Nina Stanyer on Coercive Control, Shame, and Rebuilding a Life

Hey, welcome to this podcast. And today I have a wonderful guest. Her name's Nina Stanyer, and Nina is a women's coach and mentor. And you specifically work with women who have just come out of relationships and marriages where they've experienced domestic abuse, knowingly or unknowingly, and you help them rebuild their lives. Nina, first of all, welcome to this podcast and conversation.

Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here. You're so welcome. I'm so pleased that we get to do this. I truly believe that this is one of the most empowering conversations that anybody can be a part of, and I'm really looking forward to going deeper on this with you, specifically because you work with women in real time who've experienced this, and there's so much conversation about the impact our domestic or family life has on how we live our entire lives, but it still feel that the aspect of domestic abuse is perhaps not discussed, or as openly and enough as it can be.

I'll start there. What do you think about that? Yeah, look, I couldn't agree more. And I think that the word domestic is the key in all of this. And people tend to turn away when it becomes a domestic issue.

And they can be outraged, they can be aware, they can know what's happening in their street, but they just don't want to get involved. And I think that that's the biggest problem that I see happening with, with the whole system not being able to move forward. Yeah. Why do you think that's the case? Why do people try to stay away from it?

So I think that I find that, you know, we just don't want to get involved. We may have awareness around it, you know, and we may feel great because we donate to a cause and we feel that we've done our bit. But when it comes to the next door neighbor or the lady down the road or something like that, we tend to step away and just go, yeah, I'm not going to get involved in that. And what's underneath that apprehension? Do you find.

I find that I think that what I've come across when I talk to people who are not involved in that situation, I've been having those conversations with with a few people last week. Is that the general feel of it is like, we really just feel like if we get involved, then what can we actually do to help? We don't know what it is that we can do to help. We can just sort of like give money to the professionals or that's what we feel that we can do. We can't go any further with it.

Yeah, I think that's a fair consideration. I think it's very easy to kind of stand from a distance and go, hey, we should help. But it's also in part, perhaps we need to empower people, society, communities more to also know what to do when they become privy to such a situation or they become aware of it. And I know there's stuff there, but let's go even further and look at what do you find is the general perspective that we hold as a society around domestic abuse, and if that plays a role in how we see it, because my experience is having worked with many women as well who've been through this, is there's also a degree of shame associated with talking about the situation that someone's going through with, perhaps, I would say not interfering, but even connecting with someone who is going through that and touching base on that. And I appreciate it's a sensitive conversation.

You know, if it's a man or a woman, whoever's going through it, to talk about them with something like this. But what role do you think shame plays in perhaps keeping people, stuck in that kind of environment or in reaching out for help or getting support from other people? I think that shame is probably one of the largest. And I from my perspective, it was not shame of the situation, it was shame of myself. And so it became really personal.

I find that also with some of the women that I work with, that they feel ashamed for getting into it in the first place. And so there's a lot of blaming themselves. And when we look at moving into a situation where even if we know that it's somebody that we know, the conversation rolls easier when the person who is in that situation actually approaches us and says that, I really need your help. We feel the empowerment in that, and we think, okay, so we can do something about this and we can point them in a direction or whatever. But if we have to move into that situation and go, hey, I kind of noticed this feels a bit off or whatever it is that we notice bruises or however it that becomes a little bit more risky for the person moving into that situation.

Yeah. What do you mean, risky? There's a there's a, you know, like, it's none of your business. You know, a lot of the time, and from my own experience, a lot of the time, if somebody hadn't come to me, I would have just said, no, you're wrong. Nothing is wrong, you know?

So it's like we have a defensive lair because of the blame and the shame and the guilt we are carrying to have an exterior of nicety, to protect ourselves from judgment, from other people. Exactly. And I think that a lot of that is, you know, what I like to call a billboard. You know, you put a billboard up and it's interesting. There's another thing that a lot of people who haven't been in that situation don't understand is that there's a lot of shame around what you're going through, but you also step in to protect the person who is your abuser, because you don't want other people to see them badly.

Wow. And so that that sort of keeping that whole situation perfect so that you know how to manage that, like you know how to be inside of there. And when somebody comes up to you and they sort of, sort of say to you, they're going to say to you, why don't you just leave, you know, why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? And you inherently know that you can't you don't have the strength to be able to do that.

And so you do whatever you can to not only manage the situation from the inside so that you, you don't get hurt or whatever the abuse is that's going on. You manage that. You also manage the external and how you look to other people. And you know, you're the woman that sits at the cafe with everyone else when you're being coercive, controlled with money, and you say to yourself, it's okay, I'll just have water. I'm good.

You know, I have my tea this morning. You know, you never spend any money because you don't have it, and people around you don't see it that way. So it's, so it can also be how subtle is what they're experiencing and how visible or not visible it is that plays a role in it. I'm also curious about so how do you define abuse? I define abuse in a way that you don't feel the ability to be yourself, where you start to question yourself all the time, where you feel you don't feel safe, where you start to live in that hypervigilant state all the time, where you find yourself managing your life instead of living your life.

And this starts from a really early time. Like you go into these relationships with love. You fall in love. He loves you. You love him or her or however the situation may be, and it slowly creeps up where you suddenly stop seeing your friends, where your family. You just don't go there. You just stop going out, you know? He says, I'm better at managing money than you are, you know? How about I just give you money when you need it and all of that kind of thing? So you start to sort of wake up one day and you sort of start to go, oh, hang on.

You know, I know I'm not allowed to see my friends where you start to manage inside your life, and then you have that extra layer on top where you're not only managing inside of there, but you're managing outside of here. So for me, abuse is any at any point where you don't have the freedom to do what it is that you feel that you need to do in your life. Yeah. I'm sitting with that definition. It's, it's a, it's a unique way of looking at it in, in some ways.

And it's challenging me in other ways as well. So I think it will touch on both. So, so what I really resonate with in what you're saying is being in a situation where you are. Possibly. Subjected to circumstances and conditions where you are restricted or limited in your ability to make choices in life.

So I can see that happen as well. And that's such a common occurrence, which turns into abuse. My curiosity is around. It's also sounds like from what you've I haven't experienced it so and I know you've personally experienced this in your life. So I'm curious like where is the the gray area there?

Because if I take what you just said is also the aspect of how much responsibility does someone carry by themselves? And imagine that's the work that you do as well in terms of empowering people, of where can I feel that I don't have a choice because of my own relationship with myself, compared to where I actually feel restricted in my choices because of coercive control or abuse. How do you kind of separate those boundaries? Because sadly, I wonder if you've noticed that particularly in the in the modern age of media, people actually misuse a lot of words. And I think abuse is one of the words, which it's actually the word in and of itself requires clarity and respect, because it's quite a serious thing that someone experiences.

And then if we can blow it out with sometimes not knowing where it is, someone not knowing how to be themselves, empowered human being with, they are being coercive, controlled. And if that's not clear, then people can minimize what someone else is experiencing by virtue of their own lack of capacity to explain what's going on in their life. Does that make sense? So I'm just really curious on like, how do you kind of paint a picture and draw the boundaries there? One of the things that is really important to understand inside of any abusive relationship is the fact that you lose that sense of self, is that you disconnect from self.

You mentioned in their relationship to self, you have no relationship to self. Everything is your fault. And a lot of people that come into abusive relationships, not everybody, but a lot of people that come into abusive relationships have had abuse in the past, and it's what they know. To them, it seems to be normal, like their low self-esteem. Everything is their fault.

They take responsibility for it. In my own personal experience, it was my fault. I was ugly and stupid, and if I wasn't so ugly and stupid, then it wouldn't have happened in the first place. Wow. So there's a deeper layer of like a self-inflicted layer of abuse in there as well, which facilitates that external abuse in me getting this right. Yeah, absolutely. And so when you don't think very highly of yourself and, you know, we bring in, you know, we can bring in words like people pleaser coming into the situation where you you just give away all parts of yourself in order to, to belong, you know, to be you. You want that safety even though you know it's not good for you, even though you know that it's abusive. It doesn't matter, because that's right. You're bone.

Every now and then, you know there'll be something beautiful. It's not always horrible. There'll be. There'll be really good times. There'll be, you know.

And they're the things that you end up living for inside that relationship where I used to call it staggering back to happy family. And there's sort of like, you have that happy family and that's what you live for, because there's nothing else inside of you that matters more than making sure that you do everything you can, that, that so that person will continue to love you, no matter how dysfunctional it may look like from the outside to you, it's love form of love. And so I guess at the others part of this too, is that you were talking about lack of capacity or the external, the external abuse. Yeah. And I really do feel that it's a mixture of both.

It's the two that that coming together because there are two parties involved in this. And so there are two different I look I'm going to call it there there, there's two different points of view at war in this inside the relationship where we have one that wants to dominate and one that wants to be submissive. And when that submissive, when that submission comes to a point where it's like, yeah, I just can't do this anymore, you know, I simply can't do this anymore. So it is it is a mixture of both of them that sit in there. Yeah.

I think that's very profound. I also think that that's not talked about enough because It is easier to sit and look at the situation from the outside rather than being the situation and not know what to do, which is the submissive, party in this, in this environment. So now when you coach and that's my next layer of curiosity around this is when you're coaching women who've been through this, and they have found the courage to stand up for what matters to them, and they're breaking through the cycle of experiencing the abuse, and they're breaking through, not just the marriage or the relationship they've been in. But as you said before, they've probably had it before that they're really breaking through the patterns they've had for all their life. Yeah.

How do you coach them and what do you focus on? What do they need the most help with? The first thing, the most important thing that these that these women need is to break down the overwhelm. You know, they step out and they are overwhelmed with coming out of coercive control or coming out of an abusive relationship. It's not freedom.

You know, you're coming out of a situation where you had no choice into a situation where you're being thrown a hundred choices, you know, do you need counseling? Do you need to make a police report? What are you going to do with your children? Do you have somewhere to live? Why didn't you tell me?

Did he wasn't really abuse. So, you know, you you become like the defender outside of that relationship where with people wanting to help you, people angry with you and all of that happening. And I get that a lot. And these women come to me and they just do not know what direction to point themselves into because they've got this massive ball of overwhelm around them. And so the very first thing that we do is sit down and we break their life down, and we start to look at, what is it that is working for you so we can put that one to sleep for a while?

What isn't working for you? Where is the energy going? And start to sort of once we start to pull their life apart and they can go, right? Okay, so it's not all bad. These parts are great.

This is working really, really well and this is not working so well. So let's work on the ones that are not working so well. And through that we, we they start to see patterns that they've developed inside the relationship, that they've come out of, patterns that they've had all their life. If they've gone through abuse from a, from a young age or something's happened to them at a young age. And so they start to see those patterns.

And once they start to see their patterns, it all becomes about the awareness of that. And sitting with that awareness and moving through that and going, okay, so this is why I, this is why I do what I do. How can I do it differently? Yeah. That's powerful.

So they have a myriad of choices now. And they have to learn how to actually make good choices and decisions. And I'm also hearing them, perhaps not having built the psychological muscles of assessing and making good choices for yourself is perhaps what's also led to what they experience for a really long time. So you're effectively really helping them build maturity in the psychological function to take greater personal responsibility. They are, they are.

And let's go back to what you said. We said earlier around shame. You know, they're also carrying that the shame is massive that these women carry. So they're shamed of what they've done and ashamed of what they've put their children through, ashamed of walking away from their families. They carry all of what had happened to them on their shoulders, and they blame themselves for it.

So, you know, we have that. And then we have that lack of of trust in self because along with that shame and that blame, they blame themselves for it. You know, I felt in my experience that it was my fault that I got myself into that situation. It was my fault that my children were abused, and it was my fault that I didn't get them out earlier, that I didn't have the courage to do that. So not only carrying that, but then going, I made really crappy choices back there.

How do I know that I'm making good choices moving forward? And so even if I get a choice put in front of me, I have no sense of self-worth and self trust to be then able to go. I have no idea how to advocate for myself. So is that decision a good one or not? You know, am I actually going to make the right decision?

Because look at where I got making decisions before that. That's a huge thing that I find with the women that I work with. Yeah, that's a very important part of it. Self-Advocacy that you mentioned. So how do you help them build as a as a coach?

How do you help them be more self advocating? What what work needs to be done from a coaching point of view there when you're helping them? Yeah. This is really this is a really fun question, because the first thing that comes to me inside of this is the fact that we talk about emotional intelligence and we talk about these women know a lot of buzz words. They know about the buzz word self trust. They know the buzz word nervous system. They know a lot of buzz words. They think they should understand it, but they don't. They don't understand relationship with self because they don't have one. And so it's it's very much about I'm not going to say dumbing down the language, but it's very much finding a language that, that they can understand where you speak to them on a level that they have when they when they're sitting there, and it's bringing them up to having an understanding about self trust.

If I through self trust at them, they and I've done that. You know because I understand self trust like yeah. You know we just need to build yourself trust and we need to start advocating for yourself. And they're like what? What does that mean?

What does that mean? You know I don't understand what you mean. And so I learned very early on to back that up and kind of go, okay, what is it that we what level do we understand? You know, that's part of that coaching is what we're what we're taught how to do is to understand where they are at and then help them to help them to to do that and building that self trust is giving them techniques that they can work with where they start to go. Okay, so I did that and it worked.

I understand that and I've given a shot in my own real life it's working and that slowly, slowly slowly starts to build that sense of self trust. Yeah. What would you say is like a bit of a structure to building that self trust. If there were some things that you would give to your client to build self trust, say three things or three steps, what would they be for someone who's listening right now and going, well, you know what? I'm actually in a relationship where I feel like, I'm pretty disempowered in how I approach my choices.

And then I've got this other external coercive control as well, because I imagine self trust is very important for them to even consider stepping away from that relationship. Yeah, yeah. It is, So the most powerful thing that I've found that works with the people that the women that I work with has been the ability to understand and sit with curiosity. And one of the first things that we go through in the program that I work with is around fear and control and sort of looking at that circle of control and where you sit inside there and where your attention is explained that more a bit. What do you mean by circle of control?

So circle of control is, it's three it's three, three layers of control that we have. So we have the middle layer which is us. This is what we are. This is what we are responsible for. Like our emotions, our beliefs, our values.

Yeah. You know, those kinds of things. Then the next circle outside of that is our circle of influence. And this is where I can offer you advice and not control what you do. With that, I can offer you advice and walk away.

So then the outside circle is everybody else's business really. So that's everybody else's needs and everybody else's values and so forth. And when we look at the relationship with control and fear, if we have a low self-esteem, then we're outside in everybody else's circle looking around, going, you know, I need to control the situation. And a lot of domestic abuse survivors have talked to me about how much control they have around what other people are doing, around what other people are saying around them. And that's their version of safety. They don't know what it's like to look at their needs. They don't even know what they are. That's huge. Their beliefs, their values, nothing. You know that that inner circle, they have no idea what it even is.

So they've spent most of their life outside in everybody else's circle trying to control what everybody else is doing, saying, being because that then becomes the sum worth of who they feel they are. Yeah. Wow. That's huge. Yeah.

So tell me if I'm getting this right. So someone who's actually a survivor. They are unaware relatively speaking of their own needs. So to feel a sense of safety and control in life, they then actually go out and control other people's situation circumstances. How is that different from what they're experiencing with their abuser I guess with their abuser he controls it all.

And over here they are controlling parts. Yeah. Rather than all in one person's life. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. So you, you also, when you're inside an abusive situation, you do not exist. Hands down, you do not exist. It's more than control. Yeah, it's way more than control.

So you do not exist. So what happens is that you become responsible for the emotional temperature in the room. And so I'll give you an example of that for me. And that is where my partner can be looking for a can opener. And he can be carrying on like a pork chop because he can't find it.

And my instant reaction is he stressed out. This is unsafe for me because he's angry. So I'm going to race in. I'm going to find the can opener. I'm going to give it to him.

I'm going to do what I can to make him calm down, so that I can have that sense of safety and go, okay, because if he's upset, then there's that's a threat to me. That's how your mind runs. And so you walk into a room and you're controlling the emotional temperature. So this is I guess, coining the people pleaser phrase. So that's a survivor approximately.

Absolutely. And all of the women that I work with, they all do the same thing. They all feel the same way. And and inside of that, they don't realize that they're giving away those parts of them where they're just walking in and going, what can I do to help everyone else? It goes beyond, I'm doing this so that they love me.

It's also I'm doing this so that I can control what the situation is going to be because I can stay safe. Yeah. So I can stay safe. Yeah. Yeah, I love that.

Yeah. Very insightful. And I really love the depth around how much you go in terms of really understanding what's happening here, so that you can help these women at the level that you do, which is really, really admirable as well. I've got a couple of even deeper curiosities around this, and I really want to explore that with you. I definitely don't think our time is going to be enough to unpack all of that.

We want to, but we'll give it a go. So one of the things I'm really curious about is. Where does control become abuse? When you step outside of your own circle of control, where you are in control of your emotions, when you're in control and you start to try and control somebody else's, that's abuse. Where you use that to your advantage. Got it. So there's manipulation in there to fulfill your own needs, to fulfill your own desires. You are now manipulating someone else to be able to fulfill what's important to you without any consideration to them. Absolutely. My kids asked me when we came out of the abusive situation, and they had the words and the ability to actually talk to me about it.

And my youngest son said to me, what? Why did daddy do that? You know, why was daddy like that? And the easiest way for me to explain to him was sort of like, well, daddy had a hole inside himself that he needed to fill with us. And so in, because he didn't think that we would give that to him willingly through.

We just love you and we're happy to be here. He took it from us and it didn't feel enough for him. So yeah, so he took it from us forcefully. And so that helped them understand that it's like he was taking pieces to fill an empty void within himself. And it was never enough.

So because he needed to fill that void himself. And they know that they understand that now. But that was the only way that I could sort of make them understand that that was why he did it, you know? And it wasn't that daddy was broken or because we don't use words like that, it was just that he had something missing inside himself, and he didn't know how to fill it. And so he just took it from from us.

That's a helpful analogy, because it also then helps someone who maybe. Inflicting abuse for them to go if they have the capacity to self-reflect. Hey, what's the hole I'm trying to fill here? Because it's fascinating. It's very rare.

But when someone who is inflicting the the coercive control and putting people in a situation where you've been, where if they can turn themselves around, that's quite remarkable as well, albeit very rare, because generally they've gone so far out on the spectrum of lacking self-reflective awareness. It's harder. Is that is that your experience? And I also think that in all honesty, there's not a lot of conversation around that. You know, they just become the perpetrator.

And that's well said. What do you think? Because they think that label of perpetrator, albeit as much as they may be true to it in terms of what they've done, that still is not helpful for the furtherance of community and family. No it's not. I think that they're a victim for the victim to themselves as well.

Well said. Well, not only creating victims, but they're also victims to themselves. And that's not looked at. You know, there's people that have alcohol problems, drug problems, gambling problems, you know, all of these sorts of things. Domestic abuse, a domestic abuse perpetrator, unless they are pure narcissist, have a problem.

You know, they and this is not something that is addressed because they are the narcissists. You know, they are the perpetrator. Why do we not talk about it nearly as much as we talk about the victim? Again, I, I just feel that people are uncomfortable with it. So say it without I just feel because.

So what's happening is sometimes you go, I just I might it just takes away the certainty because your message is amazing. Yeah. Just stay certain. So so my question was why do we talk less about perpetrator than victim? I think it's because we're uncomfortable with it.

And I really feel that it's again, this shame blame. You know, we have in society we have this way of just going who's going to be taking the responsibility for this? You know, we need to go. Okay. So that person has been hurt by that person.

So, that person needs to pay for it. We're not kind of looking at the reason around what that person, their motivations for doing it. And I think that the one biggest thing that I've learned in my coaching is to question motivation. It's to stop and go, why don't they actually yeah, why am I doing this? You know, not just accepting everything blindfold but just going, why am I doing this?

Why am I reacting this way? Why that? Why question is not applied to them. And I also think that in a big degree, the why question is not being applied to them, to the to the, the victim either. So you know, it works both ways, but less with way less with the perpetrator.

Way, way less. I think that the why question around, it's just like they're just a perpetrator and you just label them and they kind of forget them. Yeah, they're label then go on. You know, this person is in pain. This person is let's protect them, which is rightly so.

You want to protect them, but then. Yeah, absolutely. My ex-husband went on to another abusive relationship after he left me. He came from an abusive relationship to to this one. He then moved on to another one, which ended up really badly as well.

And then he moved on to another one. So if somebody had stepped in and looked at him and gone, okay, so you need some help, mate. You know, let's let's move let's move you into help as well. You know, let's see what we can do to help you to stop this from happening again. It's serial on.

He goes on, he goes because he doesn't know any different. So just as there's growth for the victim, there's growth for the perpetrator. And that conversation just doesn't happen. Yeah. And perhaps that's plays a big role in why.

Divorce and separation rates go up further and further and further. Because there's help on one side more than there is help on the other side. And it's not to say that that necessarily would change divorce rates, but I just because I haven't been in this situation, I'm very mindful of how I think about it. And I'm curious on your thoughts like so say if there was more support on both sides. And excluding the extreme circumstances of perpetrator, because quite often people are inflicting what we are talking about on the perpetrator side and they're not even aware that they're inflicting abuse.

Right? Emotional abuse, financial abuse, there's a lack of understanding on their part because they're just trying to fulfill their needs by manipulating the other person in those kind of circumstances, if there's any, and support and guidance and whatever we can do to help the perpetrator. Do you see a possibility of perhaps, a healthier recovery in the relationship? Absolutely. Both parties are supported, guided?

I think that if there was coaching or counseling available for us, when we got to that point in our relationship where we both were aware that something was wrong, we would still be married. Because we started off with love like we both loved each other. It was an amazing relationship. It was alcohol and, you know, mental illness that destroyed the marriage. And we couldn't manage that inside that on our own.

And so and there was no support when he was diagnosed with bipolar was outside of our relationship that had happened. It wasn't diagnosed inside of there. And so that can be said in we weren't open and honest about it, you know, I didn't step forward and say, hey, things are crap and he's hurting me. And, you know, all of that. I didn't feel that I had the support outside to do that.

I didn't feel that if people came to me and they said to me, leave, I wouldn't have anywhere to go. So if we had have had that support, that coaching, that counseling inside of our relationship as a couple, we would have made it through. And it also makes you think about in situations with my ex-husband where he then moved into another abusive relationship and another abusive relationship. If we look at the domestic abuse stats, how many of those stats include men that moved from one and domestic abuse to A to another? And if they had have been counseled that it would actually bring the stats down and they would be given an opportunity to step into a healthy, loving relationship and stay in there and be happy because he's, you know, he's not happy.

Yeah. Wow. That's really huge. That's really huge. I'm just taking that in.

That's remarkable. The consequences of I feel goosebumps, the consequences of not paying attention to the whole picture. Both parties are profound. It's it's it's almost like it's perpetuating the victim perpetrator cycle across society because we're not paying enough attention on both sides, because that person will then go and find someone else to do the things that they were doing, which is what exactly what you just said rather than. Being a more healthy, resourceful contributor to another family or another person's life.

What about the other side? So I'm curious, so as a someone who's a survivor, when they go on to another relationship, I would imagine that they would feel that they could very easily be subjected to the same situation. So they'd probably be on rail guards even if it's not happening. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it's interesting, as you say, that because I personally stayed single for seven years until I met my current partner and every relationship I've had previous to him was abusive.

Every single one of them. And it was within that seven years that I started to work on myself and do the work that was required for me to start to get that level of self trust and to begin to have that relationship with myself. If you don't do that, then you'll move from one abusive relationship to another like I did. Because you that's what you know. You know how to be inside that relationship.

You know how to live inside that relationship. And if you don't have that sense of self-worth, where you stand up and you go, hey, I actually deserve more than this. I'm worth more than this, then you're just going to settle for somebody else that's going to come along and love on you and then take advantage of you. And, you know, sometimes it's it's like in my situation, it was something that just grew into that through through circumstance. But there's some people out there that that's what they do. You know, they're perpetrators out there. That's what they do. They they look for a particular personality type that they can dominate. And if you don't have that strength of character and you don't take that time to work on yourself and grow as a person and have that relationship with yourself where you can walk into another relationship going, this is what I am, this is what I offer, and this is what I'll accept and this is what I want. Then you're not going to go into a healthy relationship because you're not healthy.

You don't have a healthy relationship with yourself. Yeah. I'm just taking time reflecting on my own life. So. I imagine there's great shades of gray to this.

What you just said, like everything. Always. So give you an example. So, One of the things that I often talk about with my wife is expressing your needs because I find that I'm very expressive of my needs, relative to how well she would express her needs, which is very minimal. And I know there's history there for her.

So just taking on what you said, and she's growing into expressing her needs, which is beautiful. And we work together on it. We have our moments where we have to chat about it and all those things. Is it always the case, though? Because I'm just reflecting this on myself now and I'm going.

Is it always the case that if you haven't done the work that you will end up in a abusive relationship or not have a healthy relationship? Because I feel my wife and I have a very healthy relationship. Aside from moments where trauma control up and then we're, well, I'm super aware of it. And then she's very into it and we kind of talk about it and work through it. So is it possible that you may or may not have done work, but then you're in a relationship where you are, you have a space where you is as the trauma of the past comes up, or as patterns show up, you can heal as you go through the relationship as well, because that's what I feel we do like I mean, we all have some sort of trauma we carry.

I'm curious in your thoughts on that because that's how I feel. My wife and I, we approach it. It's be interesting to sort of throw into that. Also, is your level of awareness of your own patterns and your level of awareness around your curiosity with your relationship with yourself. A lot of the women that I work with have no curiosity around their relationship with and selves.

The only thing that they're even remotely concerned about is how can I be loved? And yes, if they if they do enter into a relationship with a man who has a higher emotional intelligence than them and is more aware than they are, that is there to sort of go, hey, you know, curious that you do that, or interesting that you would say that that is where that works. And I can see that working and that has not necessarily, in my experience happened in my relationship. My partner just goes, you do you boo. And I really have worked it all out for myself, and he's given me a safe space to do that without actually having to come in and go.

I'm interested that you do that or curious that you act like that, you know? So I think that every relationship is very different, of course. And every person is very different. But there's a pattern of like levels of awareness. Definitely playing.

Yeah, absolutely. And it depends. I had I have a client who has has gone into a new relationship and something had come up with the ex-husband and she was back in pattern. You know, she was worrying about what he would say, worrying about what he would do. And it changed her behavior to the point where her new partner said to her.

I don't understand what your you know, what are you worrying about? What are you doing? Because he has no experience of that at all. And so when she tried to express it to him, he said to her, I don't think that I can have a relationship with you while you've got somebody else in your head. And as we sort of, we just, we, we talked about that.

And I kind of said to her, wouldn't it be interesting to kind of think you don't? Actually he's he's not in your head. It's your patterns that are in your head. It's wow. It's the fact that he's gone like he's over there somewhere.

You're assuming that he's going to say this, do this, be that from past behaviors that he's shown conditioning, it's conditioning. So until you break that pattern and until you get a positive reinforcement that and he doesn't do it or you, you know, you work on yourself like that. And that relationship very nearly broke up until we had that conversation. And she could go back and go, yeah, okay. So it's actually not that I still care for him or I still love him or I still think about him.

It's that his voice and his conditioning is in my head and I'm telling myself these things. Wow. And that changed the whole landscape for her and that relationship. So again, without that coaching and without that being given that option, that awareness, that sort of insight into it, there's a broader pattern here. Yeah, yeah.

And our patterns, rulers, you know, and we do revert to type. We revert to, we revert to type. So we can sort of go, you can sort of elastic back to that really quickly. And so something stresses you out something go back to a coping mechanism. Yeah.

You go back to whatever it was that worked for you back there. Even though you're you're stretching yourself out to to do that differently. Yeah. That's phenomenal. I say phenomenal because there's so much depth to this.

Yeah, there's a lot and a lot of people don't take the time to understand this. And maybe that's also part of the reason why people go, I don't actually how to help someone. Right. Or I don't actually understand. It's the internal affair, which is where we open the conversation.

And I think this is a remarkable conversation for anyone to really understand what goes on under the observable behavior, what's the internal, deeper psychological layer and patterns of behavior? And on that note, I'm also curious, like what are some of the key patterns you find your coaching these women through to let go so they don't end up in same situations again? So maybe a couple of key patterns that help them be more self empowered and have more healthier relationships moving forward. The first one is, is there a relationship with them in regard to control? And a lot of the times when when things go belly up for these women, they'll come back to me and they'll explain it to me.

They said, this is what has happened in the last two weeks. And it'll be like, okay, so let's go back. It's around that control. It's around that outside circle. It's bringing it back into yourself and understanding that you have a right to choose and that choice is yours. So that's pretty much the you know, one of the big things that I see, the big pattern is self abandonment. Huge is that self abandonment. And they don't even know they're doing it until you until it's pointed out. Another pattern that I find is the people pleasing pattern and the roles, the roles that they take on, where they feel that becomes a part of their identity. You know, things like, oh, I am socially anxiety anxious, I have social anxiety, or I have, you know, I'm a mother, so I have to, you know, I'm it's the expectation, the obligation.

These are huge patterns that I find with women. And once they start to break that up and they look at it and they start to go, oh, this is interesting, I why am I acting like this? Why am I thinking like that? That's their the two big ones that I work with. So so let's take one of them.

Whichever one you like. Imagine you're coaching someone. What awarenesses do you help them develop, and then what do they need to change or let go to stop running the pattern? Yeah. So let's go with the with the control one.

And this is where something starts to happen externally, where they feel that it will impact them and they don't know that. And that's the pattern that they're running, is that I'm controlling all of this because I need to keep what's my version of safety. And they don't understand that version of safety or they never have words for it. It's just like, I need to control this because that makes me feel safe. Feels, makes me feel good.

So when that starts to happen outside of here, they find themselves putting all of their energy and time and everything goes into here. But they know that that's not what they want to be. They have a dissatisfaction and they have a frustration and anger that they're repeating it, that they're in there. They know, but they don't know how to get out of it. And so they sit in their situation where they're going, I need to control this.

I know I shouldn't be, but I don't know how to stop it. And when they bring that back into the room with me and we sit down and we have a look at it every time, it's like, I just have to do that now. And they go, yeah, of course, all of your decisions are based running through a filter of how it's going to affect that person. You give away all parts of yourself in order to make sure that you think you're helping them. You think you're you're not.

It's not about that. You're going in there to control their behaviors because their current behaviors are threatening to you. So it's developing in our nervous system the capacity to not register that external behavior as a threat and developing capacity emotionally within ourselves, to be able to be with the emotional discomfort that shows up as a result of that external behavior without reacting by virtue of some sort of behavior that is controlling in nature. Yeah, exactly. It's like learning how to be with yourself in that moment when you're experiencing that charge or trigger.

Yeah, it's taking five minutes. It's sitting. And, you know, we forget that we have every right in the world to put a hand up and say, I'm just going to come back to you on that night. Just give me a moment to think about that. I love that it's so simple.

But yeah, it is. It's just like we forget that. And I just get back to you. Can you just give me just need to sort out a few things or just look at a few things, however you feel comfortable saying it, giving yourself that breathing space to be able to step back and go, okay, so how do I really how is this really sitting with me? How do I really feel about this?

And they think that they need to get the answer right now and snap it out. And and then they come from a point of defensiveness, and that in itself then takes away their their choice. They have they feel they have no choice. Yeah. I just, I just love in everything you're sharing the role that a level our level of awareness has in this.

Like you got to be aware that that's what's happening in your body. That's what you need to do in this moment, and that's what you are about to do. And that's where the trigger is. And that level of awareness is so important because if we don't have that awareness, we won't even pick up on our compulsion to that external behavior that is bringing our control from us. And we'll just run the cycle because it's a stick in nature.

I call it the loop. Right. So this is our core wound. We all have one mind is not being heard. And so when that's triggered, like I send a text message and you don't reply, that bangs up against my core wound.

And then I have the behavior. And that behavior then becomes, they don't like me. They have an answered me, you know, whatever. And it will it will swing back around and it keeps me within that loop. If anybody said to me, stop believing that you're not worthy or you're not being heard or whatever your core wound is, that's really, really hard.

But if you change the behavior, it sends you on a different trajectory. You know, if you can feel within yourself, I can feel the anxiety coming up. I'm going to give myself five minutes. I'm going to not try and give the excuse why you're not replying to me, but just looking at at the situation and going, here I go again. This is the same behavior, the same feeling attached to this.

When this happens, this happens. So I'm just going to sit with myself and go, it's okay, we're safe, we're fine. And as soon as you change that behavior, trajectory goes elsewhere and you get out of that loop you're talking about. So at the heart of it, it's like developing that self-awareness when you're experiencing the wound and then learning how to self-regulate in that moment. Or if you have a healthy partner or healthy friend or someone around you as well.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's really powerful. And yeah, just having that awareness and just sort of sitting there and going, here it comes again, listening to your body and the feeling, the sensations that you're having before your mind kicks in and starts giving you excuses as to why you're feeling it. Yeah.

Just slowing down plays a big role. Yeah. I think that there's one of the things that I learned from the, you know, being that being conscious of yourself and living consciously and living in the moment, you know, and this is something that I teach my show, my clients, is that the fact that the point of being here, like in the now, right now, where doesn't matter what happened back there. Don't worry about that and don't bring in what might happen up there because you don't know. So when you sit with right now, that is true gratitude.

You know, that is where you literally get to sit and smell the roses, because all as you have the capacity to deal with is what is happening now. What happened back there happened. What's happening up there hasn't happened. What you can manage and where your capacity sits is with right now. And once they get that and they start to feel themselves, you know, what happened over there or this, you know, this is happening again, it's like, no, no, no, no, no.

What can you manage right now? What do you need in this moment right now. And this is where we need to learn to be and live. Yeah, I totally resonate with that. I also find a lot of us, we have so much capacity, but we think or sense that our capacity is limited because of the conditioning we've been in.

And then when you become available to this moment, it's fascinating how much capacity internally, the emotional and mental capacity becomes available because you're here now rather than in a different moment in your memory. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Yeah, exactly.

If you can't cope with now, it's because you're you're dragging something there or there or you're dragging something in from there because you have the capacity where we have the capacity to live with right now when people say, I can't cope, I can't do this. Where are you? What are you what are you bringing into now? You know, just be with now and put your hand on your heart and your hand on your belly, and take a few deep breaths and just get that energy happening where you just go, right, take five minutes, pause and just go right, you know, recenter, start again, go right. Okay, what can I manage now that's powerful.

And then learning what to do in those five minutes, isn't that the journey of becoming a coach as well? It is like really learning what to do in those five minutes. How to notice you need the five minutes, doing what needs to be done in the five minutes, then helping someone else learn how to be and who to be in those five minutes. Yeah, what a joy it must be for you to do this work with other women. It is amazing, and I think that one of the things that I've learned is that moving forward and and what you you can only take somebody as far as you are and the I can't even tell you the amount of times where I've had something happen to me in my own life and I've gone back through and I've coached myself in that moment and sat there and worked it all out, and then got on a call with a client, and they've got exactly the same thing as happened to them.

And I'm like, fresh off the print with it. I'm like, oh, you have no idea. And like, I mean, I don't say, oh yeah, I've just gone through that. It's just like the wisdom comes in and you go, yeah, try this. And they go, oh, that's amazing.

That works. And it's like, I've just. And I'm thinking, I've just done that on myself. And the amount of times that has happened is just been uncanny. So it's that always embracing growth.

And you know, I jump all over my triggers. It's like, come on, give them to me. Because in there is growth. If I've made a mistake, it's like, oh, that didn't quite go the way I wanted it to go. How can I do it better next time?

You know, there's no more expectation in my life. There's no obligation in my life. There's no berating myself and shaming myself. It's all like, wow, that was a that was a mess. That was awful.

Okay, let's break this apart. Yeah. Because it will come up again because there's something in here I need to learn. And so and I learn it and then and then I and then I share it. And I think that that's what coaching and mentoring is all about.

Wow, I love that. What an adventure. Yeah, this conversation has been. Yeah. We've touched on so many things and we need like, another five hours.

So. Yeah, because I just felt like I, I really want to go deeper with so many of the themes we've touched on today, I think it absolutely deserves more depth and more nuance to be developed particularly. Really enjoyed the holistic approach that you bring in your thinking around, looking at both parties and supporting both parties. Despite of it being relatively harder to work with the perpetrator side of the, of the relationship. And then the, the power of like helping people who have been in, in the victim state to really rise above in life.

Congratulations on doing this work, Nina. Yeah. Thank you. I know when you walked into this school, it was a dream for you. You're now doing it, and you're working with people for a while now.

And I just want to say how proud we feel for you here at the school. In terms of the impact that you make and the lives that you change. I know you've written this beautiful book recently. It's called Tide In, Tide Out, and I love the title in a couple of sentences, who is this for, and what is it about and what would disempower them with. I think this is for anybody who questions what it you know, when things you think you've solved the problem, you think you've done the work, and then it comes back again, you know?

So the analogy of Tide In, Tide Out is like the tide is in and we're screaming across the water and where everything's fantastic and it's all great. Then the tide goes out and there's that bloody rock again, you know, and this book is about learning not to crack up against the rock, but to accept that it's there. It'll always be there and navigate around it, because that rock is a part of who you are. It's a part of your life and part of your story, a part of your journey. And so it's for anyone that feels like they have gone back to the start and that they shouldn't be here anymore.

I shouldn't have to rebuild their life. Yeah, yeah. And they're just like, oh, I thought I'd done this, you know, why is this happening again? And it's about learning that lesson and looking at it. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. Yes. Thank you for having me. This has been amazing.

Yeah. You really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed it. Yeah.