Trying to Rescue Someone Who Won't Change. A Relationship In Shambles.

Automatically transcribed, so the wording is close but not exact.

Macie: Hi, ladies and gents. Welcome back to another episode of This Is Not Your Practice Life podcast. My name is Macie, and I am so excited you're tuning in today. So I have a great episode planned for you all, and that is geared around wanting someone to change because you feel like their behavior is destructive. Maybe it's negatively impacting your relationship with them, but you can't seem to talk them out of it. You can't seem to make them understand. And it's starting to make you feel like you're going a little bit crazy, you're a little bit dysregulated, and you're wondering why this behavior in them will not change. So we're gonna dive into that today. And I'm really excited about it. The first thing I wanna say is that if you listen to this episode this week, the week that it's released, which is July 27th, I wanna let you know that my upcoming program, Whole and Magnetic, is going to cover a lot of why.

we attract the things that I'm gonna be talking about today, why we tolerate the things that I'm gonna talk about today, why we get into cycles, why we feel so dysregulated around the things that I will discuss today. So if this resonates with you, this podcast episode, and you listen to it as soon as it's released, like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I'm gonna put the link in the show notes for you to join the program Whole and Magnetic. Just as a heads up, it doesn't start until Tuesday, August 11th, but it's a very interactive program. The workbook is more like an activity book. It's I'm calling it the polypocket of workbooks. And I have to order the exact amount I need to get professionally printed.

And then when they're done, I have to go in and I have to customize each of the workbooks for each person enrolled in order to mail them to you so that you're ready to go by August 11th. So The timeline is short to sign up. The link to sign up will be in the show notes. It's $1,499 if you pay in full, or it's three payments of $4. 99, I think $67, if you want to do a three-month payment plan. And it will be so worth it. You're going to learn so much about yourself. in whole and magnetic, it will be well worth the investment. And it's only six weeks. So it's not going to take a lot of your time. It will be on Tuesdays at 8 p. m. Eastern Standard Time. So again, this is kind of your last opportunity to sign up.

If for some reason you miss the deadline and you listen to this episode and you're like, crap, you need to get in contact with me right away, just in case I have one or two extra work. Books. Okay. It may not happen, but if you listen to this a little late and you're like, I really, really needed that. I do not know when I will offer this again. So this is not a time to wait until the next one. I don't know when I will do it again. I don't know how soon. I don't know if I will. So please make sure that if you're interested in this program, you're signing up sooner rather than later. Okay. All right. Let's get into today's topic. So let's talk about this. I want to gear this to Maybe women that are in a romantic relationship, maybe you're married.

but do know like this can apply in many different facets of life. Maybe you have a family member that you love that you have to be around a good amount of time, a sister, a brother, a parent. you know, maybe it's it's someone else really close to you in your life, a best friend. And so even though I'm going to gear this episode towards more of the romantic relationship. kind of piece, just know you can apply this to whatever means necessary to make the content apply. Also you can apply it to yourself if you listen to this and you realize maybe you're this person that I'm going to be talking about with your own habits, patterns. Maybe someone has asked you to change something and it's felt really hard.

And maybe you get really frustrated with them for pointing something out that they see and you just You're like, I don't see it as problematic. I feel like it's fine. So it could also be an episode that applies to you and helps you see something that maybe you want to change. Okay. So I this is not geared at any specific person. So please know I coach. Dozens and dozens of women at any given point. Okay. And over eight years, I have coached thousands of women. And I know that in my client base, this episode will resonate with many of the women that listen, whether this is their past experience or this is a current experience. So I'm not thinking of one particular person when I'm doing this podcast episode, but I do want to say that you might feel like Macie is calling me out.

And it's not that at all. Okay. It's just that I have had this conversation and coaching so many times that when it starts to become a pattern or when there's multiple women going through it at the same time, it feels necessary for me to address on a podcast episode because if they're going through it, someone else in my audience is probably going through it more privately. So let's talk about it. So let's talk about habits in a relationship that just really feel Like maybe they're destroying parts of it. Okay. So I'm talking about habits where people cope. And it's not healthy coping. It's coping like using alcohol. It could be using pills, abusing pills, right? a drug of some sort, a drug of choice.

it could really be anything, but these are the most common habitual things. And the number one I would say that is a silent. destroyer many times is alcohol or like narcotic abuse, right? Pain pills, things like Xanax, things like that. If you get addicted to that, it's it's stuff like that. Okay. And you could be in your relationship begging for someone to see how it's impacting them, how it's impacting your ability to communicate with them. solve problems with them, be a team with them. And just because you are communicating that or there are issues in the relationship does not mean that they see it, nor that maybe they are ready to address it or change it or operate differently. Okay. So that's that's kind of what we're going to be talking about today.

Because here's what happens a lot of women come to me and There are certain things in relationships that are very, very difficult. Everybody in a relationship is going to go through some hard moments. We're gonna go through some disagreements. You're gonna go through things where I promise you the grass is not greener on the other side. Every single relationship has its things. how they kind of play out in terms of scale from minor to major depends on each individual person and EQ skills. play a vital role in that. So some women come to me and they have little tweaks that would absolutely help them in their marriage or in their romantic relationship. And that's great. We address that. Anything they have going on, we work on.

Anything that is bothering them, we work on. Then there's things on the more major scale where your partner might have a vice because they haven't healed their own trauma. They don't know how to feel emotions. They don't have much emotional intelligence or know even that they can change their emotional intelligence. So how they are showing up currently is how they feel they will always be because it's who they've always been. And they don't know that anything can change. And being emotional, and I'm quoting if you're if you're on YouTube, you can see me. But if you're not, you have to see these air quotes that I'm doing. For a lot of partners in a relationship, especially if it's a male partner, emotions feel really dumb.

Because we live in a society where men having emotions isn't really an acknowledged, accepted thing. Men have been raised to be the protectors and to be tough and to believe that women are the ones that carry emotion. But what actually I see over and over and over again in relationships, especially when there starts to be disagreements and dysfunction and things that are not changing in the relationship. As much as the woman is evolving, working on herself, healing, growing, a lot of times it comes with asking for what they need or communicating what they see and the partner having an emotional reaction, but turning it onto their partner and saying, You're the emotional one in the relationship.

Like things are fine. I don't see what the problem is. I don't see why you're so frustrated or why you're so upset. And thinking in that moment that they don't have emotion. But what's so interesting is that their response, whether they get angry with you, they start raising their voice, they get defensive, they shut down. What a lot of men in particular don't realize is in that exact moment that they're getting elevated or upset because of what their wife or what their partner brings to them, they are also having emotion, but they don't see it because our society has done a really Great. And then again, that's air quoted. Great job at more so directing emotion towards a woman's thing. Okay.

So men still have emotions. If you're a man and you're listening to this, you still have emotions. Every single time you feel anger, frustration, irritation, you're upset, you're sad, whether you display it in tears or not, right? It could be in the tone of your voice, it can be in your body language. Don't think for a second you're not having emotion. You're having emotion in that moment. So if you are in a romantic relationship and your partner approaches you and they're they're trying to express something, maybe they're crying because sometimes, again, each person's emotional intelligence is different. Women tend to wear their emotions on their sleeve a little more so than men because men have been taught differently, right?

You suck it up, you don't, you don't get quote, emotional, you don't cry. But just because you don't have that response doesn't mean you're not having emotions too. Okay. I just want to make that very clear because as I go into some of the other things that happen and what I see, I want to make sure this is understood on both sides. So men, you still have emotions, whether you express them or not, yours just get expressed differently. And a lot of times it comes out in a different way. Now, if you are super disconnected from your emotions, and this could be man or woman, okay, we have vices for what we don't want to feel or what we don't know how to feel. So many times women who come to me, not only do they have some maybe unresolved, unhealed things in their life, but so do their partners because we attract people based on certain things.

And this is another shameless plug for Hole and Magnetic, okay. We're gonna talk about this in depth, but we attract people into our lives based on what we've got going on internally. We are walking around as human beings like magnets. Okay. And again, I'm not gonna get into that here because I'm gonna get into that in Hole and Magnetic, which is a program for women, but we're going to talk about how this happens. So here's what I wanna say. What I see a lot of times happening in coaching. Women will have things that affected them in their younger years, their childhood, whatever. They will come to talk about things that they are experiencing in their relationship, things that their partners have said to them.

And what is very clear is their partners also have unresolved, unhealed things, maybe from their childhood or their younger years, or something that's happened. The differences, especially if we're talking males, is that they have never felt safe enough to. Express that nor know how to process it because of our societal conditioning around male emotions. Okay. So what happens is a lot of times it will lead to different ways of coping. Okay. Now there's healthy coping skills and there's unhealthy coping skills. And that's something else that I teach my clients a lot of times. There's healthy coping skills and there's unhealthy coping skills. And a lot of times without realizing it is that those unhealthy coping skills, again, going back to having alcohol, abusing maybe some pills that are meant to help you calm, center, regulate if you're abusing those, if you're using drugs of any kind, those are unhealthy coping skills.

It goes beyond like something that is maybe it's different for each thing. I should rewind and say that. Alcohol in moderation, even though it's still not technically very great for us. Is not a problem, right? But there comes a point in time where if you are drinking a lot, you are altering your brain chemistry. You're altering your communication. You're altering so much about yourself. And a lot of times if you're doing it outside of moderation or social, there's a habit there. Addiction forms. And it's often because you feel that you need it. You need it to cope with something that you're going through. So that's alcohol. And then there's other things like. Pills or drugs, a lot of times things that you don't know how to feel, you don't know how how to be with in your body.

You will seek those things in order to be calm. And when you're abusing them, it's often because the dosage of whatever it is that you're taking, you haven't actually healed what's inside. So nothing is changing if you're not actively working to heal the pain that you're feeling and the things you're navigating will just get louder and louder and louder. And if you don't have the EQ skills and the coping skills that are healthy, you'll abuse what's unhealthy because you're trying to make all of that go away. You just want it to go away. I have people in my life that were addicted to. All kinds of pills like pill addiction because everything that was unresolved in their life, they wanted to mask, they wanted it to quiet, they wanted it to stop.

And a certain dosage would be prescribed to them for a period of time and it would work for a period of time. And then all of that would still be there, all of the pain, all the heartache. And so again, they would up the dose. And then up the dose and then up the dose. And before we knew it, we had a completely different version of this person that couldn't show up the way they needed to show up, that couldn't operate the way that they needed to operate, that was destroying all the relationships around them. And it was a very difficult place to be. And so I see women come to me all the time that have this with their partner, that they want to be supportive and they want to be loving, but it is destroying their relationship with them.

It's The communication is not there. The understanding is not there. The emotional intelligence is not there. And they are begging and begging and begging this person to see it and to change it. And they're trying their hardest to work on themselves to try and fix what they can in themselves that may be triggering this response. And there comes a point where it just feels very, very exhausting. And you may feel like your relationship is in shambles and your nervous system is tapped out. And I want to talk about why this happens for the person when you've communicated, hey, alcohol is literally destroying our relationship, our marriage. It is destroying you. Like you are a different person. You do not show up the way that I know you're capable of showing up when you do this.

Why do you go past this point? Why is this so hard for you to stop? Now we know addiction is very difficult to stop. Okay. For a multitude of reasons. Same thing with if they're abusing pills or if they're abusing drugs. Like you could beg and plead and want them to change so badly. And you might even get glimpses of them seeing their behavior and acknowledging their behavior and maybe even apologizing for their behavior when they've sobered up. And yet it's not enough to actually move them to change. Let's talk about why that is on the emotional intelligence side. Okay. So here's the first thing. When we have an unhealthy vice, many times we are doing it because especially when it initially starts.

Okay. It is to quiet and suppress emotions. We do not have the skill to feel and to regulate in our body. Okay. When people cannot regulate their nervous system or regulate what's happening in their body, when emotions arise. They will try to escape it by any means necessary. Okay. Overeating, over-drinking, over-exercising. That can even be abused. Okay. it could be what are some other ways? Buffering through TV, just wasting your entire day away, just rotting in front of the TV, watching show after show after show, scrolling and knowing more about some stranger's life on the internet than you. know about yourself or in your own way. Okay. There are so many ways that this shows up. And many times when we're doing it to a place that again goes right outside of just social or a little bit of pleasure here and there, when it's being abused, we have emotions we're not equipped to feel.

We have things inside of us that we're not ready to quite address. So when you approach someone and you say, this is a problem, I'm really seeing that this is a problem. It's affecting our relationship. It's affecting how we communicate. It's affecting how we both feel. It's really like destroying us. I really need you to hear me. I really need you to like see me. I really need you to be on the same page with me. And maybe they can acknowledge, like, you know what? I can see sometimes it's a problem. But at the end of the day, they go back to the habit or they justify it. Like, well, work is very stressful. You don't get it. Or, you know, my life is very stressful. Like I wish that you would just support me.

It's not problematic. I'm not doing it as much as I used to do it, like whatever it may be. You need to know that those are stories that that person has to tell themselves because they are not ready to change the habit. Okay. It's very hard to go from wanting to do something to actually getting yourself to do it, to go from, let's say, overeating. To stop overeating. That's difficult. To go from over drinking to no longer drinking is very hard to do. To go from scrolling on social media for hours and hours a day to hardly picking up your phone, very difficult to do. And you might know mentally that you need to do it and that you'd probably be better off to do it, but to change that. There's only one person who can, and it's the person who has the unhealthy coping mechanism.

And what is so important is that they have to go from ignoring or buffering through emotions they're feeling deep down to feeling them in their body. Okay. And here's what happens. So let's say your partner has good intentions and they're like, you know what? I am not gonna drink today. I'm not gonna smoke today. I'm not gonna take any of that stuff today. I am not going to XYZ, whatever it is. Okay. They have good intention. And we'll we'll use alcohol because I alcohol is a big one that I see in many relationships. Okay. So we'll just use that one. They say, I have seen that this really bothers you. I am not going to drink. I'm not going to drink. Okay. I'm going to stop. Okay. And you're hopeful and you're like, yes, I would love this because I just want to get back on the same page.

I love you so much. Like, and I want our relationship good again. And alcohol just takes it to a place where it's no longer good. And so they're like, I'm gonna stop. Okay. So here's what happens. They're going to feel urges to buy alcohol, to have alcohol. And this can be true with any habit: phones, overeating, pills, whatever it's whatever it is. Okay. You're gonna have urges in your body. Those urges are emotions that feel uncomfortable in your body. Okay. And what is it that the brain wants to do as soon as it feels uncomfortable? It wants to go to the vice that's going to immediately give its pleasure. So here's the thing about our brain: our brain wants immediate pleasure. And our brain wants to live in pleasure all the time.

It is not geared. To want to live a life of pain and not having the unhealthy vice in the moment that your body craves it or tells you that you need it, or an emotion comes up where it's, it's like it's bubbling, it's bubbling, stress, anxiety, anger, frustration. Immediately your brain goes, This is painful. I don't like how this emotion feels in my body. I don't know how to be with this emotion. I don't have the EQ skills to be with this. My nervous system feels very Unregulated, dysregulated, okay? And we need something to shut this down. We need immediate pleasure. I know I said I'm not gonna drink today, but I'm gonna. I know I said I'm not gonna overeat today and have snacks when I feel stressed, but I'm gonna.

I know I said I was gonna keep my phone down and not use it for a dopamine hit, but I'm gonna. Right. This is what happens. People are unable to sit with the urges. That is what has to change in you to change a habit. You're going to have the urge to buy the alcohol or to drink the alcohol or to take the substance or to do the thing you said you're not going to do. You're going to have that urge. You have to know that. You have to know that your brain is going to say, not having it is painful. Feeling what I'm feeling right now without this coping mechanism is painful. That is a skill to be with that. And it is a skill to overcome. Urges. So if you feel the urge and you don't have the capacity to be with that urge and choose better in that moment and the moment after and the moment after and the moment after, you will go back on your word and you will repeat the same cycle.

And the important thing about this is that only the person who has the vice has to be the one that wants to make the change. You cannot, if you are a partner of someone like this. You cannot make them do anything. Okay. They have to want to do it for themselves. You could try and offer. Why can't you do this for me? Why can't you do this for us? Why can't you do this for our children? Why can't you do this for XYZ? Sometimes the person that has this and and uses the vice, they do want to change it. They can see how destructive it is. But again, their EQ would have to be in a place to. Be with the urges and not fall into fixing the urge with immediate pleasure. When you change something that has been a habit that immediately gives you a dopamine hit or immediately gives you pleasure, you have to be in the change for the long game.

You're playing a long game. Okay. You have to make a decision and draw your line in the sand, and you have to be with the urges. For the rest of time. Have you ever talked to someone who has been practicing sobriety? It is a daily thing that they're getting through. They're getting through the daily urges. Now, each day out, it might get a little bit easier because they don't just run to it anymore. But in the beginning, especially, what they've had to do is fight every urge, every emotion they felt in their body, they have to know that when the urge is there for the vice, they have to be willing to regulate in a more Healthy, appropriate ways. That is why the person that needs to change the vice or to heal, they have to do that for themselves.

They have to love themselves first enough to want to do that. And yes, they ideally they would love you enough or their children enough to do it, but this is a them thing. This is a them thing. Okay. And we cannot, as outsiders, as bystanders, change something in someone. We can't control other people. And we will literally. exhaust ourselves or make ourselves physically sick trying to. Okay. I see so many women come to me and they are, they are grasping at straws, trying to make their partners understand or trying to make their partners see something, trying to beg them to change. That partner has to want it. And sometimes that means that there are very difficult things we're working on in coaching as far as what they can control in themselves and what they decide to do in their lives.

whether this person changes or doesn't. Okay. And that that is a personal, each woman's journey in that is very different. But for the person that has the coping mechanism that's unhealthy, they do need to want it for them. And they have to know that it's a long game, not a short game. They have to know that their brain is going to tell them, I want pleasure right now and we have to have pleasure right now. And they They have to have the awareness of that's just my brain speaking to me, trying to get out of the discomfort of now. But I'm playing the long game and I am willing to fight the urges and I'm willing to feel all of the emotions I have masked and I have shoved down, telling myself all my life that I don't have emotions.

Women have emotions, right? Especially if we're talking about men. I don't have emotions. I don't I don't have those. You do have those. That's what's driving the behavior. The the thing is too, like you have to have the desire for yourself. You have to be able to look at your future self and know what you want and be able to see that on the other side of the vice. And that is really hard to come out of as well. And so here's the painful thing I'm gonna tell any woman listening to this that goes, Macie, my God, like how did you peer into my life? How did you know what I'm going through? Well, first of all, I've coached thousands of women. And hundreds who have gone through this. Okay. So you're not alone, first and foremost.

But the second thing, if you're really feeling seen, there's probably a lot that you have to also look at within yourself. Are you condoning this? Are you at times making it okay, even in your brain, because you're fighting so hard for what you signed up for when you married this person or when you entered this romantic relationship with this person, your commitment, your word to them. Like, are you justifying it? Are you condoning it? Are you even contributing to it? There are many things to look at here. Okay. And and I can help you with that part. That the part where how you're showing up in it is very, very important. But this is what I need to say. And I've shared this with so many clients of mine.

Years ago I was in therapy. And I think I've shared this in a few other podcast episodes in different ways. But years ago I was in therapy and I was talking about specific people in my life that Just were exhausting me. Like their behavior was absolutely exhausting to me. But I love them so much. And I just felt like if I set the boundaries that I wanted to set at that time, it would mean the end of some of these relationships. And so what I was doing was telling myself a different story. Like, But I see the potential in them, but I know that they can change. But I know like this hasn't always happened, or this hasn't been a forever thing. Or like I would just make all the excuses in the world.

I wanted to believe it was different than what it was. And my therapist said something to me that that just rocked me to the core and has stuck with me. And I've like I said, I've shared this so many times with clients. She said, Macie, don't let vision remove you from reality. Okay. I'm going to say that one more time. Don't let vision remove you from reality. What she meant by that is when we have someone we love so much in our life, it is really easy for us to envision a different future for them, envision different behaviors for them. Envision what it can be or what it could be or what it used to be. It's so easy for us to go there when we really love someone. And what she was saying is don't let that vision of what could be or what has been remove you from the reality of what you are enduring today, what you're living through today, what you're experiencing today.

what is so important, and this is what all of the women, you know, that I work with do is like we will justify, we will make excuses, we will gaslight ourselves, we will totally put ourselves in a position of dysregulating our own body, trying to mentally and emotionally rescue someone else who may say that they want to change, but they're not doing the daily actions to change it. And we will make ourselves actually beyond mentally beyond emotionally unwell, we'll say mentally unwell, emotionally unwell. Beyond that, It eventually will start impacting us physically. And that is also something I'm going to talk about in Whole and Magnetic. So if you're listening to this episode and you're like, good Lord, this is, I have to be in this.

Check the show notes for the link and make sure you sign up A-S-A-P. Okay. Because it's going to be starting soon. I promise you it will be worth it. It'll be the best six weeks of your life. You know, maybe some hard truths to face, but also something that helps you learn and take away a lot. So going back to this, you don't want vision to remove you from reality. You need to take people and their actions at face value. What are they giving you? What are they telling you? And not only what are they telling you, but what are they showing you in their actions? That's the come to Jesus moment that a lot of the women that work with me have to face. it's not just what's said, it's what's done. Stop saying that you're going to change it or do something different.

Do it. Actually do it. And how long have I been tolerating your word and only being broken down because your word is shot to hell every single time? Okay. And so that's a big thing. Don't let vision remove you from the reality of now. So there comes a point where you have to decide what you need to do, what you have to work on. What attracted this into my life? What have I been condoning? What have I not healed? What has this resulted in inside of me that I now need to cater to? Because I've been trying to pour all of my energy and love into a person that may see the problem, but they're not willing to change the problem. Okay. If you were in this pattern, this cycle, this spiral, we can do some serious great work together.

I promise. I have seen this go all different ways. I've seen this, the work that a woman does in herself lead to. A wake up and reality call in her relationship, where it actually changes things for the better. I've also seen a woman work on herself and realize that she's begging for something that actually has no movement, no give, no progress, and decide what she's gonna do to move forward. I've seen this happen a multitude of ways. The most important thing is that you feel whole when it's all said and done, that you feel good in your body, in your life, in your decisions. And if you're so focused on another person and trying to save and save and rescue and rescue or defend, defend, defend, instead of also focusing on what you need to do within you, you're going to have a very dysregulated nervous system.

It's going be really, really hard to show up in day-to-day to day-to-day life and feel good and empowered and excited about day-to-day life. So if this resonates with you, there's a few different things you can do. Book a consult. If you're like, I need one-on-one coaching. This, this is me. This is my life. I need, I need help. Book a one-on-one consult. Okay. Number two, if you want to really be coach in a hands-on interactive way where I'm going to be teaching concepts in a way that sticks with you forever and it's more low ticket and it's not that long. It's only six weeks, then this is the program to sign up for. If you're like, I need to pour back into me. I have poured out, I have poured out, I have poured, I need to understand myself, heal, and I need to understand me.

If that is you, whole and magnetic, it's starting August 11th. You only have a couple days to enroll in order to make sure that I order enough workbooks and that I have time to customize the workbooks before they're shipped out. So today is Monday, July 27th. You have the rest of the day today. If you listen to this on release day, you have all day Tuesday, the 28th. And you have all day Wednesday, the 29th. If you listen to this podcast after that and you're like, I missed it, please reach out. Okay. I'll also put my email address. but find me on social media, DM me, any way that you can get in contact with me if I have an extra workbook or two, then I will get you in. Okay, as much as I can.

But I do need you to sign up swiftly so that I can order all of the workbooks and the materials and things that you'll need for this program. It will be worth your time. Okay. I love you guys. I hope that this episode helps you. I hope it reaches the person it needs to reach. If you know that this episode, maybe it's not the episode for you because everything's good and smooth and healthy in your relationship, but you know you have a best friend, you have a sister, you have a sister-in-law, you have someone in your life that is enduring this, pass it to them. Okay. You never know. Like they don't have to live in their own. Okay. Life can be better than maybe what they're feeling it is right now.

But it we have to do our work. We have to do our part. We can't always control the other part. We have to do our part. So if you know this needs to go to someone, be loving and send it to them. Doesn't mean they have to listen. They may not be ready. That's okay. But you do your part in passing along a free resource that maybe they can latch on to and it will change something for them. All right. Okay, my friends, I will see you next week. on This Is Not Your Practice Life podcast. Bye.