← Decoded | Unlock The Secrets of Human Behavior, Emotion and Motivation
Decoded | Unlock The Secrets of Human Behavior, Emotion and Motivation
Lovebombed: Lovebombing Archetypes
01:07:02
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
Busy Gold
I truly believe that self deception is the linchpin of our entire mental health crisis. The whole concept of love bombing is not that uncommon. And more likely culprit is that we have two different pattern types. Mislabeling each other and then doing this idealization, devaluation stage at opposite time. Passion driven people that do get excited. You might be the ones that people are behind your back labeling as a love bomber. That passion is is blinding you over rationality. We're often going to be mislabeling, misdiagnosing and assuming incorrectly about what drives a person. When you understand someone's underlying motivation and you stop mislabeling or assuming incorrectly about their why, you can stop fighting with each other. There's something controlling you. Something hidden, operating beneath your awareness, dictating your decisions, your emotions, your relationships. You think you're in control, but you're not. Your thoughts aren't random. They follow a pattern, a script. And that script was written a long time before you even knew you had a choice. Why do you keep making the same mistakes, chasing the same people, ruining the things you claim to want? Your brain is wired for deception. It builds stories, rationalizes, defends, and it does it so well, you stopped questioning it. But here's the truth. Patterns can be broken, the code can be rewritten, and once you see it, you'll never unsee it. Decoded dismantles the hidden programming that's been running your life so you can finally take it back. Once you hear the truth, you can't go back. So the only question is, are you ready to listen? Subscribe to Decoded because you deserve to know what's really running your mind. This episode is called Love Bombed. Infatuation, Imitation, or Intention? This is the truth. Many of us have heard of the term love bombing throughout all of social media. It's definitely a buzzword on TikTok, Instagram. And I think many of you know my aversion to pop psych terminology and how general it can be, and how that can then in turn destroy relationships. So let's jump in and start to uncover what love bombing actually is. It sounds like a vaction, right? If you just think about it, it feels like fantasy in the early stages, but it might actually be something else entirely. The term love bombing originated from a cult, actually, that used it as a term for overwhelming affection to manipulate recruits. Today in pop psychology, this has been completely hijacked and now it's used to describe virtually anyone who shows up in a big way in early stages of relationships, only to eventually fall off or not maintain that same level of energy. But I think what I want to ask during this podcast, and I always want this podcast to be something that is interactive, that allows you to think critically. And not just me spoon feeding you what to think, but teaching you how to think about it, around it, through it. Is it always truly manipulation? Is it intentional? Or are we simply mislabeling something that we may not fully understand? The history of the term is, like I said, coming from a cult. It's actually coming from a cult that was started in the 1970s called the unification Church of the United States. And it was of course later adopted by other cults and arguably is still used in some of the charismatic Christian ministries in the United States today, like Family International, and it was used as a coordinated effort to attract new members. Characteristics of love bombing include rapid escalation of affection, including excessive flattery, gifts and affection. In the cult context of this term, it was explicitly non sexual. Although obviously as this term has been utilized in pop psychology, it's certainly also transcended into the realm of sexual affection. And it can include in spending a lot of time with the target, expressing interest and making them feel special, giving grooming vibes. Commonly listed red flags will include excessive gifts, sudden and intense affection, and demands for complete loyalty. The psychiatrist Dale Archer identified the phases of love bombing with an acronym called IDD Intense idealization, devaluation, followed by a discard, and then the whole cycle repeats. For those of you that have been following my body of work with break method, you, you know that we track behavior cycles. So this behavior cycle actually is something that is relatively common even for somebody who may not get the label of love bombing. So idealization, devaluation and discard is something that we're going to explore in depth on today's episode because that is something that many of us go through, even not in the context of intimate partnerships. Each of these phases has a unique self deception pattern to it. Let's start with idealization. This is a defense mechanism where a person attributes exaggeratedly positive qualities to somebody else and starts to minimize their flaws. Just quick audience, check for a moment. Be honest with yourself. Have you ever done this in an intimate partnership? Have you ever gone in with love goggles and seems like the best person in the whole world? They check all of your boxes, hey, maybe you even wrote this person on a manifestation journal sheet or you put them on your vision board. It is not uncommon for people to idealize a new partnership or even just something new, a new goal, a New idea. We fall in love with the idea of love in many ways much more so than actually being in love itself. So just to level the playing field, I'm fairly certain that most people that are here today have experienced idealization in the early stages of relationship. So this is where it can start to turn. Let's look at devaluation, which is a psychological flip to the idealization. So think of this like a pendulum swing or an opposite. This is when someone assigns an overly negative quality to a person, often someone they previously idealized as a way to protect themselves from the emotional discomfort and disappointment and obviously from being truly vulnerable. This is very important. Be honest with yourself here. How many of you have also then started to devalue the same person that you once idealized? I'll share this example from my own life. And I think this is something that self deception, which most of you know is a large part of the body of my work, this is something that self deception can do in early stages of a relationship. Those of you that haven't seen my husband on social media, he's a total stud muffin. I know. Thank you. Thank you. In early stages of dating, my brain would try to do this thing with me where it would try to trick me into thinking he wasn't attractive. And I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like, he's the. He's so handsome. And it would be like, well, maybe. And it would literally try to get me to detach from this person. And then whenever I would see him again, I'd be like, damn, you're hot. What is my brain doing? Why is my brain doing this? So there are. As a. As a protective mechanism, sometimes our mind will play tricks on us to get us to pull back and det. Might have a lot of value and might actually be, dare I say, ideal. So this sort of pendulum swing experience happens to many of us in intimate relationships. So I do just want to set the record straight on that. When we're really kind of breaking down these pieces, the whole concept of love bombing, I think, is not that uncommon. And more likely culprit is that we have two different pattern types which we're going to dig into today. Mislabeling each other and then doing kind of this idealization devaluation stage at opposite times. You guys feel me? So one person that likes the chase, they're idealizing the person that they're chasing. And then sometimes once you have that person, what happens? You get distracted with other things. Maybe that person, if they're not around your brain can play tricks on you and make them feel like they're not quite as valuable as this other thing that you're working on. Right. That's a more sneaky devaluation process. But typically what happens on the flip side of that is that the person that was being pursued maybe was kind of avoidant and playing the game. And then as soon as they were like, oh, actually this is something and they connected, that happens to be right when the other person pulls away and gets distracted with something else. So I just want to break this down. When it comes to relationship dynamics, I want us to be thinking about two concurrent tracks. Okay, so one track is that me busygold, I have my unique behavior cycle that will unfold chronologically over time. When I get to the end of that four part cycle, it's going to repeat again. Okay, so I've got this track that I'm going on personally now I've brought another person into my mix. Their track may not align exactly with mine. Right. Because we've. We trigger each other like ping pong. So when I'm in fear, I'm going to do certain things that might trigger my partner and then they're going to do something to trigger me in response. And then if my protective response is anger, now I'm in anger. So instead of us both being in fear at the same time or and anger at the same time, what happens is this call and response where my fear may trigger their anger and their anger then triggers my anxiety. And you see where the snowballs. So devaluation is literally just backing down from a previously held more likely positive self deception where you were tricking yourself into believing that this person was like perfect, sent from God only to oh my God, uncover that they're actually a human being and everyone has flaws. And when you get to know somebody and you get a little bit deeper, you see other sides of them that may not be what somebody presents in a very packaged or facade like way in those early stages of relationship. Now we move on to the discard phase. Discard happens when the person who was once obsessively pursued and idealized is abruptly pushed away, ignored or cut off and often without explanation or closure. I want to emphasize here because I do work in the relationship space with break method. It is relatively uncommon once actual dating and intimacy has occurred. So I'm not talking about hookup culture, which I'm certainly going to get into toward the end of today's episode, but when a relationship has been built, right. Let's say there's a foundation of five to six months or more. It is very rare, extremely rare, that somebody will build that relationship and literally just cut things off and goes without any explanation. However, it does happen, but it is very rare. I think this whole concept of this cycle of idd, we each may experience more micro cycles of this in our everyday life, but there are certainly people who. And one of them is a client that I'm thinking of in particular. If you're listening to this, you're probably like, oh my God, this is what happened to me. This person literally just one day stopped talking to them and like moved out and then that was that and then cut them off completely. I want to say this about that type of person in the discard phase. I think in general we tend to incorrectly assume what drives someone's behavior. And more often than not in that specific behavior set, this pattern of avoidance has less to do with the other person and more a form of self protection where that person doesn't believe they can manage their own boundaries or navigating their way out of this entangled dynamic. Therefore, they've decided likely in their mind feeling very logically that the best course forward is just to completely cut it off because they don't trust themselves to manage the back and forth to get themselves out of it. So an example of this may be as that person, let's give it a time marker. Let's say they were in this relationship for six months. This person that maybe one day cuts things off and ghosts and never comes back. It might be true that at month two or three they started to notice that they were involved in a toxic dynamic and they unfortunately might have been conflict avoidant and keeping things in and finding other subtle ways to manipulate the relationship to see if they could get it to heal, only to eventually possibly come up with that self protective scenario of I just have to be completely done with this, I don't trust myself to manage the back and forth. Or this other person is so pushy that if I don't do it this way then I won't ever get to leave or they're going to escalate. So more often than not, in these scenarios where somebody really just ghosts out of the blue, if I start to work with said client and we really start to go backward and unpack and reverse engineer the whole thing, more than likely this is the case. It's not that the person is just completely cold hearted and honey badger doesn't give an F and just leaves. More often than not, all the telltale signs are there in the months prior where this is something that they've likely thought through, planned to some extent, and rationalize or justified to themselves as a move of self protection rather than a move of harm or abuse. Everything that I have studied and covered in Break method, going through the data and the patterns over the last 11 years, has shown me that more often than not, the way we see things from the outside looking in is not at all what's happening underneath the hood of their brain. This is why I wrote the book your brain's a filthy liar. I truly believe that self deception is the kingpin, the linchpin, if you will, of our entire mental health crisis. And when we try to label something from the outside in without understanding that person's unique brain pattern type, therefore being able to then in turn understand their underlying motivations, we can't ever really know. We're often going to be mislabeling, misdiagnosing, and assuming incorrectly about what drives a person. Right. I mean, ultimately, that's why I made this podcast, because I want to be able to look under the hood and help people understand the underlying motivations that could generate that behavior output that you are seeing and labeling in X, Y, z way that really is happening because of something else entirely. And in Break method, more often than not, no matter how toxic the relationship pairing is, if even one person truly does the work in Break method, that will have a ripple effect in their relationship that is positive. You can actually change somebody else's behavior by changing your behavior. So one of us has to go first. Great, if both sides of the couple want to do it, but someone has to go first. And no matter how toxic the pairing is, I've seen things turn around more rapidly than you can imagine, but because when you understand someone's underlying motivation and you stop mislabeling or assuming incorrectly about their why, you can stop fighting with each other, give each other some space, actually allow peace to exist in your relationship dynamic. I mean, what peace and a relationship dynamic? No, we can't do that. I'm covering that tomorrow on Beige Flags, so make sure you tune in for that. So in a show of hands or even just in your heart acknowledging the truth here, do any of you struggle with push pull behavior? I know I certainly did early on in my 20s, definitely in my teens, hardcore. Okay, so push pull, also part of that IDD cycle. Okay. Our perception of reality opens and closes like an aperture on a camera, right? So our brain perceives all these possibilities in this big circle. And then based on other Faulty assumptions or conclusions, it will close that aperture. And now we can only see these possible choices. So what happens is that our perceived choices get constrained at any stage of our behavior evolution. Many of you have experienced this push pull dynamic. And when we are in our behavior cycle, right, which we're going to uncover a little bit more deeply, but it has four phases. At each phase of that behavior cycle, the way we see the world will be different. And when we see the world differently, the things that we have available to us as choices become different. An example that I used on a recent podcast, right. I'm staring at this big coffee mug. If I were sitting across from somebody, technically, I could throw my coffee mug in their face. But I'm not a monster, and I would never do such things. But let's say somebody was attacking me and the only thing that I had available was this coffee mug. Might I throw that in their face? Hell yeah. So what's changed? Really, the only thing that's changed is my perception of this said moment. I'm either with somebody friendly, in which case throwing my coffee mug would be absolutely absurd, or I'm with somebody that poses a threat to me, in which case my coffee mug is the only weapon that I have. Really, that's just a perception thing. Has anyone ever gotten bad vibes from somebody and decided that they were a terrible person, only to eventually uncover that they were a delightful person and you were kind of just being an asshole? Certainly happened to me before. So our perception of reality is slippery. It's a slippery slope. It's a gray area. It is not concrete, and it is certainly not objective. So we have to remember that if our perception of reality is going to dictate the choices that we feel like we have available to us in this moment, and our perception of reality is incredibly gray, might it make sense that we contradict ourselves with behavior all the time? Yeah, probably. And does that mean it's intentionally premeditated and malicious? No. And in fact, I feel like I'm in the courtroom right now. And in fact, by assuming so quickly that something is malicious or being done to us, are we actually starting conflict ourselves rather than seeking to ask questions and seeking to understand and be empathetic? Yeah, definitely. So when someone goes hot and cold or goes in really strong and then pulls away, it's really often not intentional or premeditated. In fact, self deception has likely tricked that person into seeing how the events are unfolding very differently in different stages, thus altering this person's behavior at different phases. So while the Term love bombing absolutely has its roots in a cult sort of tactic. It's obviously now trended and made its its way into a list of TikTok red flags. And I feel like every social media influencer I know that's in the kind of like dating, toxic relationship, narcissistic abuse. They all are talking about this love bombing thing all the time. Narcissism, love bombing, beige flags, white flags, green flags, all the flags. Here's the thing about pop psychology, and it's why I dedicate an entire segment of my podcast to it each month. It thrives on overgeneralized and dramatized language, and it turns emotional nuance into clickbait. Right? That's what makes it work. And pathology becomes more of a punchline. Love bombing is now a trendy label, and most people have not stopped to ask why someone actually behaves this way. So just labeling it as a blanket terminology and then feeling justified to either yourself pull away and devalue, because you better believe it's usually like, oh, my God, they're love bombing me. That is your first step of devaluation. You're now seeing something that they might actually be doing because they really feel that way, maybe because they're open in early stages immediately in a negative light. And that's your justification to now pull away. We heal by decoding, not labeling. And obviously that's what we do in the show. So in today's podcast, we're going to be looking at three love bombing archetypes. How to discern each one so that you make sure you're not falling into the popsicle like, trap of mislabeling every damn thing around you. Psychology and psychiatry, as we were just discussing, are completely obsessed with labels. And these are three reasons why I think that is incredibly dangerous. Labels are based on observation and they are still inherently subjective, even with training. Right. We were just talking about this. When I'm observing, it's based on my perception of reality, which is not concrete, very subjective, and extremely gray. And it's based on what's going on in my world in that moment. Okay, have you ever been in a crap mood and all of a sudden everything in your house is pissing you off? And everything is the dirtiest it's ever been, your husband is the meanest he's ever been, etc, and then the next day it's like you kind of snap out of it and you realize, oh, I kind of love my house and I love my husband and like, maybe I'm just gonna get my period. Our Current state in that said moment is going to dictate how we are able to observe. And psychologists and psychiatrists don't just get excused from this. They're not somehow like, you know, above human beings in this. They too feel emotions. Except I don't. Some psychiatrists, maybe not so much. Okay, that was not, that was not nice. But also, if you've met some of the psychiatrists that I've met, I mean, maybe, maybe I'm not wrong, maybe that's why they go into psychiatry. But we'll leave that one for big academia. Therapists have feelings, okay? And I train therapists for a living and I can tell you therapists have a lot of feelings. Therapists like to feel their feelings and it's part of their whole training. So in general, many of the therapists that I have met and worked with and trained, when they come into this work, part of what led them into this work is their desire to help their, maybe their own personal mental health struggles where they emerged possibly victorious on the other end that led them to want to become a therapist and help others. You can't totally compartmentalize those things. Those things will, whether you like it or not, influence your observation of another person. Because our observation is very much dictated by things that are stored in our subconscious. So there are biases that you are unaware of. There are ways that somebody might subtly move their body in a way that your mother used to use her body and therefore you shift in your chair and you start to think of them in a slightly more negative light. We can't get away from these things, so we can't discount how dangerous the subjectivity is when we're talking about the field of psychology and psychiatry and labels at large. Also, people frequently accept their label and assume that the symptoms that they are part and parcel to in that bucket are absolutely what's going to happen to them. Right? They become a self fulfilling prophecy. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this. In particular with bipolar, when we understand what symptoms are part of our cluster or part of our label, then we actually start to anticipate them, subtly justify them, and then act them out in a very real way. So when somebody understands, you know, what is going to happen to them, is that a hundred percent what's going to happen to them? Or is that something that's now much more likely to happen to them now because you actually primed them with such things? We'll leave that one for a deeper episode. Labels can be challenging to shake and they create Their own form of confirmation bias in the caregiver. We really can't discount how profound this is. And I'll use this example when it comes to raising a special needs child. My oldest daughter has cerebral palsy. Early on, you know, the doctors were telling me all these things that she would struggle with. And I, being the stubborn person that I am, was like, no, I don't. I don't think so. I don't think that's gonna happen. And they, in the hospital, brought in the hospital psychiatrist to make sure that I was really facing reality. And I respectfully said, I understand what you're saying. And also, when I look in my baby's eyes right now, I can see that she's not cognitively damaged. So I respectfully disagree, and only time will tell. They kept trying to, like, literally beat it into me to make me accept reality. And I, of course, being mean, did not. And in fact, jokingly, with Sarai, I would tell her all the time, her neurologist name was Dr. Abe, and he really did not believe in her at all. He even acted out what she would likely be like. And in this moment, I was already, like a raging mama bear. And my nurse advocate was next to me, and she grabbed my hand and looked me, and she was like, that was wildly inappropriate. And I was like, yeah, it really was wildly inappropriate. He. So I'm just gonna do it so you guys can, like, get on the same page as me in this huge room of doctors with my daughter's brain scans projected up on this wall. He was trying to get me to accept my daughter's fate, which I was not doing. And he looked at me. He's like, your mom daughter's gonna probably talk like this. And he, like, moved his hands funny. And I remember just being like, what is happening right now? So they were trying to prime me and force me to accept what was going to happen to my daughter as her life unfolded. Obviously, I did not, but many others do accept this. And then instead of trying to push their child past that edge of normal, right? Because what happens is when they tell you all these things that are going to happen, you create a boundary. And then that boundary now starts to include something inside of it. These things are all normal, right? This is what we can expect from this diagnosis. So now, as long as something is inside of this bubble where you've created these boundaries and things are normal, you don't have to push. This is exact. They're doing exactly what's expected. I knew my daughter was capable of more so I said, f your bubble. My daughter is going to smash this bubble immediately. I don't agree with what you're saying. So I pushed past it. Many people accept, and then they don't seek ways to pushed past. Instead, this is why it's called normalization. They normalize their symptoms, and they normalize the way that whatever their label is unfolds over time and repeats. And they start to justify, oh, I'm just like this. I have bipolar. Oh, yeah, I'm just like this. I've got adhd. Do we have to just justify our behaviors and accept what behaviors our label says are normal? Or do we. Do we have the desire to push past normal? I mean, I certainly have the desire to push completely outside of this sort of boundary of normal, because I think it's absurd and I think it's also part of the reason that we're stuck where we are. So we'll definitely do an episode on the disabling effect of normalization, because normalization, I think, honestly, is like one of the worst things ever. And side note, just to go, like, I don't know, like a touch conspiratorial here for a second, and I realized I'm. I'm stepping in a landmine right now. And that's okay, right? I mean, I was born to step on landmines, you guys. I've talked about this before, and we certainly don't need to get into a long, drawn out vaccine conversation right now. However, when my daughter, who is now turning 15, was just a wee little toddler because she was at risk for being diagnosed with cerebral palsy, I was very well versed on all of the milestones, especially because I'm a competitive person. So I was like, she's gonna crush all these milestones. I'm, like, training my daughter like an athlete when she was three months old. Like, come on, you can lift your head. You could do it. I kind of joke, but also not really. I was very determined to prove these doctors wrong. But the whole point here is I memorized these milestones inside and out, so this would have been in 2010. The milestones that we had in 2010 are very different than what we have in 2025. Why they're trying to normalize vaccine injury. I'm just gonna go ahead and say that. So we'll get into that on a completely different episode because I actually have the receipts for this. Little by little, they moved the sitting milestone just a little bit. Little by little, they moved the crawling milestone, like, by six months. Little by little, they move it from this many words to this many words. If they do it little by little, right? If they're just kind of moving that goalpost, imagine that normal for my daughter in 2010 was this like, huge, big circle, right? They realize, crap, we have to cover something up here. So we're going to move this goalpost in a couple inches in 2011, a couple more inches in 2013. Now it's 2015, or constraining the circle quite a bit by 2025. The milestones chart looks so radically different than it did in 2010. There has to be a reason that they did this. So again, we'll save this for a future episode, but I'll leave you with this question to ponder. And I'm not going to give you an answer, but let you ponder on the question. If, as people are bringing their babies in, all these babies are suddenly missing their milestones, two things are going to have to happen. On one hand, doctors are gonna have to be like, suddenly all these babies are missing their milestones. Do we, should we look into this? Should we maybe like, start asking some questions? Do a little bit of research into, like, why suddenly all these babies are missing their milestones. Oh, oh, oh. And this also ties into my episode, Big Academia today. The other opportunity that you have is if you're starting to realize the trends because there's a lot of reporting that happens here, especially around childhood immunizations, especially if people are using any sort of social welfare services. They now are getting tipped off to these rising numbers of kids no longer making their milestones. So now starts a more administrative process where now they change the milestones themselves. So now kids aren't missing them anymore. And because of the way Big academia works, many doctors don't question this. They just do what they're told. Well, there must have been a good reason that they changed the milestones. No, milestones are changed because they're trying to normalize something. So when in 2010, if your kid wasn't sitting on their own by like four to five months, you were missing milestone. Now I think it's at like six to seven months. If you look at the lifespan, not a lifespan, the trajectory of a baby and how quickly they change over time, a three month time frame, that's a lot of change, so to say. Oopsies. Well, it used to be this, but now we're going to push it back three months. There's something causing that. So we need to be extremely careful and aware of how this idea of normalizing something from kind of A top down approach. Well, like the man said, it was now normal. Oh, okay, so now it's normal. Then we just start to accept this, like, crap life that we have or chronic health issues, learning disabilities. Right? We just start to accept because we're like, oh, yeah, this is normal. God, I can't wait to get into the normal episode. So I've already said this, but I want to just emphasize this in this episode. In all episodes of Decoded, our goal is always to get underneath the hood. So instead of just labeling the behavior and like, these behaviors look like this. Our job is to get under the hood and said, say, what is motivating this person to act out this behavior? Because the behavior itself is less relevant than what's driving the person. And many of us in our lives, we don't think about what drives a person. We just want to feel justified being mad about what they did or didn't do. This episode is brought to you by Healing Sauna, the most advanced portable infrared sauna on the market. And it's trusted by people like Dave Asprey and Peter Diamandis. I've been using this consistently at home and it is truly next level. I found them at Dave Asprey's biohacking conference. The girl ran me down and was like, hey, busy. We love what you do. You have to try this. It's got 99% purity with every single one of its infrared ceramic chips. 0EMF. That's right, 0EMF. And it heats up in 60 seconds. I originally went for it because I've been struggling with lymphatic drainage and all types of issues, struggling with weight loss, rashes. And I knew that I just needed to add something into my daily habit stack that I could keep up with. This is something that I can keep at home. It's something I can jump in for 15 minutes instead of going somewhere to go sit in the sauna, wait for the sauna to warm. It's just boom. Just jump in there, throw on a pod, and heat myself up from the inside out. And it helps detox your body, it boosts circulation and improves recovery. And of course, it supports brain and mitochondrial health. I use it about four to six times a week. And six times a week, even for only 20 minutes, has been proven to extend your lifespan. Listeners of this podcast get a hundred dollars off by using my personal code, bg heal@healingSana.com. every purchase supports my work too, and I would appreciate it deeply if you would go check it out. By far and away, the best sauna I have ever owned. If you are serious about your health recovery and longevity, go head over to healing saunas. Use my code BG Heal for $100 off. If you are not familiar with Break method. In Break method we track nine distinct markers in brain pattern mapping. I'll drop drop a link in the show notes the top two, right, because it's going to go top down. So the top is going to inform the middle. The top and the middle are going to inform the bottom. The very top two are going to be thought based. So this is where we get into those underlying motivations. The things that I can try to guess about you, but ultimately I don't know. This is going to inform the secrets that you keep and your true reason why. Even if you give somebody a totally different bullshit reason verbally, the three are going to be the liminal space in between your thoughts and how they become a biochemical chain reaction that will start to inform behavior. Then we have four on the bottom. These are behavior cycles as they unfold over a period of time. The behavior that is being described in the term love bombing is something that a few pattern combinations may do, but they're each doing it for very different reasons. So I want you to understand how to separate these out. I've separated them into three buckets so that you can start to understand someone's why instead of just to be like, boop, you're love bombing. I'm out. As we approach this section, I want to remind you that behavior cycles unfold over time and then they repeat, right? That's what makes them a cycle. So they have a chronological aspect and then they have an end point where the system begins again. And at each phase of this behavior cycle, they're going to actually overlap with very specific behaviors and emotional states. At each phase of this process, a person's actions, their tone, their priorities, all may appear to shift. And sometimes that will be extremely dramatic. In Break method, we call this a pattern oscillation. And it's not that they're faking it, it's that their brain is actually running a program beneath the surface that's generating behavior outputs that often feel contradictory. Right. Push, pull, for example. And this confusing and hot, cold cycle just repeats over and over and over again. And while it might feel like they're just being manipulative or trying to pull one over on you, the truth is that many people are operating within that self deception phase of their own behavior cycle. And just because someone can display two completely opposing behaviors in early versus late stages, doesn't mean it's malicious. Pop psychology is going to immediately say that this is manipulative, self centered or even abusive. But the reality is that this process, I hope you understand at this point, is not only extremely complex, it's highly predictable. We can see this in brain pattern mapping in literally 20 minutes. So if you want to understand what is driving a person, you have to understand the pattern itself, self, not just the behaviors that you would describe in love bombing. What's actually happening when we're talking about love bombing? So if we're talking about kind of underlying motivations and what sort of behavior traits are happening here, it's when someone's brain pattern type has specific markers for impulsivity. So another way of looking at this would be their excitement and passion or going to take the lead over rationality, right? So impulsivity is like, yes, I have to do this. This is so exciting. Right? So a lot of you that are passion driven people that do get excited, you might be the ones that people are behind your back labeling as a love bomber, right? Because that passion is blinding you over rationality or being realistic. Likely. These people also have early stage over commitment. So they're too quick to say yes. And they have positive self deception that is skewing their perception of reality. Positive self deception is when your brain is highlighting the positive and it's actually observing, obscuring or hiding the possible negative outcomes. So in this way they're leading with the upside and of course blissfully being hidden from reality in this moment, their brain pattern at this time puts on love goggles. And this is really not manipulation. This is something that they truly believe in the moment. And that's why I think I get so frustrated with how people go around and point fingers and use this term love bombing. Because a lot of these people that are being labeled this way, I think do feel really authentically and intensely in those early phases. And out of the three types that I'm going to go through today, two out of three really do mean it at that time that they're showing up and doing kind of these grand gestures later in the cycle. Right? Because this person's going to transition through different phases, they will likely become more reflective. And at that time that they're becoming reflective, they're more aware of their long term consequences, right? So the positive self deception goes away and now negative self deception rises up in itself its place. And their brain may now, as they're aware of long term consequences, locks onto something else entirely, like a project work, a new Area of focus. I'm sure this has happened to some of you where you go into a relationship and you lose yourself so quickly. Immediately. I'm thinking of this wonderful assistant that I used to have that did this exact thing and completely blew up his career for no good reason. You go into a relationship and you get so excited about the relationship that everything else stops existing. Like, you stop being as attentive at work. Maybe you start deprioritizing things at work. And maybe the reputation that you had at work is like the best employee ever that was so dedicated. You were always on time, your quality of work was always consistent. Now all of those things are slipping because you're giving everything to your relationship now. One day at your work, you're going to realize, oh, crap, I've destroyed my reputation at work. I need to fix this. So now what are you going to do? Well, because you go all in and you over commit now, that same mechanism that you once had on your partner has now shifted back to work because now you're trying to salvage work. What's going to happen to your partner? They're going to be like, what? Bait and switch? Okay. It's very common. This is not calculated and it's also not premeditated. Right. This person is literally being blindsided both times because this is part of their cycle. So when we decode something like this, we have to really zoom out. And instead of looking at the behavior again, looking under said hood, let's jump into the archetypes and how we're going to spot each archetype. The first archetype, and I gave these funny names so that they would stick with you and you would remember them. The first one is. Is one that I truly think has been created over this recent generation. We're going to call them Coach Bay. Okay. Or the swipe Strategist. This is a learned tactic that may stem from insecurity and the desire to win somebody over. To get them to like you, they will definitely give an intense showering of gifts and attention. That this one may actually be a manipulation or an act. And it can be something that they were likely taught by an online dating coach as a way to, like, be successful in dating, get attention, make money, look a certain way, appear a certain way. So this one's not really driven by the desire for love. This one's being driven by the desire for acceptance and power and validation. Let's take a look at what I wrote about Coach Bay. Okay, everybody get ready because this is how we're going to Spot this person out in the world. They seem emotionally intelligent, they mirror your values. And this mirroring is very important because it's something that they were likely taught by a dating coach. They say things like, I've done the work, you're safe with me. I can hold space for you. I'm sure some of you, and I'm just going to say the word because we all know this term and if you don't, you can go look into it. But a spiritual F boy? I'm not going to say the F word, but you know, the spiritual F boy. Oh, I just want to hold space for you. But scratch the surface and you're going to find someone who is not grounded in their own sense of self and that what you're experiencing isn't authenticity. It's actually extremely curated. This is Coach bae, the one who's not leading with self generated confidence, but is following a script that they paid $997 to download. They don't trust their own instincts and they look to online dating coaches, red pill content and podcast clips to teach themselves how to be desirable. They also want to learn how to make you feel safe. Right strategy. How do I make this person feel safe? How do I get them to let their guard down? How do I get them to sleep with me? How to lock you in before you see through it. They are stuck in a cycle of learned helplessness, afraid that if they show up as themselves, they won't be enough. So instead they cosplay secure attachment and they hope that no one notices the cracks. They're using external scripts to build intimacy. And when that scaffolding fails, your whole connection is going to fall to the floor because it will unravel. They will eventually ghost you. They will spiral or they will panic and try to love bomb harder for a time, especially if they feel you pulling away. But what they're really doing is that they're hiding from themselves. And the worst part is that if you fall for it and let yourself go, they're even more likely to pull away and ghost. So this is something that I want to dig into a little bit for a moment. This is one of those examples of this push pull dynamic where they're trying to get you, but really they don't know how to be present and truly vulnerable. So once you, they kind of, they hook you and you're connected. That's actually way too scary for them. Now their brain is going to start to justify why they should keep their options open or move on to something else because they're acting out that chase process and that's what they're believing will make them feel good or feel successful. But ultimately, once the connection is secured, they feel really exposed. And that's exactly what they don't want. They don't know how to handle that. The version of Coach BAE doesn't need to be feared. They need to be met with boldness and accountability. They need to learn how to be messy and authentic and to stop mimicking emotional intelligence and actually learn how to build it for real. Because love isn't a funnel. And a real connection doesn't come from a course. It comes from stepping into the truth. So raise your hand if you've ever met a Coach bae. Definitely met some Coach Baes in my day. Like I said, I think the last 10 years in particular have really built a lot of Coach bae and it's pretty disgusting, frankly. So this next archetype is much more in line with the classic abusive label of love bombing. This one is also validation seeking. But they're also very controlling. And these are the ones that are going to struggle the most with projection and deflection. Meet Mr. Or Mrs. Quid Pro Psycho. That is quite the handful. They enter like a fantasy. Hyper focused, generous, emotionally articulate, maybe even fluent in the language of healing. But what you're about to experience is not love. It's leverage. The master of conditional intimacy. This praise feels personal, the attention feels earned. But the truth is, this is all part of a deal you didn't realize you were signing. Here's the twist. They don't think they're manipulating you. To them, this is actually what love looks like, right? It's more of a game of poker. Like, I'm gonna go all in. Are you gonna go all in? There's a lot of intensity here and there's a lot of anxious attachment here, okay? In the early phases, to them, love looks like this and it is very give to get. If I show up and you validate me, that means that I'm loved and secure. Perform means to be kept and loved. Okay? So performance and validation are what make a person feel like they are going to remain in this controlled, loving relationship. But this person also, even though this is actually, in my opinion, the classic abusive version of this, these people are also not operating in a conscious malicious intent. They're operating from rejection driven self deception. They were wired to believe that love has to be controlled to be secured. Right? So these are the ones that are going to seek reassurance, double and triple check things. Ask where you're going, what were you doing? And that if they don't manage how this is given and received, they're going to be exposed, humiliated, and left unseen. So this is the kind of person that can't give you space because as soon as you're away, you might be doing something that's going to embarrass me. So what may feel like romance and love in the very beginning stages will quickly turn into straight up surveillance. They'll scan for signs that you might not love them back the same way that you once did. And when they detect even the smallest dip in your energy or attention, then they start to retaliate. So remember we talked about this idealization, devaluation phase. They really idolized you. But as soon as they feel like you're pulling away or you're not quite matching their level of intensity, their brain self protection mechanism is that you have to become the enemy so that they are not personally humiliated. So when they do start to retaliate, it's not initially with rage at first. It's more coldness, subtle corrections that make you second guess yourself. And eventually with this type, which is why this is labeled as the classic abusive type, the devaluation will become overt, Right? This is where it could turn into really nasty things that they say to you. And still they tell themselves that they're just reacting to your shift because you're not matching their intensity anymore, or you're pulling away, or you're maybe being more independent. You must be doing something wrong. And they don't want to be humiliated. They believe they're being wronged. Because when love and rejection are fused in your brain, every unmet expectation, every moment that you have to yourself feels like complete and utter betrayal. And then their version of control becomes their only defense mechanism. This is emotional coercion disguised as commitment. And if you don't recognize this pattern early, you're likely to spend months or even years trying to earn back a version of them that never really existed. So have any of you experienced this relationship before now? The most commonly labeled love bomber, who in my opinion, just needs to be redirected. This is the one that, especially in my line of work, I see frankly, that the quid pro quo and this next one typically end up in relationships together for reasons we'll describe in just a few moments. This is the one that I think in the social media sphere of love bombing, this is the most common one for people to be like, oh my God, they're totally love bombing me. Completely misreading what's Actually happening underneath the surface. This one is the intensity Nomad, you've probably heard this one called the Love Bomber. But these ones do not fit the bill straight up. They just don't. Don't fit it. Both of the other ones, yes, there's some sort of tactic there. Although one's tactic is very intentionally manipulative than the other ones is part of self deception. This one really doesn't fit the bill at all. This one isn't about manipulation. It's not about control, and it's definitely not fake. This person is actually likely not a very controlled or controlling person, which is so ironic that these are the most likely ones to get called this, by the way. These people also sometimes get categorized as narcissists, where it's literally impossible that they could be a narcissist. We'll get into that in the narcissism episode. They aren't guarded at all in early stages of relationship. So this person goes full send, all in, totally vulnerable, totally open. That because their whole modality is like, why not? Like, if there's a question, if there was, like, on the opposite side of the spectrum, like, there's no reason that I should do this. Observes person's the opposite. Like, why not? Everything's like, yeah, sure, like, what's the worst that's gonna happen? It all falls apart. Sign me up. So this person's much more, go with the flow, spontaneous. So when they're going all in, their whole heart is going all in. They're not holding anything back. They're not compartmentalizing. But they're also obviously completely oblivious to the risk of doing this. Okay? They're living completely in the present moment and giving it everything they've got until something shifts. Okay? This person loves sprints, right? They're really good at driving after these short goals of high intensity, but the marathon is where they really start to shit the bed. This person likely has extreme tunnel vision. They pour attention, words, time, intimacy into the connection, and in that moment, it's the only thing that matters, because this person is highly in the moment. Many of the other brain pattern types, of which there are five total, are virtually never in the present moment. They're replaying the past or they're projecting future outcomes. This is one of the few patterns that's acutely in the present moment to a point where they are oblivious to what's about to slap them in the face in the future, but they're also not dwelling on the past to learn from their mistakes, right? So they just, like, keep Going right into the trap every time. This person does not have a long game strategy because they're in the moment. They're not building an emotional infrastructure because they're in the moment. They're chasing intensity because they love that feeling of being intense and in the moment. But they don't know ultimately how to build the roots for long term stability. Right? That's where their work lies. That's why they're the intensity Nomad. Eventually their energy is going to pivot to something else like work, a creative pursuit, a new challenge, or even they might just get mentally exhausted from the level of output they've been putting into the relationship and they might need to recharge their battery alone. Because often this intensity Nomad also likes to intensely be alone for select periods, whatever. Wherever they are, there they are very intensely. And when that happens, this shift is going to feel very dramatic for the person that they were once giving their attention to. The withdrawal is going to actually get misread as deception or betrayal. But this interpretation is driven by perception, not intention. This person is not intending to do that. And unlike the others, this type isn't broken. There's not something that's damaged in them. They actually need to learn how to restructure because with the right tools, their passion can be anchored into something that can be sustained over the long term. And Brittany, I think it's hilarious that you said this is me because. Yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, this is, this is that pattern cluster, right? It's the abandoned covert right next to the abandoned. Hold it all together in that one very specific section on the source belief spectrum. And again, shameless plug. If you don't know your brain pattern type, you can go in the show notes and do your brain pattern type anytime. And then we will show you where you are on the spectrum and what you can expect in terms of underlying motivations and traps that you set for yourself. So this type is really not love bombing on purpose at all. This is just unsustainable sincerity. Any moment that they're there, they really mean it when they're there. And then, oopsies, they go get distracted. And then it feels like all of that light and love that they've showered on you is now gone. But they didn't pull it away from you to punish you. They literally just turned their light in a different direction, probably temporarily, and that light will turn back on you. But if you are more that quid pro quo type, as soon as that light comes off of you, now your brain is looking for ways to devalue them and retaliate. And that's what will make this person actually pull away even more. So this is something that we call in Break method symbiotic dysfunction, where you have these two brain pattern types or using this sort of archetypal language, you've got a quid pro quo with an Intensity Nomad. There can be a lot of intense spark in those early phases, but eventually, if the quid pro quo starts to get mad and retaliate and seek reassurance or ask them where you've been or why don't you call me anymore? This person's going to pull away because they won't like that intensity. The Intensity Nomad actually likes positive intensity, but they don't like conflict. So as soon as this person starts to escalate in conflict to pull them back in, they don't realize that's actually the one thing that will really push this away permanently. Because this person will just want to pull away as a form of self protection again, not because you don't matter. So in a way, this person then becomes the self fulfilling prophecy, right? This person's like, you're gonna leave me, why don't you call me back anymore? And then by escalating this way now this person is really going to feel justified completely pulling away, falling into the trap that boop. Now they really did leave me. All of these things, all of these patterns can be completely rewired in Break method. I don't care how talking toxic it is. I've seen literally them all, they can all be changed. So in my opinion, the most common type of love bomber that we talk about in our day and age is this Intensity Nomad. And there's a unique issue here that tends to account for the labeling and potential feeling of abuse by another pattern type. And it is this symbiotic dysfunction. So symbiotic dysfunction is when two different opposite pattern types get together and the way that they perceive reality is extremely contrasting. And typically one is quite quick to label someone else's withdrawal or distraction as an intentional rejection. And then the whole cycle tends to kick up out of control. And again, this is most commonly become going to be between more of that quid pro quo type and the Intensity Nomad. So in this way, that sudden shift in behavior distraction, maybe just now realizing, oh crap, I have to really dig in at work so that I don't lose my job as soon as now they're going to focus on work. It's not that they're leaving their partner behind but that sudden shift or distraction from attention in one place to another will likely be seen as abusive or betrayal. And this is something that I see very often in relationships. So this one can be completely salvaged as many of them cam. And I'm going to give you some tips on exactly what to do in just a moment. Let's take a second to look at a sociological checkpoint because I do think that many of us, although I'm not single, I have friends that are single and trying to talk them through the online dating world is just makes my stomach turn and I feel so bad for them and I'm so grateful that I'm married with kids. So for those of you that are stuck out in hookup culture, I'm praying for you. It sounds awful. And I do think that this Coach BAE and hookup culture are a byproduct of the same decrepit system and where we've come to in our culture. So I want to specifically call this one out because I think if those of you that are listening to this today are single, Coach BAE is everywhere. And don't think that Coach BAE has to be a man. Coach BAE can definitely be a yoga teacher or someone who's done a lot of spiritual seeking or medicine ceremonies. Coach BAE can be male or female. And here's why. You have to watch out for this one and ultimately not take their actions personally. This one is acting or performing, not because you don't matter or because you are lacking. It's because they believe they are. So this is all about what they feel like they're lacking or not enough in in themselves. So when they do this to you and you eventually have to pick up the pieces and deal with the fallout, you have to remind yourself that this is their own perception of a personal deficit where they are lacking. It's not something that they're doing to you because you suck. This type tries to learn how to date because they lack self trust and commitment. Right doozy where I don't trust myself. And because I don't trust myself, I don't trust what I want to commit to or not commit to. So they can be extremely push pull in this way. This type is just going to follow a script because they can't self generate. And once you go off script, what are they going to do? Pull away? Withdraw? If you can strategically draw attention to the act and get them to soften into authenticity, you might actually be able to get this person a turnaround. And my hint is it may require a bit of sarcasm and poking Fun to shatter the exterior that they've probably paid thousands of dollars to curate. I work with actually quite a few of these clients and I can pretty much guarantee you if this is a man and a strong woman says, hey, I really like you, but I know this is an act and you've paid all this money for dating coaches, like, drop the act. I actually really like you. Just cut the shit, be yourself. Like, why don't you tell me something real about yourself? If you call their bluff and you do it in a way that's inviting them in and showing them you're actually really sincerely interested, as long as you're willing to take the lead on that, you can probably really get this person to turn around because this person ultimately has just given away their agency and authority to someone else and they just don't trust themselves. But if you can take the lead here and pull that out of them and kind of let them know, like, I'm onto this act and I'm not buying it, they might drop it more quickly than we think. So if you are out there in the dating world and you are starting to notice that this hookup culture has kind of set the stage for this sort of coach based scenario, and now you're also realizing that there's definitely this kind of trend in, in love bombing, right? Where someone starts hot and heavy and then they kind of back off because really they're like secretly keeping their options open and talking to like six different people online. This is what I would remind you of. Step number one is, even though the fantasy or the idea of love can feel intoxicating and exciting, do everything in your power to keep things practical, right? You've gotta, like, focus, stay focused here. When you start to feel that love and they're showering you with gifts and you're going out on dates, you have to look yourself in the mirror and be like, okay, busy. Stay focused. I need to be practical. I know the signs of this and I, I can actually stop this from unfolding in a toxic way by drawing attention to it right now. This doesn't have to be done in a negative way where you're like, I think you're love bombing me. That's certainly not what I'm saying here. What I'm saying is that if you help them adjust to a more rational approach or actually help themselves see what's likely going to come down the road and start to help them become aware of their limitations in the moment, it ultimately protects you both. If you really like this person also, especially if we're talking about an intensity nomad. Ask questions about their other interests, goals, and pursuits. This way you can start to understand, like, what are they likely to shift their energy into so that you can feel like you understand it. You understand what drives them and their patterns of behavior so that you're not so quick to feel rejected or duped. And instead, you can understand how passionate they are about this other thing and that you don't feel jealous of it. Instead, you can understand it and remember that many that fit this bill have that tunnel vision. And while it's on you, it does feel glorious and it feels like you're basking in the sunshine. But when it goes away, you're likely to feel discarded. If you understand what they've moved their attention to and you can realize that it's not actually a discard, they're just present with that other thing, then you stop yourself from preemptively feeling jealous and mislabeling this as a betrayal, which it is likely not. The other piece of advice I have for you is to speak to the pattern. Like, speak to it directly. So an example would be with that Coach BAE thing, kind of call it right out, like, hey, I think you're great, but I can also tell that you're putting on this act, so can we drop that? So when you properly articulate what the likely behavior arc is before it happens, it often takes the power away. So I'm going to give you an example of exactly what you could say. So I don't want you to be saying this stuff out of fear or nervousness. You have to say it boldly and confidently. As soon as you start to notice that they've got their love goggles on and they're coming on really strong, and I want you to make sure that you're not just trying to shoot them down. We're just speaking to the pattern. Okay? Because this pattern's operating in this person at the subconscious level. And sometimes if we learn how to speak to the pattern, we actually get the person's brain pattern to shift, and they are no longer operating in self deception at that point. So here's an example of what you could say. And obviously you can make this your own. I have intense feelings for you, too, and I know that you're busy and a very extremely committed person, and I love that about you. I would just rather us build slow and steady because I'm sure that when you get busy at work, it might be hard to find the same level of time and commitment that you have had in what we're doing. And I just, I know that once we set a tone, like there's a part of me that's going to want to keep that and I just want to make sure that we set a pace that we can keep. This is going to help that person realize, oh yeah, you're right. I have done this in past relationships and I really want to hang out with you all the time. But you're right, I probably should also put equal effort into work so that I'm not borrowing and going into debt in this one area where then I'm going to completely pull away from you. So by speaking to this pattern early, you're helping them have this aha moment or epiphany, like oh my God, you're right. But you're not pushing it away. You're not calling them a love bomber. You're not angry. You're just saying like, hey, I like for the longevity of this relationship because I really like you. Let's slow it down just a little bit so that you can give equally to these other things. And then you're actually really helping this person heal. Oh, that sounds great. In dating, you're actually helping each other heal and grow instead of become increasingly more toxic. So as you're moving into this dating world, or maybe you're even dealing with this in your marriage or your long term relationship, it's really important that we're not just quick to like ghost and pull away, but that we're also not enabling the pattern. We have to learn how to engage the pattern strategically. So three quick strategies that you can use are to pause the escalation without punishment or shaming. If they need to see that love doesn't have to be intense and all consuming and you can kind of slow them down and make it more practical, then you are in the chips, as my husband would say. Number two, you have to create boundaries rooted in data, not fear. If you're drawn to all consuming attention because you have a more anxious attachment style, you have to learn how to manage your boundaries in early stages to set the tone. So you have to learn how to pull yourself back. Right? Self regulation. And then number three, don't take emotional shifts personally. You have to track the cycle instead. Once you've actually matched their behavior to one of these archetypes, you should reasonably be able to see what's going under the hood. You can also try to get them to take brain pattern mapping. And chances are this has nothing to do with you. And if you ask the right questions and support the person in getting out of their pattern of self deception, you can probably heal the relationship and help it grow in a more reasonable, practical way rather than this IDD intensity and then discard phase. So ultimately in relationships your job isn't to fix them, it's to decode what's happening, right? You don't have to do this for them, but we do have to stop ourselves and try to see at a deeper level what's driving this behavior so that we can speak to those things. This isn't about not having boundaries and over accommodating and justifying it, but we do have to just stop reacting to the symptoms themselves and spotting the cycle and then using it as a way to just cut and run, right? Feel totally justified. I'll leave you with this. Some of the people that you may label as love bombers actually make excellent partners. So when you learn how to engage their pattern without taking it personally, these individuals can actually be loyal, loving and deeply supportive. But only if you stop expecting a more linear form of emotional consistency, because that's not how their behavior cycles work. So the pattern may not actually be the red flag, right? The pattern of behavior that TikTok and IG tried to convince you of, but your reaction to this pattern and how you get pushed into your own IDD cycle may actually, actually also be part of the problem. Brain patterns, as we've been talking about, unlock a treasure trove of secrets that include someone's underlying motivations as we've been talking about their unique perception of reality and then how their behaviors unfold over time. Be sure to head over to the show notes, grab the link so that you or a loved one can take the online diagnostic today. It really doesn't take very long and it literally cracks the code on why you do what you do, even if that's a form of self deception for you. If this episode hit home or you know someone who needs this advice and strategy, please share this podcast. As you know, this podcast is brand new. If you feel led to leave us a review or rate it on all the major podcast platforms, I would be so grateful. In our next week's episode, we're diving into the underbelly of academia, so this is something I know I shared at the beginning of the episode. I'm so excited for. I spent a lot of time researching this and it's something, honestly that's been on my heart for many years. I had a vision to rework the university system all the way back in 2016 that I plan on talking a little bit about at the end of the big Academia episode, so please tune in for that and our school community is officially now up and running. You can also click the Show Notes link to join us for bi monthly events, deeper online learning, and a ton of great community. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode. Love bombed. Please do share it with someone and I'll see you next week. Your brain isn't broken, it's running. An old code break method is a system that maps your neurological patterns, decodes your emotional distortions and rewires your behavior fast. No talk therapy spiral, no getting stuck in your feelings, just logic based rewiring in 20 weeks or less. Head to breakmethod.com and see what your brain is really up to.