your life in romantic relationships with people

who chronically disappoint you who hurt you they can't grow with you they can't commit to you or they can't commit to themselves even well think of them as a room with a sticky floor it's hard to leave you can't get your feet up right right but having a happy relationship begins when you get yourself out it never it always feels like you're shutting the door on love like you're giving up the only chance of love but if that love is not making you loved then the shortest path to being loved is out the door of

that bad relationship so if you're going to be in a relationship aim for one that makes you feel good about yourself that will be your sign like sometimes sometimes you'll be not sure like we have these differences we have these qualities I like but the number one sign is just like check in with yourself how do you feel about yourself does this person bring out the best in you do they make you want to be a better person do they make you want to be more and do more right that's a sign that's what they're

talking about when they say that someone completes you right they're they're very presence in your life sort of draws you forward into a better version of yourself all right the 14th thing if you've been neglecting yourself your health your hygiene your appearance sit down get a piece of paper and pen and make a list of 10 things you can do to take better care of yourself and this is going to be you know what they are you know what they are but I want you to write them down go take a walk find a recipe

to make a healthy meal make an appointment to get your teeth cleaned you know what you need to do but you need to sit down and be bring it into your conscious Consciousness into the top of mind so make a list of 10 things if you can't if if you make a list of 10 things and you tape it to the wall where you see it every day begin to take at least one action a day towards doing that make the appointment for the dental cleaning okay go take the walk make a date with your

neighbor to take a walk arrange to walk somebody's dog for them just take the action and put it on your calendar to take at least one action on your list of things that need to happen for you every day if you want to do more than one great but I'm always with cptsd sometimes if you're going to be making positive changes like let it be slow let it be gentle so that you don't have to quit and freak out and dive under the covers and hide from everything just a little at a time titration a

little at a time adjust a little at a time adjust that's how you can make some changes all right so if you've been doing too much if you've been over functioning you've been giving your your power away to other people trying to show them how helpful you are how totally on top of everything you are trying to make sure that they value your friendship because you know you're gonna step in you hear they're getting married and that's it you'll take care of everything for them you've all here that's what over functioning is and people who

over function will almost always tend to crash they'll do a whole bunch of stuff and people start to count on them I've done this and I've had people do it to me and then boom all of a sudden they do this like flip on you there's just like they're so angry they're so angry because in their mind they've been working on this complicated equation where they will not say anything but they'll be so busy and helpful that something they want from you is going to come their way and then you have no idea they're even

doing this and so you can't deliver you don't even know what it is and they're just like boom and then they cut you out of their life have you had that happen or have you done it to people so we don't want to do that we don't want to do that it's very good to be able to be active to function but not do too much don't do so much that you're putting yourself in Jeopardy of having to flip out and run and if you're connected with somebody either through your work or your personal life

with somebody who is like doing way more than their share of things like see if you can talk about that with them if you can get things out in the open about what they're doing what they feel good about what they were hoping would be reciprocal you might be able to save the relationship from their flip out later you know when they have to when their only way to set a boundary is to end the relationship it's so sad right but it happens all the time if you've been under functioning if you've been procrastinating all

right uh you will think to yourself there must be a magic pill for this but there isn't there's actually what happens is you break the ice you have to break the spell procrastination can become a spell by getting up and doing one thing do one thing that gets you moving and that brings you pleasure make it something that you actually like sometimes procrastination it's like such a Negative state that if you say oh I'm gonna go you know Harvest all the broccoli and eat it for dinner so if you go um I'm gonna make brownies

and have one it's easier to break the ice I'm trying not to eat brownies myself ha but that's that's the idea of breaking procrastination you do one thing and when you're getting started make it something that gives you pleasure so like all other changes we're talking about releasing old coping mechanisms is going to create a little temporary moment where you feel empty did you have you have you had that happen so when you finally stop over watching TV or overeating brownies or whatever it is it'll be like oh I don't know I feel anxious I

feel like something's missing in my life I just I need something I need a brownie I need Netflix I need that it feels like that all right when you start to feel that emptiness here's what I want you to remember it's good that's really good the empty pocket is where it's the thing you're trying to fill and you're going to be able to bring your attention to it and it's where you can sit and do the footwork to face what is in here and in your heart what is scaring you what's keeping you angry what's

keeping you stuck this again is where where I recommend using my daily practice that's where we get the fearful and resentful thoughts on paper out of our heads on paper like you know it's you're gonna surprise yourself how effective it is for reducing that hamster wheel thinking when you can get it on paper it's a very specific technique and I strongly invite you to come learn the specific technique don't just like rant on paper it's not a journal it's not a journal a journal is for remembering and recording the this is for you just take

out the trash you're like I have fear that doesn't fear that and I'm resentful so-and-so because I have your gorilla you get it on paper you don't even have to write nicely and then there's a thing that you write at the end that I call the sign off where you ask for this to be removed if you're inclined toward a higher power if you are more working like with your higher self if you prefer to do that you can release it and then you rest your mind in meditation all right so that's free you can

sign up for it in the description section the link is uh underneath every video I make down there so you can always find it there or on my website the 17th thing instead of blaming other people for your problems which causes you to lose your power you can forget the role that other people have played in your past yes I know that's sacrilege right you're supposed to talk about and acknowledge it and grieve it but I'm going to wager probably you've already done all of that you've probably spent a lot of time talking about it

analyzing it reading books about it hoping that if you would just understand what happened to you enough if you just were to talk about it enough that you would begin to feel better now that could happen it's it's certainly part of healing certainly in the beginning but if you've been doing that if you've been paying for a lot of therapy you're talking you're talking and you're not finding relief yet then something else might be needed to move you forward out of that and that's again where the daily practice is that's what it is it helps

you deal with what has to be dealt with and then you can let go of the rest it's a big release your healing doesn't always depend on talking confronting analyzing sometimes it's about naming releasing and then moving on with paying attention to your life today and trying to make it the best life you can so it's a good exercise to look at your problems even if someone has really pushed that problem on you and just ask yourself what can I do to stop having this problem because usually even if a problem was sort of dumped

on You by somebody else's bad behavior like they're not gonna fix it for you it's you you're you're the one it's not fair but here it is you know somebody's got to fix it and it might as well be you so ask yourself is there anything I can do to solve this problem right now and it I you know try do what you can to detach it from the person who perpetrated the problem there's very few problems that other people can solve some of the ones like that are like lawsuits and things and that's one

reason I have really tried to stay out of those in my life because because you can really get tied up for years trying to make other people a judge a jury the other person the lawyers or whatever to see it your way and sometimes the most freeing thing the most happy outcome is to be able to just wash it out of your hair what happened and move on sometimes all right the 18th thing if you've been cutting people out of your life as a way to avoid difficult conversations well I want you to be able

to have a choice in those moments you can cut people out of your life but it it is something that you could exercise only when everything else that you could try has failed so sometimes problems with other people can be worked out and sometimes problems with other people sacrilege again sometimes they can be ignored not everybody in my life has my approval or agreement about everything they think and do but that is doesn't really have to be an issue because of the nature of my relationship with them I don't have to worry about that I

don't have to tailor my life around it or make them change to be friends with them now I know there are relationships that do need to end and that will become clearer especially when you're using tools to get those fearful and resentful thoughts out of your mind those can actually trap you in kind of a strange way of like blaming other people for stuff that's not their fault blaming yourself that's for stuff that's not your fault blaming yourself and thinking they're so great when is there you know it just like our perception gets very warped

so you need a way to process your thoughts especially the negative feelings to process them and sometimes processing them just means naming them releasing them and releasing them doesn't mean you're not going to deal with them or you're not willing to look at them it just means that while you meditate for 20 minutes and take a rest you're just like there you know come out of my mind let my mind come together and you'll usually find that only some of the things that were bothering you come back only some of them come back and a

lot of what's been bothering you the fearful and resentful thoughts they're just they just drift away they're just forgotten and so I when I do my techniques of the daily practice I write my fears and resentments I meditate and I keep a pad of paper just in case I go ah you know what I really do have to send that rent check right now I forgot and I can write it down because even that that start that'll start to be something I must think about I can't just like relax right now I'm afraid I'll forget

so you take care of business and that's how you get your power back and and that's very empowering when you can like know when you can keep track of what you feel responsible for doing and let go of the stuff that doesn't need your attention you just took all these power drains out of your life and you could take all your power back and focus them on the things that you do need to do that are fruitful that you choose that is power I would like you to have the power to save relationships that matter

to you that's a very important skill to have so you you can talk to people you can talk when there's a problem and when you trust yourself a little better to be able to handle the emotions that come up when you're honest about your feelings you can be more confident about going and trying to patch things up with people when you heal you will become better at having healing conversations that help relationships and don't hurt them when you heal you'll become better at having healing conversations and you can practice that when you have a little

small Rift sometimes and work your way up to bigger problems all right the 19th thing if you've been staying too busy to ever focus on what needs healing in your life oh this is great this is your chance you get to do less now being over busy starts as a way to help someone out or make extra money but if it's a coping mechanism you're using all this activity to avoid something in your life it's time for you to have that quiet time and just let the awareness of the problem show you what it is

you don't have to solve it yet just allow it to enter into your mind and your mind will begin to work it out as you have less PTSD symptoms your mind can do these projects for you just when you're while you're sleeping all right if you've been consumed with somebody else's problems and it's been driving your life it is time for you to bring the focus back to yourself it's one thing if this other person is a child and you're obliged to keep taking care of them that's a hard situation and help is available for

that but if it's a partner or friend and you can you can't be that effective in solving problems for them and there's a high probability that you're avoiding your own life by you know trying to be the hero in their life a lot of people are afraid that if they focus on themselves they'll be lonely or bored or useless or just too consumed with themselves but when you avoid yourself like this you lose all your power and guess what you become lonely and bored and unable to be useful to anyone now if you grew up

with trauma a lot of what I'm saying Probably sounds good but you don't know how to actually start the place to start is with the daily practice course I teach it's two techniques that help you get clear in your mind and calm in your emotions and empowered to take good Common Sense actions to build your power back up if you want to see what it's like you can try it by clicking right here and I will see you very soon [Music] thank you