24: Healing Past Relationships: How Your Past Relationships Can Affect Your Future Relationships

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Dec 8

Often times we don’t give ourselves the time we need to fully move through past relationships, so the patterns and beliefs from old relationships can end up affecting our present day lives.

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In this episode, I discuss how traumatic past relationships can be and how to heal and move forward. I also answer a question from someone who is just now see the effects of a past relationship, and someone healing from a toxic relationship.

Episode References:

12: Friend Breakups: Healing from Friendships, Gossip, and How to Know When to End a Friendship

Ho’oponopono Meditations

Journal Suggestions:

For the journal prompts referenced is this episode, check out:
Journal Prompts: Healing Past Relationships

Resource Round Up

Develop a Forgiveness Practice (Highly Recommend Ho’oponopono)
Write down limiting belief & stories. Then when you feel read to release them, find a safe place outside and a safe container to light these beliefs on fire. Allow the element of fire to help you transmute these beliefs.
Feel your feelings.
Find a safe container to heal, therapist, support group, close friend, etc.
Dive into your creativity
Inner child practice

*Listen to the episode for more specifics about each suggestion.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro
6:31 Teaching
20:13 Listener Question 1
35:53 Listener Question 2

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NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Otter. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher (Intro) 0:00
Welcome to New View Advice, a safe place for you to ask your most vulnerable questions about life, relationships, healing, and so much more. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I believe our fears and traumas are often what holds us back from living life to the fullest. Join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever is holding you back from being your best self. Let's get started. Hey, they're beautiful. My name is Amanda Durocher. And this is New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a podcast where I answer listener questions about life, relationships, healing, and so much more. This is a healing centered advice podcast, which means that I believe you have all the answers you seek, you just may need a little guidance along the way. I believe you are immensely powerful. But oftentimes, because of trauma, past relationships, fears and pain we've experienced in this life and honestly past lives, we get stuck. And it's my intention to help you to connect back with yourself so that you can create the best life possible and be your highest self in this lifetime. So I'm super grateful to have you here with me today. Today, we are going to be talking about healing from past relationships. So this episode is about healing from any relationship in your past. So the two questions I will be answering today aren't actually from recent heartbreak, it's looking at how relationships in our past. So it doesn't matter, the amount of time it could be a few months or a few years, could be 10 years, it could be 20 years, how if we have not fully healed these relationships, how we could still be playing out beliefs and patterns from them, and how important it is for us to heal all the layers within us. And oftentimes in relationships. If we are unintentional in them, they can cause us pain and trauma and create new belief systems around people around relationships, and around ourselves. So it's so important for us to look at this and heal this. So this has been really relevant for me recently, I have been taking a beautiful course that has been helping me to dive into my root chakra, and to heal layers and wounds that have been arising for me because my root chakra is an area of my body I have avoided, to be honest, and that I am finally ready to look at certain things that I have stored there in my body. So as I've mentioned many times I am right along the healing journey with you, I am never going to claim to be fully healed, or that I have all the answers. I'm just here to guide you and to assist you in connecting back with yourself. So I'm really excited for today's episode, it was actually inspired by the work I've been doing the questions I received, and also by Taylor swift release of her album read. I don't know how many of you are Taylor Swift Fans, but Taylor Swift re recorded her red album, which was an album about heartbreak is an album about the feelings and the emotions and the experience of heartbreak. So through Tiktok, and Instagram, so many people have really been feeling this with her. And I feel like we have created a collective who has been feeling into old heartbreak. Because what this album reminded me by watching tiktoks, and people talking about this that was well is that these wounds of past relationships truly do live in our bodies, until we're ready to look at it until we're ready to release it and let it go. And relationships can be so complicated, because we can want someone to love us outside of ourselves so deeply. And when that doesn't work out, it can really be heartbreaking, it can really feel like a part of our heart is breaking off. And it can leave us feeling unwhole it can leave us feeling wounded and incomplete. And though we are always complete, I believe we are always whole and the healing journey is coming back to ourselves. Coming back to our innocence coming back to our wholeness coming back to the truth of who we really are. But oftentimes we create defenses around ourselves because it can feel too scary to be our vulnerable selves. Because oftentimes in places like relationships, we were vulnerable. And when our hearts broken, we can feel that it's not safe to do that again moving forward. So today I want to jump into the episode and I'm going to talk a little bit about the importance of healing from past relationships. And then I'm going to answer two questions about people with awareness about how past relationships really can be affecting our present day. And so before we jump in, I just wanted to mention the sober course I've mentioned a few times before, so I've been spending the past week really starting to figure out What this container is going to look like. And I've decided that this course is for people who are sober, curious are at the beginning of their sober journey, and who are looking to bring more intention to their relationship with alcohol, who are looking to heal their relationship with alcohol, who know they have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol right now, and are ready to heal, and to look at where that came from. And to make a change in their life. I'm not asking the container and the people in the container to go sober forever, I'm just asking that you do dry January with me and that we as a group, not drink for 30 days, and we start to look at heal, and reflect on our relationships with alcohol, I'm going to share with you my system for healing from alcohol. And it's been transformational for me, I didn't do sobriety through a program, this is the system I used. So this is what I'm going to be sharing with you. And again, this is just a 30 day program. So this is an introduction to healing your relationship with alcohol. But I find that healing and community it really helps us to dive deep quickly in the process. And it helps us to feel really supported to do the work. So if you're interested in this, if this sounds like something you'd like to learn more about, I invite you to email me at newviewadvice@gmail.com. And I'd be happy to answer any of your questions. That's it for updates here. So let's jump on in to talking more about healing from past relationships.
Amanda Durocher (Teaching) 6:31
Healing from past relationships is so important. This includes friendships as well. But today we're focusing on romantic relationships. I have an Episode Episode 12 called Friendship Breakups, which is all about healing from past friendships. But today we're focusing on past relationships. And as I mentioned, it's specifically about bringing awareness to relationships where we might not still be in that heartbreak phase, that full sadness of losing someone. But we notice that these past relationships are still affecting our present day reality and the way we show up in relationships. So this can be showing up as feelings of mistrust, because we were cheated on in the past or because somebody lied to us in the past. So we might be allowing that past relationship to affect how we show up today. Another way is if you were in a past relationship where somebody was abusive, so they yelled at you are physical abuse or even sexual abuse, you may be afraid to move into a new relationship, because you're holding on to the beliefs around what it means to be in a relationship. So it's really important to heal these wounds, heal these beliefs and allow ourselves to fully move through the experience of that relationship. So for me along my healing journey, I've had to look at past relationships I've had, I'm grateful to have been in a long term relationship for the past 10 years. But I did have a few brief relationships before it. And one of them my highschool relationship, which was my first boyfriend was a very emotional, very abusive, very traumatic relationship. It was very unhealthy, it was very toxic. And I have found that even though this was so long ago now that this has still continued to arise for me to look at, because it was a fast and traumatic, that's the only word that keeps coming to mind. It was a really traumatic relationship, it really got ingrained in me, parts of this relationship I experienced, it was very unhealthy. So I think other people can probably relate. But when I was younger, it was a very desperate, obsessive and clean relationship. So I was so desperate for love at the time that I fell hard. But what this was, was it was two children who were very traumatized, who attracted each other, to fill a hole within them, that they actually needed to fill within themselves. So what I learned from this relationship was that this relationship was created because I was in so much pain at the time, I was in a lot of pain in high school, I was raped in high school, and that I was raped in my childhood, which affected who I was. But then when I was raped in my teens, it just set off every boundary I ever had. I mean, every boundary I had felt broken, and I couldn't talk about it. And I suppressed it. And I went through life in this traumatized way. And I made a lot of, quote unquote, bad decisions. And I put that in quotes because I made the decisions the best I could with what I had at the time with the resources I had at the time with the support system I had at the time, which was very small. I had a lot of people trying to fix me. A lot of people trying to change me, but nobody trying to find out What was going on within me, I had nobody who would just hold a space for me to feel my feelings and to figure out my own inner world. Because I believe you have all the answers you seek, you do not need anybody to fix you. But you may need spaces held for you, containers held for you, in order to heal, you may need more knowledge than you have. I know when I was going on my healing journey, I devoured self help books, I still pick up a lot of books, and I still do a lot of education because I think we can always learn new techniques, we can always learn new layers, ourselves and deprogram belief systems we have because we're constantly coming back to the divinity within us. But at the time, I didn't have any of those resources. So these quote unquote, bad decisions I was making were from, were from just where I was at, they really were the best decisions I could make at the time, I really believe that everyone's doing their best in every present moment. And we just can't judge people with the resources they have, because we don't know what people have experienced or what support systems they have. So I bring that up. Because, as I mentioned, this relationship was emotionally abusive. It was a little terrifying. This relationship was needy, it was obsessive, it was toxic. It was like, we became attached to that toxicity. And so throughout the years, layers have arisen for me to release. And I feel like I have looked at this relationship so many times. But for me, this relationship came up for me in a dream recently, which showed me that there was still something to look at. And of course, I woke up that morning, and I was kind of like, I can't believe there's more to look at here. But what I realized quite quickly, was that I had never honored the relationship. I had never honored it for what it was. And I needed to fully forgive the experience. So I talked about forgiveness a lot. I think forgiveness is so important. I think forgiveness is a key to healing past relationships. And the most important forgiveness I've found is the forgiving of yourself forgiving of myself. Because often times when we experience trauma, when we experience abuse, when we experience past relationships, when we experience pain, we place a bit of blame upon ourselves. And we need to forgive ourselves. So not only have I had to forgive the other person involved in this relationship, I've really had to forgive myself for where I was at at that point in my life. And I realized I hadn't really fully honored that I hadn't honored the bigger picture of how I ended up in that relationship about the young girl who was so desperate for love, that she was looking in all the wrong places because nobody told her that what she was looking for was within that she didn't have the tools to access that love within because she had become so disconnected from herself. Because of all the trauma she experienced. That she allowed herself to be abused so fully and kept going back to such an abusive person. And to be honest, did some abuse I was abusive at that time, I was a screamer I was a yeller, I was angry, and he would yell at me, I would yell back. I'm not saying I was perfect in that relationship. But she allowed herself to be in abusive relationship and not show up in a healthy way because she didn't know any better. She didn't know any better. I didn't know any better. And I bring this up because I want you to bring compassion to yourself forgiveness to yourself about your past relationships. I don't know what you've experienced. I don't know how many past relationships you have. I don't know what you're holding on to still but I share this because it's so important to fully forgive yourself to fully forgive those involved and you can't rush forgiveness, but forgiveness is important. Forgiveness is not condoning someone else's actions. It's not condoning the abuse you experience. Forgiveness is letting go of the past so you can move forward. One of my favorite Oprah quotes is forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different. I love this quote because it explains that forgiveness is not saying what that person did was right. It's saying, I'm ready to let this past experience go. Because I can't go back in time because this happened. And I'm ready to move forward. I love myself enough to move forward. And I don't believe you have to go out of your way to tell people you forgive them. I'm never going to contact this abusive person in my life again, but I have worked through forgiveness on both ends, forgiving him and forgiving myself. You know sometimes through the healing journey and through this forgiveness journey. When you sit with yourself Have, you become very, very honest with yourself, about parts of yourself, you've buried and avoided. And for me, I felt a lot of shame around this relationship because I allowed myself to be so abused, and so used and treated so horribly, that I felt a lot of shame around that. And through the honoring and the forgiving of this, what I can really see now, as I mentioned, was that I was doing the best I could, was that I was looking for love in all the wrong places. And also that this relationship taught me what I would not tolerate moving forward. And I'm able to have a healthy relationship now, in a way because I experienced this relationship. And I learned quite quickly what I did not want in a relationship moving forward. And I believe that there can be so much shame around the things we need to heal. As I mentioned, I felt shame around this relationship. And it's so important to let ourselves off the hook and to release that shame. And past relationships can be a place where we feel a lot of shame, because a lot of times because of that desperation, for love, we allow ourselves to be treated poorly, we allow our boundaries to be crossed, we do things we wouldn't do in other situations, because we're lovesick were blinded by love, like those expressions come from somewhere, because I think so many of us can relate to how you can be swept up in love, you can be swept up by that. But that's not really love, what you're getting swept up by is the intoxication of hormones, but also intoxication of those wounds you have inside, right? A part of you saying, Oh, this, this will help us heal, this will help create a situation for us to move forward. And the attachments are created. And also when sex is involved, it complicates it, that's a real energetic exchange. So Real, energetic ties are created. But also, that bond that's created through sex is real, and can be harder to let go of them when sex isn't involved. So healing from past relationships is so important. And I have found past relationships to be such great teachers for myself, and have allowed me to see where I've had my boundaries crossed. Why I've had my boundaries crossed, where I need to set boundaries, relationships really only show me where I'm still looking for love outside of myself, and where it's time for me to start loving myself within. So I hope something in this helped a little bit for you. I just want you to know that if you're healing from past relationships, or you have past relationships that don't feel neutral yet, so for me, I feel like when we fully worked through something, it feels neutral. And we can look at it and honor that experience and say yes, that happened. And yes, that was painful. But I've learned from it, or it's helped make me who I am or I honor where I was at that point in my life. Neutrality is something that happens as we move through the layers of trauma, grief and pain that arises throughout the healing journey and through relationships. So I just want you to know that if you are aware of some places, you still need to heal from past relationships. I'm right there with you. I've been doing the work as well. And I think so many of us can relate to that, because it's something that can be really hard to also talk about because another thing I wanted to mention was just that doesn't matter how long the relationship was, the ties that can be created, the trauma that can be created the pain that can be experienced the real feelings that arise. We can't judge how long that is for someone we can't judge if a three month relationship or a 12 year relationship, which one had bigger effects on someone just because these things can happen so quickly. And we can need to heal so much from short relationships and long relationships. So I say this because I think that there can be shame created around the shorter relationships like, Oh, that was so short, just get over it or like you can move on or you've already moved on. Why are you still talking about that. And if you still have pain to be healed, you still have pain to be healed. There's no reason to judge it. And if you find people invalidating you, I invite you to find a safer place for that. So therapy is a great place or finding a container or a self help group or finding a support group. But I find that so many of us can feel shame around the length of the trauma or how deep the trauma can be from a short experience. And I've had many experiences that happened one day in my life and it changed the course of my reality, one incident, an hour. One word, one phrase can change you and can break a false sense of safety you had within yourself. So of course, a short relationship can affect you too. So I just invite you to become Hi, I'm impatient with yourself as you're moving through healing from past relationships. And I send you so much love today. And let's jump into two questions.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 20:13
Dear New View Advice, I broke up with my boyfriend a few months ago. And the more time that goes by the more, I've really started to admit to myself how toxic of a relationship it was. We fought all the time. And then we would have sex and makeup and then fight again, he would yell at me all the time and didn't support me and my success. We were together for a little over a year. And I stayed with him for so long, because I really loved him. When we were good, we were good. But when we were bad, I was terrified. He hated my friends. So I found myself isolated and embarrassed to tell anyone what was really happening. Because part of me knew I wasn't going to leave, I finally left when I caught him talking with another girl, I feel so stupid and wonder if he ever really loved me, though I'd never go back. I'm having trouble moving forward and want to start dating. But I'm also afraid of ending up in the same situation. What should I do to move on and get back out there? Thank you so much for this question. And thank you for your vulnerability in writing this in. I think that so many people can relate to relationships like this, I know I can. So I am very grateful you wrote this question. And I just want you to know that you don't have to be in a rush to get back out there. I know you say you want to start dating, but maybe take the time to date yourself. Because I find that the time to be single and to be alone can be really empowering. And it can be really helpful in setting the intention and what we want to move forward and allowing us to move through those fears that may be arising. So I just want you to honor yourself wherever you're at, you don't have to rush back out there and date. But if you're ready to date, I want to help you to set yourself up for success by guiding you on ways to connect back with yourself and to commune with you in your own heart. Okay, so you mentioned that you're having trouble moving on from this. So I'm going to guess here that you may be replaying parts of this relationship, that it's still very much present with you, because you said you broke up with your boyfriend a few months ago. So that's really not that long ago, as I mentioned, I'm still healing from a relationship that was over 12 years ago. So a few months ago really isn't that long ago, you're still probably in a bit of the heartbreak phase. And I just want you to honor that, you know, you seem to be in a rush to move forward. And to get over it. And in order to move forward, you have to really sit with everything you experienced. And it sounds like this relationship was abusive. So you have to sit with the abuse you experienced and who wants to do that, right? That doesn't sound fun. But I promise you that the more you acknowledge, and the more you look at it, the easier it will get, but also the more you will become in communion with yourself. So it's so important that we look at the pain we've experienced, and not just bury it because it gets stuck in our bodies. So our body wants us to move through all the pain and trauma we've experienced. And it often gets stuck because we weren't able to fully move through the feelings, the emotions and the acts in the present. So it gets stuck. And then we have to release it. So for you, I want you to breathe, and to start forgiving yourself is going to be big forgiving yourself forgiving your ex boyfriend, if we're giving this experience. So in order to move forward, this forgiveness part is going to be so helpful for you. So I'm talked a little bit about forgiveness in the beginning part. But the practice I recommend that everybody uses hoe pono pono. And it is a indigenous Hawaiian practice of forgiveness. And it's a prayer. And you work with the mantras. I'm sorry. Thank you. Please forgive me. I love you. I also throw in I forgive you. So I usually do please forgive me, I forgive you. I love you. And it's working with these phrases around the layers you have experienced in this relationship. So I can give an example from my own life as a teaching example. So for me with this relationship from high school that I referenced, I had this memory come into mind recently, of the school field trip I went on. It was like an after school field trip. So for some reason it was nighttime. And my boyfriend and I were in a fight but I had no idea why he was really mad at me. And I have no idea what I did. And we get off the bus. And we hadn't said a word to each other on this field trip. When It wasn't really rare for us because we had different friends. But we get off the bus and he starts screaming at me start screaming obscenities at me, you effing bitch, fu you whore, you know, things I don't need to repeat because it was so horrible. And in this moment, I'm crying my eyes out because I'm being demolished with words I'm being ripped apart, and not in private. I mean, this is in front of my classmates and teachers. But nobody stepped in. Nobody, no teacher told him to stop, I had two friends who, you know, walked with me to my car and kept telling him to stop. But he just followed us and kept screaming until we got in the car. And then he kept screaming as we drove away. And that wasn't the end of the relationship. You know, he apologized, I don't know, a day or so later, and I forgave him and we were dating a young. And I bring this up, because this was something I recently had to really look at. And I had sat with the trauma of being screamed at to that extent in public, because that was really traumatizing. For me. I don't think anybody wants to be screamed up. What came up were two things that I had to forgive. One was that no one intervened, that it was another time in my life where adults stood by and watched this abuse, or what people stood by and watched abuse. I have a few experiences in my life where I had foreign beliefs around mistrust, because people watched me be abused, people watch me be raped and did nothing. And I didn't realize this layer was there. So this arose this for me this week, and I had to forgive this experience. And it was forgiving him, it was forgiving the teachers, the classmates, but it was most importantly, forgiving myself, I would obviously act different now, if someone started screaming at me in public, but at the time I acted in the way I knew how you don't know what you don't know. And I really had to forgive myself for allowing myself to be treated like that, for the pain that was in my heart for knowing what I knew at that time. And I really had to connect back with my 18 year old self, and how I didn't have the tools to react any differently to that. And I offer that to you as an example of what it may look like for you to really look at this relationship that you experienced. So, one, I don't know if you've experienced a relationship like this before, but sometimes there's a root relationship. So it's finding the stories you have the limiting beliefs. Both are the same thing. So it's finding like what are you telling yourself in your head? And where did that start from? So it's getting down to the root, it's like, stop telling yourself the same story, which can often look like the situation or blaming other people. And it's like, what's the root? So with this story I just gave, like, the root for me was that it's not safe to trust others. And that's not safe to trust anybody but myself. Because in that situation, it was out of body and I almost watched other people watch this abuse happened to me. And I developed the belief that nobody's gonna be there for me, it just reconditioned that. And that's deeper than this one experience, because I have other experiences to have that. But it just reconfirmed for me. I can't trust anybody. Again, that's not true. But I had to allow this memory up, observe it and say, What did I take from this? Like, what am I still holding on to and it was a layer of the unsafety of trusting others. And how I've developed this belief over time that I'm only safe when I'm alone, I'm safe by myself. And this is something I've really been looking at for the past year. So many things that have come up with for me have been looking at how it is safe to trust other people, but where this belief came from for me. So I hope that's helpful. But I want you to start looking at this relationship and the stories and the beliefs that you may have taken on. So some journal prompts for this could be what do I believe about relationships? What is my ideal relationship? What beliefs Am I holding on to from my past relationships? Are there any memories arising that are asking for me to look at them? So I want you to look at your past beliefs around relationships and a practice I've used this week and that I recommend is that you write down all these beliefs. It's not safe to trust others. I'm unworthy. I'm unlovable, whatever they may be for you. And to then take that list. And when you feel like you've really gotten out everything you're ready to release. So really just allow yourself to free flow. And you might have some beliefs come up that you weren't expecting to come up. And just keep going, I'm not worthy of success. Sex is the only way to solve relationship problems, whatever it may be, write these all down. And then I invite you to go outside, do this outside and find a safe container to light this on fire. And say the intention, I release these beliefs from my body and light this on fire, do the ACT fire is an element that helps us to transmute pain we have experienced, I really believe that when we bring in the elements, it helps us to move forward, it also helps us to bring in that intention, right, just the act of lighting it on fire is you intentionally telling yourself you're ready to let this go. The Power of Intention is how we move forward is how we heal. So much of our lives is on autopilot, from our jobs, to our driving to showers to the way we cook to the way we go about our day. And bringing intention is powerful. So a way you can bring intention and healing to this is by lighting that paper on fire. And releasing these limiting beliefs when it feels ready. Maybe write down beliefs for a week. And at the end of the week, you like bonfire, maybe you set aside an hour and work on this in an afternoon. But I invite you to bring that fire element in. So I invite you to release the limiting beliefs, the stories, you're telling yourself the pain in your body, through this act of setting this list on fire, I invite you to start forgiving the experience through the act of hope. pono pono. And I will link some meditations that are whole pono pono focused. And the last thing I will recommend for you is to really just allow yourself to feel your feelings. Easier said than done. I invite you to feel the pain that you may have not experienced while you were in the relationship, not just the grief you're experiencing because the relationship ended. But it sounds like this relationship had a lot of pain in it, that you may have not felt like it was safe to release at the time. I just want to take a moment to honor your experience. I don't know what your support system looks like. But I want you to know that this is real pain you experienced. This is real abuse you experience. I'm assuming you felt some terror, you felt heartbreak, you felt devastation, sadness, anger, there were so many emotions that arose in this relationship. And relationships are great places for us to feel safe and supported. But it sounds like this was a very toxic relationship as you put it. And I just want you to allow yourself to feel your feelings. They're real. And I think so many people experience heartbreak that we downplay it because some of us move through heartbreak quickly. Others it can take years to move through. And oftentimes people don't understand exactly what we've experienced. People put their own experience on your experience. So people will be like, Oh, I experience heartbreak and you're fine. And not everybody is fine after heartbreak, because relationships really trigger those childhood wounds. And depending on what your childhood look like, and how much you're already healed from it, this could be really, really triggering for you. So I just invite you to be kind impatient with yourself, to allow yourself to move through your feelings through this forgiveness practice through releasing these limiting beliefs. And also by just honoring yourself daily. And what I mean by that is creating a container for yourself to dive into this relationship. So I think therapy creates a great container where you can, once a week talk about this, I know therapy is not an option for everyone. But I do like to bring it up because one, I have found therapy very helpful in my own life. So I want to de stigmatize it. And I also always want to mention it because it really can create a safe container for healing. And I just want to end this with that the more you can love yourself through this process, the easier it will be. You say in this that you felt stupid and wonder if he ever really loved you. And I'm going to ask you to flip this and ask yourself how you can love yourself deeper. How this relationship can show you places where you may have not been loving yourself to your full ability or you may have not been loving yourself fully. I think that relationships oftentimes show us where we need to love ourselves more in order to love others but also to love ourselves. And I think that you deserve all the love in the world. You deserve to hold your own heart. And I invite you to dive into that practice. And I think great ways to start a self love practice are through meditation through journaling. And by honoring yourself and not rushing through this healing process. Allow yourself to fully feel fully moved through. Give yourself as much time as you need. We're always in such a rush here on Earth. We always think that time is right me out. But truly you have all the time you need. And I invite you to call on that higher power. So if you call that God, the universe, Sophia, all names are welcome here source, and to ask God to help you with this. And to lean into that love because oftentimes when we end up in relationships like that we feel so disconnected from a higher power, we feel disconnected from that love. And the truth is that our pain and trauma can form a shield around us. But when we start to let that down, that love is always there waiting to be led in. And the more we develop faith in something bigger than ourselves, faith, and that all loving presence, the easier this healing journey becomes. So I invite you to be kind and patient with yourself. And I'm sending you so much love today. I love you.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 35:53
Dear New View Advice. When I was in college, I dated this guy who was a few years older than me, he was my first boyfriend and I felt so special. I was a freshman and he was a senior, it didn't seem like that big of an age difference then. But now I can see that I allowed myself to be taken advantage of I let him treat me horribly, I would try to tell him how I was feeling and he would make me feel crazy. I now know that he was gaslighting me, but it caused me to develop some troubling relationship habits. What can I do to fully let this go and no longer let this bother me? Thank you for this question. I just want you to know that this is unfortunately all too common. And you're not alone in how you're feeling. And I'm grateful we can talk about this and work on healing this together as a collective. So first, I wanted to say I am so sorry that you experienced this, I'm so sorry that this is still affecting you. As I mentioned in my intro, I'm still healing from a relationship I had in high school. I'm always surprised when the layer arises. But I also have learned to not judge the layers when they arise and to just allow them to release from my system. And it's crazy how these relationships that we get in can have such lasting effects. It's crazy how long it can take to heal from something. And I use the word crazy, just because I think that so many of us in the society are always trying to rush through everything. And the healing journey is a journey of learning how to be patient, compassionate, and loving with yourself. And that patients become so important. As we see layers arise from wounds, we may have thought healed or that we wish were healed. I sure know that's how I feel often is I wish I was just done. I wish I could move forward. But really every time you look at your wounds, every time you look at yourself, every time you bring awareness to the pain inside you to your shadows, to the darkness that might still be there, you are healing and you are moving forward, you never move backwards. So the one of the most beautiful things about the healing journey is that we are always moving forward because you cannot go backwards when you release something you never take it back, it never comes back on. So it's like the layers of an onion. And when you feel the Mac, you can never put them back on. So that's a great thing about the healing journey. So it can feel frustrating at times when we're still working through something. But really, we're always moving forward. And sometimes it takes that bigger perspective, right, we're coming up on the end of the year, which is always a great time for reflection. And you can look at the year and maybe see how much you have healed but when you're in it, it can be hard to see how much you've healed. It really takes that bigger perspective to see how much we've grown. So I invite you to be kind and patient with yourself as you move through this. You obviously have a lot of awareness around this because it sounds like it's something you've been working on or something that you've really looked at, and you're aware of your troubling relationship habits. I'm not quite sure what these are. But you definitely have a lot of awareness. And that's the first step bringing awareness and seeing where these relationship habits came from. And you were able to connect them back to the root of this first relationship, this first boyfriend, I find that our first relationships can really create these root problems in relationships. It's not always the first relationship that does it because each relationship really has its own signature. It has its own imprint, it has its own energy. Oftentimes our first relationship, it's our first experience opening up to love in this new way. So before we have relationships, we experience love from our families and from our friends. But when we start opening up to romantic love, it's a new kind of love. And it's a love that we have seen played out in movies and TV shows and books and poems and read about in history and seen our parents relationship and our caregivers and people in our lives. So we've seen it since we were young. We've seen it since birth. I mean even children movies are about romantic love. So our first relationships can be so Oh, impactful because it's our first experience of it. And depending on our attachment style, depending on our trauma, depending on our relationships with our inner children, depending on our parents relationship, how we grew up, so many factors can determine if this verse relationship is going to be healthy or unhealthy. And I think the majority of people experience an unhealthy first relationship. And I know that was my case, as I've mentioned. And I think that that's unfortunate. And I think that healthy relationships aren't always demonstrated in our society. So I know for me, I was learning about my first relationships, I was already about sex, I was worried about alcohol, and I was learning about drugs from other teenagers. So I was learning about these things from other inexperienced people. I wasn't learning about them from self help books, I wasn't learning about them from experts, I wasn't learning about them from adults even. So I can see now how much learning about these adult topics from other children really affected these first experiences for me. So for you, I think that everything I mentioned in the first question definitely applies. I think, working on forgiveness, working on forgiving, this person who took advantage of you, is going to be huge for you. And it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to happen through pieces, because when we're taken advantage of oftentimes, it's on so many levels. So when I have been taken advantage of in my life, I had to heal it on multiple levels. So I had to heal it on a physical level, a spiritual level, mental level and an emotional level. Oftentimes, this energy of being taken advantage of penetrates us so deeply, especially in relationships, and especially when sex is involved. And oftentimes, in our first relationships, we can give ourselves so deeply without boundaries, especially if we weren't taught boundaries in our childhood if boundaries weren't demonstrated to us, and, and in many movies, relationships are not shown with boundaries. Also, in movies and TV. Relationships are often shown at the beginning, they're not shown what it looks like to work in a relationship. I always mentioned TV and movies, because I can see how much those affected me and how I acted growing up for you. It could be booked for you, it could be the people around you. But it's important for you to look at where you got your beliefs around relationships before you entered a relationship because I also had to work on forgiving that as well. As I mentioned in the previous question, the most important person you're going to forgive here is yourself. I have found through my own experiences of being taken advantage of that, I placed a lot of the blame on myself, most of it was unwarranted. Most of it was a coping strategy, because I couldn't fathom that I couldn't control the situation. And I never wanted it to happen again. So I put all the blame on myself. And this forgiveness is the most important forgiveness I've ever done is when I dive into the layers of self forgiveness, and through my healing journey, that self forgiveness has taught me how much I love myself. And each time I forgive a layer, I fall more in love with myself, I fall deeper into that love and that self compassion, which is so important, and is really, really essential, especially with the world we're living in. It's so crazy out there, it's so divisive, that it's so important to cultivate that self love. And I bring that up with this topic, because healing from past relationships is really a self love practice. It's really about falling back in love with you, and taking back the power that you may have given to a relationship, calling back. That power, calling back the emotional boundaries, you may have let be cross the physical boundaries, calling all that back and forgiving yourself for your lack of boundaries. And forgiving yourself for the situation you may have found yourself in and how deeply hurt you may feel now. So that forgiveness is going to be so important, as well as look at the stories that may have been created around this experience and feeling your feelings and finding a safe container. And you may be able to hold that for yourself or you might want to look into therapy or see if you have a friend who could hold the space for you as well. Another form of healing I've talked about is using creativity. So I think that Taylor Swift's album read is a perfect example of channeling the heartbreak, the abuse, the sadness, into healing through creativity. I find that when we use creativity so for me that's often through writing, we use our voice to heal. I have found it to be such an extraordinary healing practice for me. For me, I write store Rae's, so screenplays, and each screenplay heals me in a new way. So even if no one ever sees these screenplays on screen, I know each of them have held a purpose in my heart. And another practice I use regularly is poetry. Poetry is a way that I have healed through so many layers along my healing journey. And that creativity has helped me to find my voice and has helped me to let go. of so many feelings, I find that poetry is a great way to channel feelings. So, if you don't want to just sit and cry, writing a poem writing a story or art, I find coloring, so therapeutic, angry coloring, sad coloring, I think painting whatever that creative outlet is for you this the creativity helps us to transmute and to move the feelings that can become stuck in our body. The feelings of being taken advantage of, like I said, can be on so many different levels in our body that I find creativity to be a great way to release that. Another practice I often mention is journaling. So I'm going to give you a few journal prompts that I think could help you to look at this relationship in a new light, bring a new perspective to it, I find journaling to be so helpful. And I like to do free writing, journaling. So I like to just let my pen move across the page, the first couple sentences might be me just saying I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. And then it will just start to flow. And then the more I write, the more it just moves, and I find that it helps me to move the emotions in my body in a healthy way. So for you with this, I want you to start reflecting through journaling. And here are a few journal prompts to help you to move through this and to heal. One. When I think of this past relationship, what feelings arise? Does it feel neutral? Or do I feel angry? Sad? Do I feel terrified thinking of this person? Do I feel small? Too? Two? How do you feel in your body? Not just what feelings arise? But how does your body feel? Do you have any pings in your body? If you do stay with it journal about what arises? Do you feel your chest wanting to close? When you think of this past relationship? Do you get a headache? Do you feel your throat close up connect with your body? And how this relationship has impacted and where it may be living in your body? Three, what unhealthy habits did I develop in this relationship? For what beliefs do I hold because of this relationship? Examples include men are untrustworthy. Women are liars. I can only trust myself. No one will ever love me as deeply as I love them. Reflect on what beliefs you took from this relationship. And once you have a list of beliefs, I asked you to feel into those how do those feel? Do they feel good to you? Do they feel sad journal about that. And then if when you feel ready, I invite you to flip these and to think of new beliefs you would like moving forward. So this could be it is safe for me to trust others. I also invite you to just journal about your feelings and how you're feeling now we're connecting back to how you were feeling then. But moving the feelings that are in your body around this relationship, because being taken advantage of can have many, many layers that need to be worked through. The last practice I recommend for anybody healing from past relationships is to connect to your inner child. So inner child work is so important along the healing journey. Working with my inner child and becoming aware of my child self has transformed my relationship with myself. So I'm very passionate about inner child work. And I don't know anybody who's going through their healing journey who hasn't connected with their inner child or hasn't had to connect back to that version of themselves. So there's two inner children I want you to connect with. I believe we have inner children inside of us. I think every age and every trauma is a different inner child. That's how I like to view it in my mind, it helps me to visualize myself at the age I was at, it may be easier for you to view yourself as having one inner child, I invite you to do what's comfortable for you. So I would invite you for the two ages one is to connect with your freshman year of college self. So yourself in this relationship that is a child version of yourself. Or you can say young adult self, I view any younger version of myself really as a child version of myself. And so I invite you to connect with this version of yourself and to communicate with them. So you can do this through an inner child journaling practice. I have an example on my website. I'll link in the show notes, where you journal and you dialogue back and forth so you write from the perspective of your present day. A new journal with the child self. And you go back and forth, dear present day, dear inner child, and I'll link that and you can communicate with your inner child through a journaling practice. Or if you are comfortable meditating, I like to take a few deep breaths. And to sit in a safe place, I like to light a candle. And I like to visualize a white light around me. And I invite you to invite your inner child forward. So if you were doing your 18 year old self, you could visualize them and really connect with who you are, then how did you end up in this relationship? Were you feeling lost when you went to college? Were you desperate for love? Were you feeling excited? Were you feeling naive? Like just connect with yourself judgment free feeling all those things are not bad, it is not bad to feel anything. It's a human experience. You were young. So I invite you to connect with this inner child, to sit with them to talk with them to see what arises, do they have feelings? Do they have phrases do they have images they want to show you, I find that when we start connecting with our inner children, they can be quite quiet, because they don't trust us yet. So this might not come to you overnight. But the more you sit with your inner child, the more you talk with them, the more you leave space to communicate with them, the more they'll start communicating back. The second inner child I want you to drop into is I want you to connect with when you first felt that disconnect from love. So many of us have a moment actually when this happens. And it can be as young as age two could be as young as a baby or it could be when you were eight, but connected to when you first can remember. And this could get younger and younger. It's whatever really comes to mind when you first felt the disconnect from that love when you first felt unsafe. Just allow whatever wants to arise to arise. Because oftentimes, when we end up in unhealthy relationships, as I've mentioned, it's because we're looking for love outside of ourselves. And oftentimes in childhood is when we start to feel this, and we start to feel unsafe, or we start to feel unloved. Or we have to be the caregiver. There's so many reasons why we feel disconnected from love. And I invite you to explore where this first came from. Because unhealthy relationships can be the root of many beliefs. But oftentimes, we end up in unhealthy relationships because of another root, which does with feeling unloved or feeling unsafe, unsupported, unworthy, not enough, whatever that wound might be for you. So I invite you to start exploring that. And I know this is all a lot that I'm throwing at you. So just take this one piece at a time, I'm just offering a lot because there's so many different ways that you can start healing and start looking at this from so many different angles. So don't feel like you have to do everything at once I invite you to explore what feels good to you. So I hope something in this answer helped. I want you to know that you are on the right path. You are exactly where you need to be. There is no rush for your healing journey. You are bringing awareness. I am so proud of you. I am so grateful to be able to be a part of your healing journey. I am so grateful that we get to have these conversations and that you're interested in having these conversations with me because I'm just so passionate about the healing journey. I can't express to you enough of that the more we heal, the more in communion we become with ourselves and the more we can drop into that love. It is life changing. It changed my life. I went from suicidal to loving life and wanting to help others love life because of the healing journey by doing this. And it's may sound simple, and it may sound counterintuitive to you or it may sound stupid. I don't know, I don't know how some of you feel about all this. What I just have to feel my feelings. But it is revolutionary. To do this work in a world that would have you numb out check out and look outside yourself for the answers. It is the best thing you can do for yourself to go within and to allow yourself to feel these feelings. We're not taught this from a young age. I know for me, I had to figure a lot of this out on my own. I know that we all have different healing processes. I've learned that from everybody I know who's healed. So I like to offer a lot of different things that you can take and see what works for you because we all come to healing at different times. We all have different practices that work best for us. And I want to help you connect back with you. So thank you again for this question. I'm sending you so much love on your healing journey. And it is safe to let go of this past relationship. It is safe to heal and you are worthy of moving forward and it is safe for you to forgive Forgiveness is not condoning how you were treated forgiveness is not saying what happened to you was right. Forgiveness is taking off the heavy backpack, so you don't have to carry around a big pile of rocks that hold you down. But instead, you can open your wings and fly forward into this next chapter of your life. Thank you so much. I'm sending you so much love today. God bless you.
Amanda Durocher (Outro) 55:25
Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. Before we end today's episode, I just wanted to do a quick resource Roundup. So the resources I recommend for healing from past relationships are one, developing a forgiveness practice. And I really recommend whole pono pono, which is an indigenous Hawaiian practice, which is transformational. And I have used for years and I have friends who use it and I see it offered in many courses that I take to, I recommend writing down your limiting beliefs and stories around relationships that are based off of these previous relationships you've had, so that are not showing up in the present but you have developed because of past relationships, such as a mistrust of people, or a feeling of being unlovable, not enough unworthiness. Reflect on those and then I invite you to take that list outside and safely in a safe container, like that list on fire and intentionally see yourself releasing these beliefs from your system from your body on all four levels of your being. I invite you to feel your feelings as always, I also invite you to find a therapist or find a safe container where you can work on this healing. So maybe you have other friends who are interested in healing from past relationships as well. Or you can find a support group or find a time each week to just do this within yourself. Maybe Thursday evenings, Monday mornings, whatever time works best for you if therapy is not an option for you. I invite you to dive into your creativity. I find creativity to be so helpful along the healing journey. And I find it to be a great way to heal from heartbreak, grief and past relationships. I recommended some journal prompts, which I will link in the show notes which will be newviewadvice.com/24. And the last thing I recommended in this episode was to develop an inner child practice and to connect with your inner child. Thanks again for joining me for another episode of New View Advice. I'm so grateful to every person who takes the time out of their busy week to listen to this podcast. I love answering your questions and discussing the healing process. If you have a question about anything, from trauma, to relationships, to healing to anything under the sun, I'd love to hear from you. I want to help you move through whatever you may be going through and I want you to know that this is a safe space. I know how lonely the healing process can feel. So my goal is to create this safe space where you can feel less alone. If you have a question you would like to hear answered on the podcast you can email me at newviewadvice@gmail.com Or you can visit my website at www.newviewadvice.com/question And there is an asked questions section where you can fill out a form and ask a question there or you can direct message me on Instagram or Tiktok at New View Advice no question is too big or too small. Thank you again for joining me Amanda Durocher for another episode of New View Advice. As always, I'm so grateful to be here with you and to offer a new view on whatever you may be going through. sending you all my love. See you next time
Transcribed by https://otter.ai