Toxic Relationships: Love or Lies? 5 Clues You're Being Breadcrumbed.

Have you ever felt the sting of inconsistency in your relationships, where mixed signals and sporadic attention leave you questioning your worth? Our latest episode with Dr Amen Kaur pulls back the curtain on the manipulative dance of breadcrumbing, offering enlightenment and strategies for safeguarding your emotional well-being. We're not just talking about romantic entanglements; this behavior can surface in friendships and professional relationships, too. Dr. Perry’s groundbreaking trauma research sheds light on the topic, revealing the deep-seated need for clarity and safety that underpins our emotional connection and rational thought. Through the lens of the 'three-story house' model of the brain, we learn why certainty is paramount in nurturing trust and confidence within any relationship.

As we navigate the choppy waters of modern connections, it's vital to arm oneself with resilience and self-esteem. I share not just the science but also the heartache of what it means to be on the receiving end of breadcrumbing, and more importantly, how to rise above it. Drawing from my Heal to Thrive program, we discuss tools for emotional regulation that lead to recovery and empowerment. Embracing self-love and leaning into community support are pivotal steps on the path to healing. This episode is more than just a guide—it's a heartfelt call to join a community that understands your struggle and champions your journey to a more secure and self-assured life.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome my friends. So let's say you are wanting healthy relationships. You can see there's a pattern in relationships that just don't make you feel safe, and you might have actually noticed that because of social media and online platforms, there seems to be a lot of do's and don'ts about relationships, and sometimes that's quite overwhelming, because you might be looking at your relationships and feeling a sense of anxiety because you're not completely sure of what the rules are. You feel confused, you don't know where you stand in some relationships and there are so many manipulative tactics that you do need to be aware of, and it's crucial that you recognize these five signs of bread crumbing in particular that I'm going to be going through in this video so you can protect yourself from emotional pain, manipulation and investing your time and energy into somebody who will ultimately betray you and that will lead to self-doubt and losing your self-confidence and your self-esteem.

Speaker 1: 1:09

One of the most deceptive tactics is breadcrumbing. Psychologists have defined breadcrumbing as the act of leading someone on with sporadic attention, mixed signals and superficial engagement, all the while keeping somebody hopeful that there will be a deeper connection one day. So we will break that down and make sense of what they're actually saying as we go through this. So it really makes sense, and I will explain to you why you might be feeling the way you are by looking at the brain. It's nothing to do with you. It is to do with the way somebody is treating you. So let's explore the several signs that indicate that maybe you are experiencing breadcrumbing rather than genuine love, based on the insights and the research of science. So breadcrumbing happens when we're in uncertain relationships. So if you find yourself caught in a web of uncertainty, you're unsure of the exact nature and the relationship status. You just don't know where you stand. That could be a relationship with someone special. It could be your boss, it could be someone at work, a friend, a family member. You're just not clear on where you stand in the relationship. You don't have clarity In relationships, in healthy relationships, we should feel clear. In the relationship, we should feel safe. Let me explain why. Well, let's look at the brain and how. This would explain why you're feeling the way you are in relationships, in life in general, so that we can make sense of this on a really deep level.

Speaker 1: 3:04

The way we process life is through this supercomputer of yours. We experience life. It goes in and imagine, it goes into your brain and imagine your brain is this amazing three-story house. Everything gets processed on the lower level, on the ground floor. So that's where the door is to let things in, and the first ground level is the primitive part of the brain. It's basically saying, hey, are you safe to come in? Are you safe? You know, am I safe? You know right now, in this scenario. So it's basically taking all your, you're taking in all this information and you're seeing it and you're questioning yourself and your brain is saying am I safe? So this primitive part of the brain is the first brain, if you like. It's the brain that we needed when we were living in the jungles and we were with the tigers and the lions. You know we needed to make sure that we were safe. That was the part of the brain that we needed to feel safe.

Speaker 1: 4:16

And when there's situations that bring uncertainty, we become dysregulated, as Dr Perry says. Now, dr Perry is the person that first did a lot of research on trauma. So if we look at the way the brain works, everything goes in. If we are dysregulated, that means we will feel fear, anxiety, stress, a compulsion. We might go into fight, flight, freeze, fawn mode and we can get stuck there until we feel regulated. You can't go upstairs to, you know, go to sleep and feel calm and feel restful and feel okay within yourself. You can't feel emotionally safe until you feel regulated. So the first ground level making sure that you feel safe is the most important thing, and if you don't, then you will be stuck at the first floor. If you feel safe enough, you'll go to the second layer of your house and you will feel connected. Okay, that's where you create relationships, that's where you feel connected and you can relate to another person emotionally. You feel connected emotionally to the other person. So that's the limbic part of the brain. So this is where you get emotional connection and it's all good. And then, when you feel emotional connection, then you can go to the top layer, top floor, which is your cortex, which is where you can think straight, you can plan, you can look at your values and your thoughts and you can. You know, that's where you feel fully. You and your whole brain is fully connected. Okay, so we're going to come back to this three-story house as we explain this. But just keep this in mind this picture of your home, your house, you know, your brain. It's incredible.

Speaker 1: 6:27

So if you haven't got a clear answer in a relationship, you don't know where you stand in the relationship. Chances are you are being breadcrumbed. Okay, could be your boss that's not being clear about your role, about your capabilities, not really recognizing you for what you're doing, saying one thing but then actually when it's your appraisal, they do something different. So it could be a partner that's not being clear about their intentions in the relationship. Are you in a relationship or not? Or they're not committing like yes, we are, of course, and they're giving you that commitment that you need so you feel safe, and you need to feel safe in a relationship to get to the next layers in the house. Or maybe they're not being clear about their intentions, about somebody else, someone else that they're in a relationship with, where you feel uncertain. I don't know if they're cheating on me or what's happening. I'm not clear on what their intentions are. Are they seeing other people? Maybe they're not labeling the relationship.

Speaker 1: 7:37

What they're doing by doing that is keeping you on their hook, because inconsistent communication is a way of keeping you on tender hooks, waiting for them to regulate you so you can feel a sense of relief. Okay, that is the whole purpose of breadcrumbing is they're not giving you much at all, but they're giving you moments of relief so that you can then keep waiting for them to regulate you. And what it is is they have to give you an irregular, inconsistent communication. One minute they're focused on you and then they're not there. Because maybe you ask them to do something like pay 50-50, for instance, or pay for something that they owed you, and they're dysregulating you because you asked them for something for them waiting by the door, waiting for them to make you feel better, so you can get to feeling connected in all areas of your life, so that you can get to the top layer.

Speaker 1: 8:53

We're looking to get to the top layer of our house all the time, and it could be that when they are breadcrumbing you, you get moments where you feel like, oh, they really understand me. They get moments where you feel like, oh, they really understand me, they really they get me, and you feel like calmer, and then, before you know it, you're plonked back down on the ground floor again, where you feel dysregulated and you just don't know, and you're continually going up and down, up and down, up and down. It's exhausting, you know, um, but you're now going to be mainly on the ground floor, because you never know when they might dysregulate you. You know that they will, so you're just waiting for that and you just feel moments of relief and that's where you can find the intensity in the relationship. And then the next minute you just don't feel like there's silence and you just don't know where they are or what they're doing. So this is a thing that you really need to look out for in breadcrumbing is their inconsistency. Is there consistently inconsistent? And when you actually what's going on, they will change for a short period of time and then they'll go back to their old ways. This inconsistency actually gives them an upper hand in the relationship.

Speaker 1: 10:12

This is power and control. Because you feel helpless. You're in the ground floor because you're dysregulated. You're waiting because the feeling of your brain being dysregulated, you can't stay in that. You have to find a way and that's what keeps you hooked. You go into trauma responses because you don't want to feel that way. Your brain wants to feel regulated. You can't feel at peace, you can't think straight. You want to get to the top level of the house and you're not getting what you need. You're not getting that commitment and your brain can sense that Also, there's a lack of clarity of what's going to happen with this person. In your mind, you don't know where things are going to end up. There's no security of how is this relationship going to end or what's going to happen in this relationship. Are they perhaps this financial insecurity? There could be loads of different things going on, but you just don't feel in control of how you feel anymore. That's the key here. If you're not regulated, you become needy for them to feel like regulated, to feel calm within yourself, and that's where the trauma bond gets created.

Speaker 1: 11:27

So if you look at relationships a person who genuinely is interested in building a relationship in a meaningful way they want you to feel safe with them. They know and understand on a level that you need to know where you stand. You need to know that you're safe with them so that you can get to that next level and feel committed and connected. You have to know they will invest time and effort into planning things together for your future, in creating clarity clarity, whereas if someone's trying to breadcrumb you, they will avoid discussing anything that will make you or help you feel safe. They will discuss things, but without showing consistency in their communication. They'll say things and it never comes to play. You're still waiting something to come into fruition, like the holiday they've been talking about. Or they've been telling you that they will marry you, but they never do. Or there's things that they keep saying but you just don't get it. When there's a willingness to discuss the future in a meaningful way, it's a clear indication they're looking for love in a meaningful way. It's a clear indication they're looking for love. They're looking for the second layer and the final layer of really understanding you and connecting with you on a deep level. They want you to feel safe in the relationship so you can connect on emotionally. So that's where when we can connect emotionally with someone what this is, why it's really important to have good relationships.

Speaker 1: 13:15

This is where you build resilience. You build your self-esteem yourself. You feel like there's consistency, you know what to expect it. You become stronger as an individual. You become more resilient in life. So even things things challenge you, it doesn't really impact you as much because your brain is able to know that I'm connected. I can use this to problem solve so you can get to the next level, which is your cortex. Problem solve it and it becomes something that helps you build your self-confidence, whereas someone that is dysregulating you, who's breadcrumbing you? It's superficial and they rarely delve deep into understanding your thoughts, your dreams or your fears or your aspirations and really understanding the impact that they are having. They're not trying to help you become resilient, they're making you become, they're dysregulating you so that you become less resilient in life and you lose your confidence. They might avoid sharing specific aspects of their life, of what they're doing. Usually they're hiding something and that is why you feel insecure, you feel not sure.

Speaker 1: 14:41

You just don't know get to emotional intimacy and you can never get to the way you want if you're in that kind of relationship and you can never get to your cortex where you're thinking, part of the brain where you feel like I can see that this is good for me or everything makes sense in this relationship. Nothing will make sense in this relationship where you know it might be that you logically know that this isn't a good relationship for you, but you can't help it. You're at the lower level and you just need them to make you feel better because you're dysregulated. So it could be a pattern that you've got, by the way. It could be a relationship pattern that you've got and you just don't know how to fix it.

Speaker 1: 15:30

The key here is you need some tools to learn to regulate yourself, regardless of somebody else. It's so important. Emotional regulation you're feeling safe. You need ways of regulating yourself and your brain needs this. And if you feel you need these tools to help you get regulated and if it's something you really want to do, you want to get your life back. You know you're someone that is successful and you've just lost your way. You've lost your self-confidence. Look into the resources section. I've got a deep four month Heal to Thrive program and you can apply for a free one-to-one session with myself and if we align, you can work on that Heal to Thrive program with me. It'll be great. So let's go back to breadcrumbing.

Speaker 1: 16:22

Hot and cold behavior is another sign of breadcrumbing. That means that the person may shower you with affection, compliments, attention, gifts, making you believe that you know there's potential for a deep connection, and then they become cold and distance, ignoring you altogether because you've asked for something or it's game playing. It's style of dating is so emotionally draining, it causes anxiety and stress and it actually causes your brain to change because you're dysregulated and you stay dysregulated for longer and longer and longer periods of times where you start to get used to living in that kind of way. People who genuinely care about you are consistent in their interest, in their effort, in their relationship. There might be temporary change, but they will change back to their normal pattern, whereas if someone's breadcrumbing you, they will change for a short period of time and then they will go back to making you feel vulnerable. They'll draw you back, they'll hook you back in to do it over and over and over again, and the more you do that, the more you stay at that level where you just don't know. And it's really important to understand this manipulative tactic. It's not genuine.

Speaker 1: 17:50

It's crucial that you do become aware of breadcrumbing to protect your brain, yeah and to learn to use your brain in a way that enables you to make the most of your life. Otherwise, you'll be unable to release the anxiety, the fear, and it will impact your, the quality of your life. Moving forward, you could be someone that you'll forget who you are, your values, your confidence, and you just don't feel resilient. That's the top level of layer of the brain. So don't settle for someone who just gives you sporadic attention, attention and keeps you hanging for false promises. Invest your time and your emotions into those who make you feel safe, who are willing to build a genuine connection with you.

Speaker 1: 18:43

If you know someone that has been through this, please do share this with them and for more information like this, please do subscribe. Please know that when we've been breadcrumbed in this way, we can feel like we can't relate to people like we used to. That's the second layer. I really want you to know that. It's important for you to know how to heal, and part of that is to learn to be loving and kind to yourself through this process, because that in itself, self-love, is helping you get to the second layer to be able to connect, to feel safe. It's a key, important way of healing. Love is a key way of healing. So if you know anyone that's been through this, connect with others and share this and connect with this community. Subscribe. Be part of this community as we grow, because you're not alone and it's important to feel connected to others that understand and to keep being loving towards yourself is so key. Be compassionate, be understanding and sending you so much love Till next time.