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Welcome to the Overwhelmed Brain Podcast, helping you navigate the difficulties in your life and relationships. These are my personal opinions. Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well being. Welcome to another episode of the Overwhelmed Brain. I'm going to talk about how sometimes we get into a circumstance or a situation that we don't want and then we find ourselves blaming the outside world for getting into that circumstance when maybe, just maybe, it was because of the decisions that we made earlier in life. And it's really how it is, isn't it? We make these decisions and then every decision that we make leads to the next outcome for ourselves. Somebody wrote to me and says, I have a question about a relationship with my husband. We got married young, we had babies young, we were married or have been married for a good two decades and we left a culty religion and now we're realizing who we are and what we really want. It's hard. My question is about the unhealthy dynamic we have around my husband's career and me having sacrificed mine for the family. He has always been very or he's had an unstable relationship with his employer and he always has and he either thinks he's going to get fired or he wants to quit, but he's generally miserable no matter what. I feel like he dumps a lot of the a lot of this on me with an I never wanted this life and you're lucky I'm here vibe. This is very similar to the feeling I got from my father growing up, and it makes me feel like I'm in constant debt, like I don't deserve to live or enjoy anything. Consequently, I don't know if he's dishing it out or I'm creating it. Either way, I know it's a combination of one or both. Here we're processing a lot of abuse and assessing life choices, but we're owning our parts and resisting the urge to blame each other. But with this one, it's just so difficult. I feel like we're both trapped. I'm thankful he provides for the family, but I'm also very angry at him and myself and my upbringing that I felt like I had to sacrifice my education. Now I have limited choices and have to carry this with me. I'm sure he's doing his best and he gets overwhelmed easily. He seems tortured and always says he wants to do the right thing, but I'm sick of feeling like I'm some sacrifice he's making. I'd rather be on welfare than go on this roller coaster with him. We have kids, and I don't want to hurt them or abandon them by diving into my own pursuits. But obviously, I need to make a change. I really don't like my situation. And then they end with, your show changed my life. Thank you. I don't know how my show changed your life. I hope it was for the better. And thank you for sharing all this, for what you said at the end there. You know, one thing that I really noticed at first, and this is what the episode's about today, is somebody who says, I never wanted this life, and you're lucky I'm here. You said it was like the vibe he gave off. So when someone's telling you that the life they are living with you, they didn't choose, it tells me everything that I need to know. It tells me that they don't like the choices they did make and are now stuck regretting their past but acting like a victim of the future. They chose somebody who says, I didn't choose this. That would be like me saying, this podcast is too hard. I didn't want it to be this hard, but now I'm stuck. I didn't choose this. Why did life give me this bad hand? Woe is me. The reality is, no matter what happens today, I am responsible for it. And even if I feel like I have no choice, I can still make new choices today, which will give me different results tomorrow. This may be harder in some situations, of course, but everything that we do, every single step that we take, is the next domino and the next and the next one after that. In many cases, we can stop the dominoes from falling and change our path. We may not like the choices we have to make to change that path, but we can do it. And so when I hear somebody say, I didn't choose this, you absolutely did. Unless you were born into it. You had no choice because you were a child, and now you are saying, I didn't choose this. Most children don't talk that way. But once you get out of the home, once you are leaving the nest and living your own life as an adult, everything that you do is a choice. You may not like the choices. They may be hard choices. They may feel like impossible choices, like, you have no choice but to make that choice, but it's still your choice. It's like if you were very hungry and homeless and you had a choice to rob a store and get some money from the register. Let's just say that you had that choice before you. That might be something that somebody might look at and say, well, you're hungry, so you need the money. So that might be a way you can do it. That's definitely a choice. I hope you don't ever make that choice or don't have to make that choice. But something people have and then they go to jail. You know, I imagine they're caught eventually, because if they do it once, they might do it again, or they might be doing other crimes and things like that. So they eventually get caught and go to jail. And then they have to weigh the decisions. You know, this is the consequence of this decision. That's the consequence of that decision. And so these are the choices that I made. And you're going to have people like that, but you're going to have people that look in their past and say, well, I made that initial choice to rob that store and then break into that house and then do all these crimes. And those are the choices that I made, and that's why I'm here. And they're taking responsibility for their choices. And then you have people that say, well, I married that person and I had kids, and now I'm stuck with these kids and I have to do this job that I hate. I had to go every day and I'm miserable, and I take it out on my spouse when I get home. And I didn't want this. This isn't the life I chose. So they say something like that. And so now you have two different people. One takes responsibility for the choices they made, who might be in jail, who might be in a very bad situation, and the other feels like the choices were made for them or they weren't part of the choices. Even though you can look back and see exactly when it started. Okay, I started dating that person, and then we had sex and it was unprotected. And then I had a child, and, oh, no, I didn't make that choice. No, yeah, you did. You made that choice because A leads to B leads to C, Cause and effect. And that's how life works. If you don't like the risk of certain choices, you have to weigh those risks and then be okay when they turn out in a way that you didn't expect or didn't want. And I'm not saying this to you. I'm not saying that you have to accept my words on this. I'm saying that when I hear somebody say, oh, no, I'm stuck with three kids and I've got no life, and then they say, this isn't what I chose for myself, this isn't what I wanted. I see them stuck in a past full of regrets instead of looking forward and asking themselves what they can do now. That's my whole point with this. What can I do now that it exists? Because we can be stuck in the past with regrets. We can look in the rear view mirror asking ourselves, what could I have done differently? What should I have done differently? And then we can be miserable thinking these thoughts because we keep looking in the past that is already set in stone. The past is set in stone. Those are the decisions I made. I'm ready to move forward now. Yes. I don't have any time for myself because of my job, because of my kids. What can I do now? What can I do in my current situation today? Can I read a book every day for 10 minutes? I'll never forget my first episode of the Overwhelmed brain back in 2013. I had Jeff Olson on my show. He wrote the Slight Edge and he said if you read a book for 10 minutes every day or 10 pages every day, he said, then by the end of the month you will have read the typical 300 page book. That's it. He said, if you apply that to everything in life, then you will accomplish more than most people who don't. A lot of people will say, oh, a 300 page book, that's going to take forever. I don't even want to start it. And then a lot of other people will say, a 300 page book, I better get started. Page one, page two, all the way to page 10. There, I've read 10 pages. Tomorrow I'll read 10 more. And so they get things accomplished because they take steps every day. The book, the Slight Edge is all about the compound effect of the steps that you take every single day to get ahead or to progress in something. And so we can stay stuck looking in the rearview mirror regretting what we didn't do or didn't say, or the choices that we didn't make. Or we can ask ourselves, what can I do today? That's really how I live my life. I mean, I have gone through many relationships. I've gone through many jobs. I've never felt completely stable because every few years something shifted, something changed, someone left me. I quit my job. I only got fired from one job when I was a teenager. I quit every job that I, that I had because I got burnt out. Being a people pleaser, that burned you out really fast. So throughout the years, I got burnt out in my jobs and my partners got burnt out on me. That typically happens like if you're a people pleaser, your partners will get burnt out on you and you will get burnt out on at your job and you'll also get burnt out with friends because you're always trying to accommodate and give and there's. It's never enough reciprocation because you're just constantly trying to please others. And at work it's even worse because you're putting on a lot of effort and sometimes, you know, you can rise in the ranks and get promotions and things like that, but when you're at a job that doesn't really want to do that for you, you give a lot for very little in return. And then even when you get the return, you might end up miserable because you feel like you're giving so much still. Like you're giving way too much for the lack of return that you're getting. So there's a burnt out feeling that comes. And for me, it was like every four years. That was my burnout point at every job that I ever had until I started this show and I started writing blogs and things like that. This is what I've been doing for 13 years. And I just kept going at it. I think a lot of it had to do with healing some old traumas inside of myself, healing what I needed to heal, because in 2013, I was doing a lot of healing because that was around the time of my divorce. And I had a lot of toxic behaviors that I was working on and trying to heal and get through those. And I had healed most of them by the time I really got this show off the ground. But I still had stuff to work on because, you know, things don't disappear. Sometimes they come up years later in different ways. Sometimes it takes some time. Sometimes you have to get into another relationship to find out what you still need to work on or another job to find out what you still need to work on. And so back in 2013, I started this show and I had guests on, and my first guest was Jeff Olson. And he told me about the slight edge and how the compound effect of doing something every day, what gets you to the next place, that gets you to the next level, to the next state of mind, to the next stage. And it really hit me, it really affected me in a good way. Because if you're stuck looking into the past, then you are not taking steps every day towards your future. If you are stuck regretting what you did, then you are not making plans or taking steps toward what you should do or toward what you want to do. Well. BetterHelp is one of our sponsors for today's episode. And you know, sometimes I sit in bed before I go to sleep and I remember that I'm reaching an age where people I care about could experience some condition that hospitalizes them or worse. May is Mental Health Awareness Month and I want to remind you that if something is keeping you up at night, you don't have to go through it alone. When those overwhelming feelings show up, it's easy to think that you have to figure out everything by yourself. Nobody has all the answers, but having someone to listen to you and support you can make all the difference. BetterHelp connects you with fully licensed therapists who work according to a strict code of conduct based on your needs and preferences. They'll match you with the right therapist. They have over 12 years of experience and an industry leading match fulfillment rate. And if you're not happy with your match, you can switch to a different therapist at any time. BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy program having served over 6 million people globally with an average rating of 4.9 out of 4.5based on over 1.7 million client reviews. You don't have to be on this journey alone. Find support and have someone with you in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off@betterhelp.com brain that's betterhelp H-E-L-P.com brain you know, talking about therapy, Every therapist I've met has to be incredibly organized. If they aren't, they might schedule their 4 o' clock Tuesday for 3 o' clock Wednesday. With all the details therapists have to deal with, I'm amazed they can keep track at all. If you're a therapist listening, you know your work doesn't end when the session does. There's scheduling, notes and billing and insurance follow ups. All of the admin that happens before and after the work you actually care about. That's why I like services like Simple Practice. It's an all in one EHR that's HIPAA compliant and built specifically for therapists. It brings scheduling, billing, insurance and client communication into one place so you're not juggling multiple systems. Automated appointment reminders help reduce no shows and note templates make documentation faster so the business side of your practice feels lighter. If you're ready to simplify the business side of your practice, now is a great time to try Simple Practice. Start with a seven day free trial, then get 50% off your first three months. Just go to simplepractice.com to claim the offer again, that's simplepractice.com. So with this person who wrote their partner is saying, this is not what I chose, and I'm here to say it is. It is what you chose. Unless there were circumstances that you were born into bondage, little line from the Matrix movie, and you had no choice but to do what you were told or be part of a system that you couldn't control and you had no choice because you are in that system. But most of us, when we leave home for the first time and get our own place or start working for the rest of our lives, we are now in control of our lives. And it doesn't mean we aren't part of another system. It just means that we now have more freedom to make choices. And I know some people listening right now saying, no, I didn't have that freedom. It's possible, possible that you may not have some of the freedoms that other people did. But even like Viktor Frankl, he wrote the book Man's Search for Meaning, I think, and he talks about how you are still in control of your own mind. You are still in control of your thoughts. Even when they are there are people attempting to plant things into your mind, you still have full control of that. I'm not saying it's easy, because when you have unhealed trauma or old programming, thoughts come into your head that maybe you don't want or don't serve you. And what do you do with that? The way I look at it is what you do with it is what creates the next day in your life, the next outcome, the next result. And we can ask ourselves, is what I'm doing going to lead to a different result tomorrow? And the answer to me is fairly simple. If I do the same thing today, I'll probably get the same thing tomorrow. That's the definition of insanity that we've all heard. Doing the same thing every day and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. I don't know if it's insanity, but it's certainly a Ruth, it's certainly gaslighting yourself. Because if you think things are going to change tomorrow without you changing anything about what you're doing today, sure, you can get lucky, but most likely you're going to get the same thing tomorrow. That might sound miserable to somebody listening right now. They might think, well, crap, if I'm going to get the same thing tomorrow, then what's the point? The point is you can make decisions today that change tomorrow, even if it's a conversation, maybe it's a conversation with somebody that you haven't had yet. My wife and I still have conversations that we haven't had yet. And sometimes they're very hard. Sometimes they hit me from left field. They are just brand new information to me. And I wonder where the heck this information came from. But we talk it out. We have a conversation, maybe we have an argument, but it has to be spoken about, it has to be expressed. Because if it's not, where does it go? Gets bottled up. And so we don't want it to be repressed. We don't want to stuff it down. We want to have a conversation that leads to a different outcome tomorrow if the outcomes that we are having today aren't satisfactory or making us miserable. So coming back to this message, not only did this person say, I never wanted this life anyway, I never chose it, but they also said, you're lucky I'm here. Talk about a massive sense of entitlement, a massive sense of superiority and narcissism. You're lucky I'm here. Wow. So the two things that were said, I never chose this life and you're lucky I'm here is like somebody saying, I'm not happy with you and I wish I'd never met you, and you're lucky that I'm with you because nobody else would accept you. I'm not saying that's what he meant. I'm saying that's what somebody who heard that would hear. Because if my wife said, I never chose this. I never chose this life and you're lucky that I'm here, that would tell me that I'm just good enough for now. I'm good enough until she actually gets what she wants. And that makes me feel unvalued, unloved. And I wouldn't want to be with somebody who thinks that I'm just good enough until the next best thing comes along. I'm not saying that you should feel this way. The person who wrote, maybe you have had these conversations, and there's a lot more going on under the hood because, you know, sometimes we can say things that we don't necessarily mean, but they sound mean. But, you know, when somebody says, you're lucky I'm here, not only are they negating your ability to find someone better or anyone you want, but they're also painting this grandiose picture of themselves that I guess they want you to kiss their feet. I mean, that's just not something you say to someone that you care about. When you say, you're lucky I'm Here you're lucky that I haven't divorced you yet or left you yet. That's usually done as a manipulation. Like somebody wants to make you feel bad enough about yourself that you better keep them around and not get a divorce or not break up with them because you're not going to get any better. Which is kind of ironic because the person saying that is usually highly insecure. Somebody who says, you're not going to get any better than me is almost always highly insecure. And they have a grandiose view of themselves, which is a combination for narcissism. So when somebody says that they're being very narcissistic and they're not treating you as an equal, and they're actually looking down at you, and that's not nice. It's just a mean thing to do. And so this is something I see in this message, even though the main point of the message, I believe, was this person's own pursuits. They said, I don't want to hurt my kids or abandon them by diving into my own pursuits, but obviously I need to make a change. I really don't like what I'm facing here. What's interesting is that this person's partner is looking into the past, and this person is looking toward the future. This person's partner is saying, I didn't choose this life. And this person who wrote is saying, I want to choose something else for myself. I want to do more. There's two different mindsets there. No wonder they're having issues. One is stuck in the past and one wants to change the future. They probably both want to change the future. Yes, but one keeps using the past as an excuse for the reason they can't change. And the other one is saying that the circumstances that I'm in today make it difficult to make a change. But they're not saying it's impossible. They're saying, I have these choices to make, and the choices are hard. We have kids. I don't want to hurt them. I don't want to abandon them. I do want to dive into my own pursuits, but I don't know how to do it without making these difficult choices. Yes, it's a difficult choice, but would you be abandoning your kids? I mean, these are things that you have to certainly weigh and evaluate. I can't chime in on what you should do as far as going to college at a later age and getting your master's or whatever, whatever you're trying to pursue. But I do know that if you could do it in. Let's just say 15, 16, 17 years. Would you do it then? Why am I saying that? Because when kids grow up and they're old enough, you may be able to pursue these things still. If you are still in that state of mind, in that place inside your heart, and you want to pursue these things even though you can't do it now, you might be able to do it later. That's not the best answer. I know. But when we have kids, we do have to dedicate a lot of our time and effort in raising the children and making sure that they are raised right and not in a toxic household and not getting a lot of negativity from one or both parents. We do our best to raise kids the best we can so that they come out hopefully mentally healthy and stable and that. And then we can pursue our own stuff. But I know from what Asha has told me and other parents have told me, because I'm not a parent, that when you have kids, it's full time. It's full time. That's all it is. It's about the kids. And I get that. And I agree with that 100%. And so making a choice to do something on your own when you have a full time job, and that's not even. That's like an understatement, the full time job is 24 7. So when you have this full 247 job of raising children, then it's going to be hard to do your own thing unless it's nap time or school time. And sometimes that's what happens is that you get these free times or free moments, and then you can fill those in by doing a few steps a day, by taking 10 minutes a day toward something that you want to learn or accomplish. That's what might have to happen for now. One of the things that I've had to learn in life is that if I don't have time to do it or if I feel like I have no choice but to follow this path for now, it's always for now. It's always for now because things will change. My last relationship was a marriage that I was in that I believed would last forever or at least the rest of my life. And when that changed, it definitely threw me off track. I didn't realize that it was going to end. So during my marriage, you know, during that relationship, I believe that this is how it would be for the rest of my life. And in every relationship I was in, that's what I believed. This is how it will be for the rest of my Life. And so I accepted that this is how it will be for the rest of my life. And I moved forward with that thought in mind. And then change happened. And when change happened, I had to change. I had to adjust. I had to accept the new reality. When my marriage ended, I accepted that new reality. And I also accepted I had a lot of healing to do. Not just grieving, but my own behaviors. I needed to heal my own behaviors so that I didn't lose any more relationships, so that I wasn't always quitting my job because I was getting burnt out. I needed to figure out who I was and what I wanted. And that came because of change. We don't always know when change will come. Sometimes it surprises us. Sometimes we have to initiate it. Sometimes we have to wait. When we have kids, we might have to wait, or we might have to do little things every single day that move toward the change that we want. And then one day, when the kids are old enough and they're all leaving in their hover cars or whatever, when they're all leaving, they're all going on dates and things like that, then we have time. Or you might have time, or something else may come along. But to this person who wrote your partner, your husband, or whoever it is, that is definitely the life he chose. And he just doesn't want to accept that that's what he chose. And that is a miserable place to be, is to tell yourself that this isn't what I wanted and this isn't what I have chosen. And to be stuck there. I mean, to say it once, okay, great. You say it once, you get through it, you realize, okay, this isn't what I wanted. This isn't how I wanted it to turn out. This is definitely not what I would have chosen had I known. That's something that makes more sense to say. But now that I'm here, and then it moves forward. I like moving forward. I like progress. I like momentum. Looking in the rearview mirror is not momentum. It's saying, darn it, I should have done something different. It's telling yourself that you did wrong. So there's a lot of negative reinforcement, too. You did wrong. You made the wrong choice. And look at you now. So not only are you regretting, you're also putting a label on what your life is like today and how it will feel like it's permanent. Even though from this point on, you could start making different choices. And one choice to make might just be an acceptance that the past cannot change. I. E. For example, I accept that I Cannot change the past. Therefore, I will stop looking back there, ruminating on what could have been different. Because by doing that, what are you changing? You're changing nothing. Like the dog that's tied to a stake that goes around and around and around. It's the rut. It will create a path, and that path gets deeper and deeper, and you can tell exactly how long the chain is. You can tell exactly how close you can get to the dog, because there's the rut. The dog's not leaving that rut unless something happens. But that dog is going to continue circling that stake in the diameter of the circle until he makes a different choice, which is to stop circling. Or somebody comes along and changes his life by taking him off the stake, taking, you know, taking him in, taking him for a walk or whatever. And so let me finish with this person's challenge, which is basically, there's two things going on with them. They have somebody that they're with that really devalues them, really devalues and minimizes the person who wrote to me. And that's really sad, because a good partner will lift you up. A good partner will make you feel good and make you feel positive and make you feel that they are lucky to be with you. That's how it should work. When they convince you that you're lucky to be with them, that's manipulative, that's cruel, and that's just not true. That is their own insecurities talking. So there's that part of it. The other part of this is your own pursuits, which we talked about, which is basically, if you can't do it now, you might be able to do it later. If you can't do it now, then take small steps until it builds up and you build some sort of foundational either knowledge or progress on a project or whatever it is, so that you keep moving in that direction. And sometimes we take a path towards something and we believe it's going to have this specific result, and it turns into something else. That happens to me quite a bit. I take steps toward what I want to do, and it turns into something else. This show has turned into all kinds of things. I never thought I was gonna create a program for emotionally harmful people who want to change. I never thought I would create that, but I did, and now it's popular. Now people are doing it, and they want to heal themselves. Maybe the person who wrote their partner will take my course one day and work with me. I don't know. But this is what happens when we move towards something every day, take a few steps toward it every single day. And just in case anyone is listening now that needs to hear this, life is a lot easier when you take responsibility for where you end up. It's a lot easier even if somebody put you there. It's a lot easier because once you take responsibility, you have control over what happens next. Because you can make the next decision and the next decision and the next decision, knowing that you have control over your life. But if you refuse to take responsibility for where you are today and you blame others and you blame the past and even your own past decisions and relationships and jobs and things like that, if you're stuck there, then it's very difficult to go forward without saying the one thing that can take you out of it, which is the past happened. And now I can make choices about my future. But if you say the past happened, let's go there, let's think about it, let's ruminate. Let's think about all the things that we could have done or should have done or should have said. And let's see where we go with that. Because we go nowhere. It's circular logic. You're here today in the present. You think about the past, it comes back to the present. You think about the past, it comes back to the present, goes nowhere. Dig the rut. Dig the rut. And we want to hop out of that. So I want to thank this person for writing. I really hope that what we talked about today helps in some way or if anybody needed to hear this. I wish you the best and thanks for listening to another episode of the Overwhelmed Brain. I want to thank our patrons this week. Maria and Heather, thank you for your support of the show. I'm very grateful for you and every time I see your names, I always warms my heart and reminds me that I am making the right choices, I am doing the right thing. I am doing what I am supposed to be doing in life because I am always looking forward trying to make the next episode and try to help people that write to me and do whatever I can to help you. Again, thanks patrons for supporting the show. Anyone who donates. I appreciate all of you. If you find value in the show and you want to give back, head over to More T and there are options to do that over there. And for a show on how to navigate the difficult relationship, listen to my other podcast called Love andabuse over loveandabuse.com yes, you might think that what we just talked about was a difficult relationship. Is there emotionally abusive behavior going on? Well, there's certainly some cruelty, some hurtful commentary, and I would say manipulation as well, because anybody who says, you're lucky to be with me is trying to convince you that you shouldn't leave. That tells me that they are very insecure. Maybe they have a fear of abandonment, a fear of being alone, whatever it is, fear of rejection. I talk about that and so much more over@loveandabuse.com so head over there if you want to hear that. And if you are the difficult one in the relationship and you want to change that about yourself, head over to healedbeing.com I've helped literally thousands of people work on their emotionally harmful behaviors and change their life and sometimes even salvage relationships that were on the brink of complete destruction, annihilation. And when people go through that program, they end up learning what a healthy relationship looks like and how to be the healthiest partner possible. And I hear a lot of success stories from that. So that's over@HealedBeing.com and with that, always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions. Be firm in your decisions and actions so that you can create the life you want. Always take steps to grow and evolve. You are powerful beyond measure. And above all, and this is something I absolutely know to be true about you and I will continue to see, hang it for years to come. You are amazing, Sam. Sa.