Escape the Toxic Trap: 3 Life-Changing Steps from Heartbreak to Unshakable Confidence!

Have you ever felt like your confidence was shattered into a million pieces after a traumatic relationship? Together with the insightful Dr. Amen Kaur, we tackle the tough but utterly necessary journey to piece together our self-worth and step out of the shadows of our past. Dr. Kaur pulls back the curtain on the mental loops that keep us anchored to bygone traumas, and she offers a lifeline with practical steps to regain confidence and empower us to move forward. This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for anyone who's struggled to feel lovable after being emotionally scarred, guiding you through the maze of healing with compassion and understanding.

The path to self-love is often littered with the debris of our old selves, and in our heart-to-heart, Dr. Kaur illuminates the enduring power of emotional healing. Our conversation is peppered with relatable anecdotes, like Kelly's inspiring story of triumph over a turbulent upbringing, which becomes a beacon of hope for listeners. We unravel the complex task of not just thinking positively, but actively confronting and releasing the pain that hinders our capacity to love freely. If you're ready to dismantle limiting beliefs and embrace every aspect of your life with a newfound sense of purpose, this segment will be your guide.

Closing the episode, we explore the transformative effect of self-discovery and the central role of self-worth in breaking free from toxic relationships. Dr. Kaur underlines the importance of changing our mental narratives, focusing our energies on forgiveness, and healing from within. It's an invitation to rediscover your intuition, to learn to trust yourself again, and to craft a life that reflects your deepest aspirations. Join us for this uplifting dialogue that urges you to cast aside barriers and walk into a future brimming with freedom and fulfillment.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

In this video, we're going to be looking at the three steps and how you can get your confidence back after relationship trauma and what you can do to start feeling yourself again and start achieving your goals. We will also look at why it's so hard to stop thinking about, analyzing and talking about the difficult situation and the difficult person, why it's so hard to stop all these feelings from keep popping up when you're trying to move forward, and why is it that this has had an impact on your overall motivation for life. On top of that, there is anxiety we all have when. What happens if this trauma bond happens in a toxic relationship where you lose your self-esteem and you also lose, you feel the emotional pain should you wanna leave, including this feeling and this belief. Maybe I can't change my life moving forward In light of all of this. This is the ultimate guide on how you can get started and heal so you can get your confidence back.

Speaker 1: 1:07

My name's Dr Emman Kaur, and this is the video I wish I could have had 10 years ago when I first started to realize that the relationship I was in was devaluing. For a long time, psychologists have insisted that positive thinking and positive thoughts is the only way to feel better. But now we know that is partially true. There's actually something deeper than thoughts. There's an older, more instinctual part of your brain that we must explore if we wanna get our confidence back after a toxic relationship. And it's in these research that we're realizing that trauma and anxiety work is showing that you're not actually in control of some of the things that you're thinking, feeling and the ways in which you're reacting when it comes to. You know when your trauma is triggered, because it's in the primitive part of your brain that just kicks in and you repeat these patterns that you don't seem to have control of. And what we're gonna do today is we're gonna pull it all together, pull everything together that we've learned so far, so you can really begin to understand what you've been through and what happens when you get triggered. So, look, I'm gonna assume that you have been through some sort of difficult scenario that was completely senseless. It doesn't make sense why anyone would want to treat you in the way that they did, and if we can start with that, it didn't make sense.

Speaker 1: 2:39

Yet it has left you with an emotional wound it's painful where you felt less lovable than before. That feeling, that feeling, even if it wasn't right, even if it was unjust, it actually creates stress in our body. It causes this feeling of threat because we have that fear of abandonment and rejection. We don't know how to process these emotions because it feels so overwhelming like we're gonna be rejected and understanding that this is a primitive part of our brain, this is something that we have felt we needed to be part of the pack to survive. So if you have grown up in a way where you were told you have to just ignore your feelings or, being in this relationship, you've just suppressed them and pretended they're not there so you can be okay and show everyone that you're okay and just carry on, Then that means these experiences are kind of locked into your body, waiting for a time where you can process them.

Speaker 1: 3:44

And if we can't process the emotion, we don't feel like we can feel emotions in the same way as we used to and we might feel more anxiety than we used to. Things like you know your breathing might change, you might feel it in your throat, your chest or your stomach area. When you feel stressed, you might sweat more than normal and you don't understand what's really going on. You don't feel as in control as you used to. We need to understand that the brain, when there's these stressful scenarios of brain, registers it. Everything goes into this amazing super brain of yours and what doesn't feel good to you and what you don't know how to process, it's going okay. We'll store that in the amygdala. This is a certain part of the brain and we will try and sort through that at some point.

Speaker 1: 4:40

But your brain is repeating that over and over again in your head because you're trying to think about what happened and why it would happen and make sense of the emotional pain, because that's probably what you're most used to. You're probably really good at analyzing things. You're probably a good thinker, analyzer. You know you like thinking intellectually but you're not able to process the emotion. So you're heavily reliant on your emotional thinking. But that is really avoiding the feeling. You know thinking about a feeling is still thinking and trying to explain how you feel is still thinking. But you need to learn how to soothe yourself again, much like a baby would know how to soothe themselves.

Speaker 1: 5:34

But you know the issues have come because you weren't allowed to maybe soothe or wasn't, nobody was there to help you soothe and you were blamed for having emotions or having emotional needs, and we're not here to blame your caregiver. They were only able to give you whatever they were able to give you based on what they themselves knew and understood. But if you have been in a toxic or difficult relationship, there's been a time in your life where you weren't heard, you weren't understood and your emotional needs weren't met. And in a lot of the time maybe you made excuses like it doesn't matter, I'm stronger than this, you know, I can handle it. It's weak to have emotions.

Speaker 1: 6:23

All of this means that you're just storing more and more in that cupboard of trauma, if you like, or the suitcase of trauma, and then what happens is you start thinking more of why this has happened and you'll eventually come to this idea or belief or meaning maybe I'm not worth, worthy of this. You know, and that is almost a protection mechanism or belief system to avoid that feeling, because you can't make any other sense of it and that's really deep in the subconscious and it kind of drives everything without you knowing and you might know. You might know that you're consciously, you might know that, oh, I am worthy of love. I've got so much to offer. You know, so many people love me and all the rest of it.

Speaker 1: 7:16

But if you've been in a toxic relationship because of that devaluation phase, you will actually have some sort of belief that you're not worthy of love. And some of it might have come from childhood, where you weren't given the love that you needed, and maybe you've made an assumption as a small child that you weren't worthy of love. And as time has gone on, you've just built up all these emotions that you don't know how to process. And what happens is the more emotions that are sort of built up, they become like barriers for you not being able to take on board any new opportunities. It's like fear. Am I worthy of this success? Am I worthy of this? You know it's like this added fear. Is it? Am I? Because you're building up more and more barriers over time? So over time, what happens is you basically stops excelling in life the way you use, so you stop living in the way you used to. Now, so what are the three steps in getting your confidence back? Because that's what we wanna really look at. Number one is you have to follow your life force, for it is love. Yeah, it is what you love.

Speaker 1: 8:35

Is that feeling of love Toxic relationships at any difficult relationship or any type of trauma or relationship trauma, you know, be it that you've experienced someone that's cheated on you. This I mean. You know there's more research coming out that actually that creates PTSD. So I think they've got a new frame for it PISD. Yeah, so you know it's a thing, it's something that causes trauma and what the problem is is that there's so much devaluation in that relationship. It's like I'm not good enough. You know that devaluation, of feeling not loved and devalued, is huge. It causes so much pain.

Speaker 1: 9:23

It's really no wonder that you would start to feel less confident when you really look at things. It's really about being honest and open and not so harsh with ourselves. It's understandable that there would be less confidence. There will be less feeling of bringing value into the world because someone has constantly devalued us and sometimes it can get so bad where we feel like, well, what's the point of me even living? I don't bring anything to the table, there's no point in me even being here, and we can start to believe that we don't really add any value. My life isn't that valuable. All I live for is my children or I haven't really got anything to offer, but each of us are so important. Honestly, Imagine your life as like this huge jigsaw puzzle and every single piece is so important. You are a piece of the jigsaw puzzle and without you it would be incomplete. And that's what we have to really grasp is that you are worthy and your shape is so unique. It is only you that can fit that space. And when you know how important you are I mean, just imagine if there was one piece missing from that jigsaw puzzle it makes a huge difference to the overall Overall. You make a huge difference. You are here to contribute to the overall, whether you know it or not, and you have something so unique that only you can do.

Speaker 1: 11:03

What happens in a difficult or toxic relationship is that we stop believing in our own uniqueness, we stop believing in our own self and we start comparing ourselves to others and devaluing ourselves in our own mind. The most important person to see the value in you is you. You're the person that needs to see the value in you so that you can truly feel confident enough to be you. And that process of really allowing yourself to be the unique self that you're meant to be is when you can actually connect with life and really feel good about who you are and feel worthy of living your life. It's like I know I'm worthy because I'm fitting in, because you'll know you're being you and you really feel connected to everything in your way. So when we're not allowing ourselves to be ourselves so, for instance, in a toxic relationship or a difficult relationship where we've been criticized or devalued in any way or where we're losing our confidence it's basically when we're trying to squash ourselves and change our shape.

Speaker 1: 12:22

That hurts, it's painful and the problem with that is it actually means that our brain changes. It's painful, it pumps out. Our brain starts pumping out cortisol, adrenaline because of the pain it causes, the emotional pain, the pain to your nervous system, the thoughts that you're having all of this and the disconnection, the pain of being disconnected, the pain of not being loved. You start to feel weak. It's stressful and your brain will start going over and over again and again and again certain things to try and make sense of it all, and it's like it's going through a different, a certain path every day. It's the same old thoughts. It's the same old thinking over and over again, and what that is is the brain has pathways, so these are called neural pathways, and it's basically automatic thinking. You automatically go down that path over and over again. Every single time you get triggered and sometimes you don't even know you're going down there and before you know it, you're thinking and you're feeling exhausted and it zaps your energy and you might believe that you can't heal. And that's it. This is it. You can't heal, and you actively have to break that thinking pattern and actively change the brain. The whole body needs to change and shift so you can start to heal.

Speaker 1: 13:53

But before you can do that, the truth of the matter is that you have to heal the emotional pain, because your thinking is trying to make sense of the emotional pain. How do we do that? Well, love. Love is the most powerful healer there is. You must keep following what feels better to you. That's how you get your shape back.

Speaker 1: 14:20

Yeah, what is it that makes you feel better right now? What is it that gives you relief? For instance, if I said to you look, I love you, I accept you and I see you and I hear you and I love you and I believe in you, just as you are. I know there's a power in you and I know you'll get through this and I'll know you'll find a way, Just follow what feels good. Follow what feels good to let go or follow. You know healing. Follow whatever feels better, whatever makes you feel better. Follow that and avoid the things that make you feel worse.

Speaker 1: 15:01

Even if it's a small step forward to feeling better, to doing something that feels good, and even if it's a small step away from what doesn't feel good, then you'll start to really start to see that there's so many things that you can do that you are worthy of, and that is love. That is you learning how to, in essence, get to love, self-worth and self-love. That's the end goal of healing from toxic relationships. Imagine yourself like a car. You know you need fuel. If you haven't got fuel, you can't continue. Well, love is your fuel.

Speaker 1: 15:44

Following what feels good to you is, in essence, you pouring in a whole load of love that you think, yeah, I'm worthy enough to follow what feels good and where you choose to spend your energy, as if you are in control, to invest in whatever it is that creates more energy for you and move away from whatever it is that depletes energy from you. And sometimes it can take some time right and it's giving yourself time to really build in your energy source. A lot of us, when we've been in difficult relationships, we just lose that energy and we just lose that will to live. We just lose all of that. And this is the reason is that you've lost your shape and you need to find your shape back. You need to get to you again and eventually this process, as you start healing and really developing self-worth and self-love, eventually it will get you to finding your purpose.

Speaker 1: 16:48

It's like why you're here and you'll know this is the thing I'm here to do. This is what you know and it's not just one thing. There's so many different sides to that piece of the puzzle. So there's so many different things that you're here to contribute towards. You might be a mother, you might be a father, you might be a sister. You know there's so many different things. You're here and the way that you contribute and it makes you feel good. It sort of it, you know, fills up your cup and then, because it feels so good to be you, the pain of the relationship will no longer. You'll no longer want that pain to be squashed, because you'll really believe in the, the piece of the puzzle that you are Okay. So that's step number one self-love and self-worth and finding your purpose, your. What is that you're here to do? So that we can undo some of that devaluation.

Speaker 1: 17:42

Step number two we have to release the trauma. Your trauma is not you. Please don't start identifying with it. There is a lesson in everything. There is no friend, there is no enemy. They're all teachers, right? Everybody is a teacher, Everything is a teacher. We're here to learn. We're here on the earth school to learn, right? That situation that you've been in is here to teach you, and maybe you didn't know that before, but now you do. Now you know that there's something I'm here to learn and maybe this situation is helping you learn how to value yourself and that you are worth it, and actually how to get back to self-love. And the only way to get to self-love is to release the emotional pain. That's what helps to reset the brain.

Speaker 1: 18:33

When we've been in difficult relationships, yes, we've probably had PTSD or complex PTSD. Like I said, what that means is that you're living in that primitive part of the brain, right? And if you have been people pleasing, that is a phone response, that's a trauma response. So if you worry about what everybody else is thinking and you don't even feel like you should have needs. You're always giving, giving, giving, but you have a real problem receiving. You don't know how to say yes and you don't know how to say no to people that want something from you. Yes, I will receive. No. We need to learn how to give and receive in relationships. It really is about giving and receiving. It's a two-way energy. If you believe you're not worthy of love, how can you receive love? How are you going to allow yourself to receive? It's almost like a fear, when we have trauma, to even receive love. If you're in the phone, trauma response there's like a fear of I don't. I feel uncomfortable receiving, I feel uncomfortable getting support.

Speaker 1: 19:46

So many people don't get into therapy, for instance, or get therapy that really helps them, because they don't, they can't accept help, so they have to do everything themselves and it's such a barrier, it's a trauma response and they'll never get to where they really need to get because of the trauma. It becomes a barrier for them. See, there is emotional pain that needs to be relieved so that you can learn to receive, because you're worthy of receiving, you're worthy of having this life. So we must release the emotional pain because, whatever we resist, it actually persists. And if you want to experience success, love, harmony, peace, we have to look at your beliefs and become aware of those beliefs and actually then look what's underneath that and start processing the emotions out of the body. Words don't express how you feel. Right, With every single limiting belief, anything that is holding you back, there's usually a really deep emotional pain and you've created this limiting belief above the emotional pain. And as soon as you release the emotional pain, the emotional, the limiting belief starts to break down. I'll give you an example of this.

Speaker 1: 21:09

I one of my clients, who I absolutely adore. We'll call her Kelly. She actually grew up in a toxic environment and, unfortunately, her father passed away. She lived in. It was tough and things just got tougher for her because she had a mother who has a mother who has a personality disorder, unfortunately, and it was tough for her to be experiencing this but also seeing her younger sister experiencing it also, where she was then hurting herself. It was tough for her to actually witness what was happening to her but also her younger sister, and what she realized was that underneath everything was a deep pain, emotional pain, but she's so clever. This girl is amazing. She's so clever, she's very analytical, you know and she would analyze everything. And she even had an amazing you know someone in the family that they would analyze. They would, you know, talk it and explain it. But what was really underneath all of that? It wasn't so much what she needed to understand about the behaviors and things like that. That was important For her to really shift her life was for her to start cultivating self-love.

Speaker 1: 22:36

When she started to see her self-worth and self-love, her brain would have started to reset. She started to change things, she moved out, she got a better job, she started earning more in a sideline business, she's got a new home or she's getting a new home, she's settled, she's taking care of a younger sister and she's letting go of the emotional pain so that she can then start to feel worthy of love, of opportunities coming her way. And the more you can let go of the box and the barriers, the more you can allow new things in, and it's the perspective change that allows more opportunities to come. When we feel worthy of love, a whole life starts to shift. But you might be wondering is that really possible for me? You know it feels so far-fetched and I don't know that's gonna happen for me.

Speaker 1: 23:31

If you heal you will. You will, no matter what level of trauma you're in right now, no matter how tough it is. If you can reset your body, especially the brain, so that the nervous system can stay calmer, you release the emotions, your brain will start to shift and your trauma will start to be released, and then you will then find that you have you're more connected to self-worth and self-love, where you're actually being your true, authentic self. Right, and so it is a matter of releasing the trauma that's stored up in your body and and that is impacting the way you think and the way you feel habitually and the way you behave habitually, because it's you're behaving from your trauma rather than from you. Okay, so the last key thing to to before I go into that, actually the last thing my aims here with this channel is and my podcast is to share how you heal after a toxic relationship or difficult relationships, so you can let go of this trauma. I want you to really understand your self-worth and get your sense of self-love back so that you can fulfill your, your life. You know that what you're meant to do and be your authentic self. So if this is something that you would like, please do subscribe, please do share for more content and also please do review and things like that as well, so we can, you know, build this community.

Speaker 1: 25:10

So the last thing, number three, is to really build trust and belief in ourselves. When we've been in a difficult relationship, we have had to keep it a secret. We've probably felt embarrassed at times that we've even been in this toxic relationship and on top of that, we've been blamed and shamed as well. Well, like you know, you're overreacting, is your fault, they do everything, and then you get blamed for it. You're crazy, you're not logical, and all these feelings and everything hold a tremendous amount of shame and fear that we've experienced.

Speaker 1: 25:49

And we do need to learn to interrupt those patterns of thinking. That's an, it is an addiction, Okay, and in order for us to really learn to trust and believe in ourselves, we have to stop the repeating subconscious thinking patterns and really stop this addictive kind of just normalizing behavior. We have to stop going back to that old story and really connect with okay, where am I putting my energy? You know, if everything is energy? Science has revealed everything is energy. You are energy, right. Where are you putting your energy? You know? Are you going to put your energy into these thoughts? Are they taking energy away from you Feel it? Is it taking energy away from me or is it giving me energy?

Speaker 1: 26:40

And sometimes we have to forgive ourselves. There is no way around it. You know. Don't torture yourself with a story where you can't move on from because you're holding on to it with your, you know, with all your might. It's just a distraction for you, it's not serving you, it's not helping you be who you're meant to be, and you have to be able to say no, I'm not going to that, because that makes me feel bad about myself. It's not serving me. I have so much regret I don't. You know, we've all done some stuff that we don't wish we hadn't. But there's no point in holding on to regret. It doesn't serve anyone and if you know if there is, this is something you really want to go deep into, if you really want to go deep and heal this once and for all. I do have a Heal to Fried program. It's four months and it's intensive. If you are interested in investing in that, please do look in the resources section and apply for the free one to one session and you're able with myself or someone in my team.

Speaker 1: 27:48

But we've got to get rid of this blame, this injustice that's causing you pain, so that you can free yourself to move forward, Because ultimately, you did the best that you could and we have to let it go. We have there's no sense in beating ourself up. We can't worry about the mistakes we've made, we can't worry about the fact that we got into these relationships, but we have to let go and release any blocks in our life. What is blocking you right now from moving forward? And sometimes it's this energy around the injustice, or we feel that it's. You know they're targeting us or I can't leave. You know I've been blocked. We have to let go of the judgment that we feel towards ourselves that we're in this situation. Sometimes, just letting go of that that we're in this situation, we can actually move on, we can go.

Speaker 1: 28:48

Okay, what is it that I want? Instead? I accept where I am right now. It really sucks, it's not great, but I want to learn to love myself again and really focus on what it is that I want instead. So that is the first steps of trusting and believing in yourself again and ultimately, I'll be honest with you the second person that really is going to help you be the shape that you're meant to be, as that jigsaw puzzle is, by you following and trusting your own intuition Not anybody else, but you inside, really following what it is that you want to do and letting go of whatever isn't serving you right now and moving towards what does feel better. So, letting go and moving forward, focusing on what we want, and as you start to trust yourself again, you will find your life force and you will find what it is that you love on a daily basis. And remember, most of all, be kind and loving to yourself, as always, and I'm sending you so much love till next time.