For my twenties, especially my twenties. I thought because I knew so much and was on top of it, that I was on top of it.

Welcome to Therapy is my therapy, a podcast where licensed counselor Olivia and unlicensed client Tanya delve deep into real and raw conversations in order to demystify what really happens in that 50 minutes hour. Heads up. This podcast contains strong language and sensitive topics related to mental health.

Hey, everyone, it's Tanya again. You're listening to part two of our episode with Rob Murray. So to recap, the first episode talks about what landed Rob on the therapist's couch and what his first few sessions in therapy felt like. In part two of Rob's story, we get into topics such as what could have possibly led Rob to seek help sooner, the cyclical nature of our behavior and beliefs, and the long reaching effects of childhood trauma. So a lot of light conversation. Anyways, this was such an emotional, beautiful episode, and we are eternally grateful that Rob allowed us to share his story in the hopes that it will help others. Enjoy.

We've talked so much about what your knowledge was going into that first session and how much you maybe weren't as affected by a lot of other people of stigma of it. So it took you 1015 years. Even given that getting in, what do you think if anything would have gotten you in the door sooner? Is there anything anyone could have said or done or anything you could have said or done that would have gotten you there?

This one's not hard, dancer. It gets convoluted, and I guess I'll explain. So, long story short, I lived alone with my mother, my childhood divorce. My dad is an absolutely fantastic person. My mother is the complete polar opposite of that. Like, no one wants to be around her at this point in time, like that level, like, the entire family. My dad gave up a lot to ensure that the court would allow me a very small amount of time to see him so he wasn't totally kicked out of my life, and he made it his mission, knowing what I was living in. Again, this wasn't like a, oh, your dad should have tried harder. Like, three child psychologists told the judge not to give me to my mother, but it was the eighties. I've literally watched a CPS agent be laughed in the face by my mother in my own living room after she kicked me out of our house when I was in grade seven. So my dad made it his mission, knowing all that, that he was going to be almost polar opposite for good and for bad. Maybe I could have had a little bit better structure out of my dad, right? The positive teaching is a structure, but whatever. I don't fault him for any of that stuff. But the work, him and my stepmom enabled me to be aware of this stuff. It was always a safe place to describe what was going on. Here's the problem with that, though. So I've got this logical brain. I've got this great awareness of what's going on for my twenties, especially my twenties. I thought because I knew so much and was on top of it, that I was on top of it, right? And we go back to that statement of, like, good old Mike Tyson, like, everybody's got a plan to get punched in the face. That's exactly how my life went for ten years. There was these periods of complete ignorance where I felt like I was being fine. And the only reason fine was a term was because I was being ignorant to the symptoms I was displaying. And I would only become aware of that when I got punched in the face by something. And then it was a crisis. So we ask the question, like, what could have anybody said to you, Rob, at that decade? Nothing. Literally nothing. Because I was going through this pattern now, what could I do for myself? Well, that's the tragic part. So sometimes. Sometimes you gotta get punched in the face hard enough in more the most obvious way for you to realize that you've been playing yourself for a fool. So I literally had a soundtrack in my head, you know, I went to university at 19. Did not complete, because here's the thing. I left home being like, I'm free. And my years at western, I played out my tragedy. So first year, I almost flunked out. And here I am, like, I'm an extremely intelligent person, and I got to go back for my second year because of 0.5%. So a bunch of failings at the start of my twenties that started to make my life a little bit rocky. That sets a pattern. Just so happens I dated. I don't. I look back and I joke about how she ever stuck with me for this long, but I dated a young lady for six years in my twenties. We lived together the entire time. She's phenomenal. Except. And like I was, I was a cyclical mess to the point where it ended as tragically as one could write in a movie. Okay, I should explain that. I just mean in the sense of, like, it sounds movie like. Okay, so she went away for. On a trip. She's a dual citizen, Scotland and Canada. And didn't I get a dear John email? It was eight in the morning I was going to my really shitty telemarketing job because that's all I was worth at that point in time. And it was the, hey, I'm never coming home. And what do you do with that? The epiphany didn't come right away, okay? It hit me so hard. It sent me into a reactive depression for nearly four years after that, and even more so when, I mean, I pretty much was single for seven years after that. Now I had a bunch of excuses of why, and that's similarly so, why the epiphany didn't come. So I spent four years, probably took me four that seven years to start becoming honest about the situation. I spent four years being like, how could someone do me so wrong? Right? But that was the beginning of it. That was this thing that obviously I took for granted because I'm playing through my own bullshit, and then this thing's gone. You didn't realize how huge it was. And it broke me. You know, we started dating when I was, like, 22, 23. Broke up just before I was 30. Like, who am I? I'm already a troubled kid coming out of high school, going to university, no idea of self identity because I didn't have one as a kid, right? I was this pliable thing that just tried to fit in. And then I became a couple for a really long time, you know, it was a very frightening world for me. And the epiphany finally hit me, you know, again, that punch was so hard, even though it took me years to realize that it was just another human being doing what they needed to do and how they knew how to survive, which is they couldn't let me go without completely being on the other side of the world to do it. And it was my fault. I had to take ownership of what I'd put this person through. I was exactly what my mother put me through. My mother never wound up and clocked me in the face similarly, so I would never hit a female. But I was so emotionally and intellectually manipulative. And I just thought, you know, at the time, doing it was just lovers quarrels, you know what I mean? But it just. It wasn't. It was a game that I didn't even know I was playing. And frankly, it took that situation to understand I had already done it to another person at the tail end of high school. And again, that entire situation, until that point, I'd always looked back at going, oh, this person did me wrong. Oh, they dumped me right before we went to the same university. And living in the same dorm. Like, that's all I could see because I had played a record. I had put a record on the player leaving my home at 19, going, I'm free. That means I'm better. Without understanding the ramifications for me.

Similar thing in terms of, I left a pretty rough home life and went to our school. It's fixed. I'm free. I'm free of that place. However, that programming has been ingrained in me, and I would repeat cycles of behavior that I had learned as a young woman, as a child. And I'm not a therapist, but it sounds like there's very similar instances where in relating to people and having repeated these cycles and eventually having an opportunity to take ownership of said cycle, that's what you needed in order to go to therapy. I might be off base, but for me, it wasn't actually that someone had left. It was actually that someone had arrived in my life where I had toxic boyfriends and just not great experiences in relationships. But then someone came along where they were just this wonderful, safe, soft landing, and they were patient and kind and gentle. And I felt myself entering the cycle where I became terrified because of the abuse I endured as a kid. I was waiting for the honeymoon period to drop and just became extremely reactive and extremely frightened. And recognizing that cycle was starting and then deciding to take ownership, that's when I went to therapy, because I was terrified of being in the same room as this person that I was affectionate towards just months prior. And through recognizing I was doing that loop again, that's when I went, oh, I need to talk to somebody. And that was one of the reasons I landed on the therapist's couch before I spewed emotionally to Katherine. My first statement was, I'm scared to be in this room with my partner, and they haven't done anything. The problematic phrase is, I want to fix myself. I want to just not be broken. In this regard, was what I said. I find that is a common thing, is where something has happened, there's an event, and you go, oh, shit, it's happening again. And I don't want it to happen again. I need to learn the skills to break out of that cycle.

Well, actually, what you say there is for me, it hits home. So I guess I'll explain this. So I started this saying. The thing that spawned me to go to therapy in the first place was this realization on the first year anniversary of my brother's death. I was really messed up, right? I guess what feeds into that, right? Like, so, you know, it's probably. Again, the punch in the face sort of thing that my. My personality, my brain, like, it held that punch in the face as an emotional milestone. And it's those things that my brain never truly forgot again. It took me the first four years of this breakup to finally start to consider that, oh, I can't be blaming this other person for this thing. It was actually. It was the me part of it, right? And I said that I stayed, like, as a reaction, okay, I stayed pretty much single for, like, seven years. Now, here's the crazy thing. So to tie all this together back to my intro, I spent a big portion of my thirties doing fake action guy cool stuff. You know what I mean? Like, riding in helicopters and whatever, all for pretend and larping. But I found an identity in that, right? Like, again, a part of that was, I didn't mean to do it. I just used to paintball as a kid, so I was trying to find new hobbies and stuff, right? I'd finally gotten a grown up job at Friggin 30. I was accomplishing things that allowed me to make those moves. So I looked at that seven years of living like a friggin monk as like, oh, Rob's discovering himself. This is self improvement time. Which, technically, yes, it was, right? Like, I was achieving things. It took me seven plus years to realize it was actually because I was terrified of who I was. Like, I lived again pretty much in a decade, thinking, Rob's fine. I'm not destroying another person's emotional baseline. So seven years later, I come to realize or hold this emotional fact in my head that I actually was just running scared because I didn't know what I would be here. It was this eye awakening sort of event. This person. Dear John, lettering me. Well, email, I guess. There's the modern times. I thought that I had everything under control until that moment. I now no longer knew what I didn't know. And I terrified me, right? It terrified me, who I was, because I thought I wasn't, and I didn't want to take the chance anymore. So the whole. The whole thing with my brother's anniversary, I had spent the last year thinking I had it under control. And boop, not the case, Rob. And that terrified me. And it terrified me enough having these emotional mile markers in my past of where I fooled myself, where I've taken the comfortable path of, oh, I woke up today, it's a Tuesday, and I don't feel as shitty as I did yesterday, so I must be okay. And I can wait. I can wait a little bit longer. That kind of came to an end to try to pretend it was any different. Almost started to feel as bad as realizing the terrible things I'd done.

It's very common, at least for me. This was my experience. When you grow up in a home that requires you to not be yourself in order to stay safe. It is very difficult when you leave the house to first. I think the first stage of it is what you talked about is the house doesn't actually leave you and the things that you had to do and who you had to be to stay safe in that home, transfer into a different house that is now no longer helpful and is actually harmful. And so I think that's the first stage, generally, is like when you reach that realization of, oh, no, I have become all of the things that I was scared of. And then you get to the bridge of, well, I am responding as though I'm still in this house, and that's why I'm acting this way. It's not, oh, you're inherently a terrible person who's purposely manipulating and harming people. It's, I never learned how to emotionally take myself out of that home. And then the second stage that happens a lot is, okay, well, if I'm carrying that home around, I can't make anyone else come into it. I have to separate myself, isolate myself. It is the only way. I'm the problem. I need to protect everyone else.

Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's what my mid twenties became. It literally, I looked at it like I was very on top of the logic part of it. I knew what I was subjecting. Right, right. So, um, you know, I guess I'll speak to it as if I'm in my mid twenties. So at the time, it looked like anger, still at times looks like anger, and ill explain that in a minute. Like I was aware enough to realize at that moment where I decided I need to separate myself or isolate myself for the protection of others was because I knew it wasnt necessarily that id become my mother. I was far too caring and far too intelligent and all these other side of the things that just. My mother is not right. Inarguably, it was that, you know, I've come to realize that, you know, these, these little people inside me. That's the weirdest way to say that. Like, the, sorry, I just killed myself now. Like, so, like the different parts of me, like the. The younger versions of me that got trapped, that never grew up with the physical body of me. Right? Like the people that are still trapped in that house, as you. As you sort of pertain to it, they're still trying to figure out what I went through. I try to understand it on an adult level. And that's that sort of weirdness about psychology is that we've got these little pieces of us that truly don't understand what even my waking life understands. Right. It's not based in logic or what, you know. So, you know, when I would do the same behavioral patterns or display the same behavioral patterns that I went through as a kid was not me taking those things and becoming that. It was what I understand. My subconscious was presenting a situation in which would allow that little subconscious part of me try to figure out where the situation was coming from when, as a kid on the receiving end, had no fucking clue what was going on. Now, that sounds great on paper, except then you have to also realize that if it was destroying me as a child, what's it doing to someone that just wants to love you? It took a long time for me to sort of look at it differently that way. And I'm going to touch on something to complete this thought. Touch on something we talked about a long time ago at this point in time, those aha moments, right? So for a long time, I viewed the behavior set of my mother and thus the symptomatic sort of behaviors that I would display as purely just anger. And it's weird when you start to break apart where emotions can come from. And this is. Was actually a quintessential part of the aha moment. So with the help of my therapist, and funny enough, I was dog sitting for a buddy for, like, the last three weeks to a month kind of deal. And the dog was teaching me something. So the dog was a little bit reactive on. On the leash with some dogs, often when they were across the street. And that's a common thing in the dog world, on leash reactivity. And obviously, when we look at a dog reacting, it looks aggressive. That's a defense mechanism of the dog. They'll stamp their feet, they'll false charge, they'll bark, obviously. Right. Particularly aggressive dog. Then it might do things like bare teeth, snap, all that fun stuff. Right. Stuff. We. If you're not trained with the behavior, most people will pick up their toddlers at that point in time. But in watching this dog, I realized the dog wasn't angry. The moment I realized that the dog wasn't angry, Rob sort of realized that Rob wasn't angry. What Rob was, was terrified. I looked back on things. That behavior set could be a minor change to an expected plan. Could be something somebody said that I wasn't expecting. But the bottom line was a trigger of that was surprise, because I had lived a life where I had to forecast with 100% accuracy everything before it hit me. And the moment something changed was not just an annoyance, was a possible threat to my survival, no matter how big or how small. And it wasn't until I realized that, hey, here I am playing out this drama, just playing the antagonist rather than the protagonist on the receiving end and realizing that it's actually not anger, it's fear that's driving this, that I'm creating situations that, in the end, as interestingly quizzical as the human psychology is here, I am afraid of losing somebody and creating situations that only guarantees that I lose them. To try to play out some drama from when I was three, you know, recreating the same environment, except I'm the one creating it this time.

Yeah. And I actually had a session with Katherine recently where I was engaging in very. What's the word? Very hyper critical, hyper analytical, perfectionist behaviors. And she does a lot of inner parts work, which, from what I have gleaned from your story, your therapist does as well. And she was asking me really interesting things, such as, what do you think the child needs in order to feel safe? And we went down that line of conversation, and I realized that, oh, she's screaming at everyone to get away from her because she's essentially in quicksand. But instead of screaming for help, because help historically came at a cost of my bodily autonomy or self esteem, I don't want help. I want you to get away from me. And so this inner child is screaming at everything and trying to mask the fact that she's terrified and that she feels stuck. She doesn't know how to get out, and she doesn't trust this person or people enough to help her with that. And Olivia can speak much more to that. But the parts works thing is really fascinating, especially when Catherine started asking me, how old does she think you are and how old do you think she is? Because it's a really interesting exercise to. I don't know if it's to triangulate the age in which the trauma happened. Olivia again, can explain what that is about, because I'm not entirely sure what that question means, but I would love to hear more about it.

It's funny you say this. Sorry. I don't know if I'm jumping in on you here, Olivia, or if that was a direct question.

You're the guest, dude. It's all good.

It's funny that you mention all that, and I can't tell you if it's accurate to the triangulation statement, but what I can tell you is a common thread in my life of awareness. I have always still, right now, I do not feel like a 40 year old. I still walk through my life almost, like, 20 years behind. Not in terms of, like, what I do and whatnot, but quite literally how I feel on the inside. I don't feel like a 40 year old, and I don't mean it on the superficial level, like, hey, workout and all that sort of stuff. So it keeps me young. I literally mean, like, I just don't see my world in the same way now. That's for good and for bad, though. And, like, that's something I've always struggled with. It's only recently that I've really come to terms with. I'm missing a big part of my life. This is going to sound hypercritical, but it's just a statement of reality. Like, my friends are all 20 years ahead of me, and it's really hard to explain to people why that is. I don't own my own home. Just in the last five years, figured out saving money is a good thing. I almost lived, like, a fatalism based life before. Like, I couldn't imagine a future. Like, I literally. Almost like I was living like I was an 18 year old, where, like, nothing else matters because life doesn't exist yet, right? So all my friends have kids and all that sort of stuff. I was spending 20 years trying not to be a total mess. So, yeah, like, in my head, like, I still don't feel what I assume my father, who had had me by the time he was 35, his own home, a long career, all these sort of things. Like, I don't think I feel. I can tell you. I don't. I just don't look at the world the same way, and I don't. I can tell you I don't feel like a three year old. And the start of my journey is literally from about toddler age. That's kind of a fun fact about the person that is my mother. As long as you can't talk back, she loves you. But around two or three, things get problematic.

Of course. Olivia, I'd have to preface this question with, she doesn't know what goes on in my therapist's head, but I'd love.

To hear more about just this concept.

Of asking, how old is this part that's showing up? I'd be very curious both of you.

Are hitting on things that are really common with childhood trauma, that you don't get to emotionally age properly because as a kid you're supposed to be learning how to interact with the world and viewing it as safe. And then once the world is safe, then you can go out and explore and figure out who you are and what you feel like and what it's like to fail in a way that is still kind of protected. Like having the bumpers up. And when you grow up in a traumatic household, you don't get any of that. You skip all of those things and then you're playing catch up of, well, who am I? Like you said, you're trying to figure that out in your thirties of like, oh shit, I don't have a personality or an identity outside of my life sucked and I don't know what to do. And that same thing of not thinking about saving money or owning a home or whatever. Because a lot of times growing up in those homes, you physically can't imagine a future that feels safe or at all right. It's like, well, I'm stuck. I'm stuck in this. I'm never going to get out of this. So the future is not my main concern. I'm just trying to stay alive every day. So that just generally. And then I think in terms of the specifics of when you're doing that parts work, of why it's helpful to ask that question of how old do you feel these parts to be and how old did they think you are, and vice versa. And I think a lot of times those younger parts of ourselves are the ones in the driver's seat. And that's why we don't feel our age. Because there's a 16 year old version of us that got really good at surviving the household, even though they weren't doing very well, they knew at that point how to make it so that mom or dad is the least harmful they can possibly be. Like you said, I can predict the energy in the room with one step, one breath, one word. And that version of us is not going to let those younger, exiled, vulnerable parts of ourselves show up because it was not safe for them then. So I think it's really helpful to know what age it feels like those parts are because you can kind of then pinpoint where did things shift? When did I put up that wall of I'm not letting anyone else in? And then on the other hand, do they view you as a competent adult? Do those parts of yourself even recognize that you're separate from them? Or do you think you're just another kid stuck in the house because they're not going to trust you? They're also probably not going to trust you if they view as an adult, because as we all know, when you grow up in those households, adults are not safe. But I think being able to work through that process of do those parts of yourselves really view you as an adult? And if so, how can we make it so that they trust you to make the decisions so that they can still be in the car, they can still be in the passenger seat, but you have to be the one to drive. And I think a lot of times, truthfully, people who've had that trauma are more connected to their inner child once they've done the work in terms of not giving up hobbies and really being able to still enjoy the playfulness of life and not just focusing on saving money, buying a house, having kids. Right. Like, I think there is on some level, a really cool part that comes out of it wouldn't necessarily say it's worth it having to grow up like that. But, you know, it is something that I think plays a role, that you are more connected to those parts of yourself. But until you do the work, sometimes it feels like they're running the show and you're like, well, I don't want to do anything responsible, or I can't even think about it because it feels like there's a 16 year old driving the car.

You know, you speaking to the trust portion. I mean, that's so that's where we're kind of currently at with my stuff that hits home with what you said there, Olivia. You know, I'm just sort of starting to come to grips with the fact that the reason why this stuff is on autopilot for me is because the two different sides to that traumatic kid, right? So there's the one that, you know, based on my personality, I want to succeed. I want to be better than things or whatnot. But I also have another side that says, well, that'll probably just end up in terrible, terrible, terrible pain. So I've got this manager that's screaming at me for being a lazy pos because I'm too afraid to go do something, but I got this little kid also screaming that everyone's going to hate you and you're going to fail and all this sort of stuff. And they don't do anything like that autopilot nature of it is because probably, or what I understand it is like those little voices in me don't understand what I've done since, because they're living in their own compartmentalized world. Like, again, I've achieved. I am a confident person. I know I've got value. All those conscious, logical things that I understand now, they have no. They have no connection to, so they just don't trust that I'll be okay. Right. So they still continue to scream at me from my subconscious or really. I think this is really important for listeners. When I say that I've got these autopilots that scream at me, realize that it's not a conversation. The symptom is the physiological reaction to the screams. So it feels like it's you doing it. I think that goes back to what you said about who's really in the driver's seat and how muddy that can get in certain situations. Rob goes away. The rob you guys know is not there, even though he is, and I don't even realize that I'm not there anymore. That's the really mindfuckery part of it, because I'm still present, I still ride the ride, but I've got no control over at that moment in time. Right. Yeah. I think that's fascinating, the idea of trust. And it doesn't get any better until you can start bridging those places. I feel. I mean, again, I'm still on that new to this journey, so I'm mostly like, yeah, I have faith work out, but it's. It's stuff I'd never looked at before. And actually, Tanya, sorry. Something you had said I wanted to touch on a big part of what kept me from getting help. In the end, it's because it shifted. I got all these platforms right, and I started become somebody that people followed. And I think this is where it crosses over, where I've got a pretty good understanding of how it is for my service based friends, people who are former or current in anything, law enforcement, military, is that I struggled against this idea that if I admit that I need help, are all these people going to think I'm weak? And who have they been following? And what. What do I want? Or the effect on that perception to be? And it took me a long time to realize that, like, screw it. I need to do what I need to do. And if anything, I could use that to help people. But it took me a very long time to get over this idea that if anybody saw the dark parts of me, that I would be actually less valuable. And it's almost like, ooh, I pulled the wool over everybody's eyes. And now the glasses are off kind of thing, or the masks off kind of deal.

The last part, I feel that I don't have even a fraction of the following, but starting this podcast has been innervating because I've talked about my shit on Instagram Stories, which disappear after 24 hours. I've talked about this shit in person, but having this recorded and just everyone hearing about the things I've gone through, it does leave you vulnerable. And I thankfully, have managed to cultivate an attitude of I haven't read it, but very read Sonia. And as to why she wears such a skimpy battle bikini thing of I'm gonna leave myself vulnerable, but good luck trying to get at me, and not in a self defensive way, but that I have. I've learned so much. I've become a very multifaceted human being because of the things I've gone through. And I've done a lot of work in therapy where these aren't fresh wounds, these are scars. But it's very hard to poke those and harm me, because I am. I'm okay with this stuff that I've gone through and the fact that people even would send me messages or DM's talking about how they feel, much less alone because of the candor with which I speak about my experiences. That has provided me fuel, and I'm so thankful that you're doing that on your much larger platform. And then to jump back to the point where the inner parts work and building trust, that is a recent lesson I've been learning from Catherine. Well, she's been probably hammering it in me the whole time, but finally my thick skull is starting to understand. It is that I have a tendency to overwork and burn out, then engage in binge shopping or what have you. And eventually I came to the realization that, oh, I haven't demonstrated that I am an adult worthy of trust because of the track record that my inner children and I have had. I've screamed at them, I've physically exerted or beaten them into submission, been as fractured and as complicated a relationship as the one I have with my mom. And at first, Catherine had me start with journaling, which I was like, this is stupid. And I didn't understand the point of it, but she had been strongly suggesting I do so, and I started reading the things on there. So while there is a. I imagine there is a therapeutic benefit to just having these experiences externalized and not swirling around in your head. What I realized when I was reading is I'm actually really sweet, and what was being written on the page was very different than the cassette player. I'm old cassette tape that was playing in my head of what I made myself out to be, which was an asshole, a monster, so on and so forth. In order to keep myself safe through doing that work and building that communication, which was the first step to building trust, I started hearing essentially what those different parts had to say. And the fluency with which we speak to each other has gotten more and more sophisticated over the years. I can't say your journey is going to be the same, and maybe Olivia can speak to if that is a goal. But, yeah, that has been my experience.

You know, to your point there. Like, yeah, that's. That's where I'm currently at in my journey. I guess that's the other way to describe this unknown. Unknown of. I don't know how it's supposed to feel. I don't know what this work feels or looks like, particularly. So. I'm still in the very beginning stages of, like. Again, I logically understand it, but I don't know what practicing looks like. You know, I'm throwing punches in the dark, hoping, hoping something lands kind of deal. Right? Sort of turn away from the camera. I got a whiteboard just off frame there, and I put all my notes. I got my professional ones, I got my personal ones, like, take out the trash and all that sort of crap. And then I've got my, like, a little corner where I'm, like, listening on all the stuff that we talked about in my last session. Right. You know, hey, spend time with the manager. Part of that little kid. Cool. Like, do I call him? Do I send an email and set up an appointment? I don't know how any of this works. Right? Like, how do I spend time with the guy? Right? So, like, I don't know yet. So is it an active goal in my head that I want to be able to have, like, you know, a really concise conversation, like a Hemingway like conversation with this inner child? I don't even know if that's the right way to say it. I'm that new to it. What I guess I know is that, yeah, I obviously have some communication issues with some very significant parts of my past that I would love to understand and participate in. But what that looks like just yet, I still. Not. That I don't understand it. I don't, at the core of my subconscious, understand what that feels like or.

It looks like just yet so relatable. I remember that in the beginning for me, being a client, but also being a therapist, it's an interesting thing, but I think it's also helpful for people to know that therapists have just as much of a hard time with this stuff, like, exactly like we're talking about. Just because I logically know these things doesn't make it any easier for me to feel it in my body. And so it is a lifelong journey. But at least for me, in the experience of doing that parts work and having contact with the very wounded gutter children in my brain is that they don't scream at me anymore when they need something. I can hear those voices in a much calmer way, and they're very, very clear about what they need from me, whether it's rest or play or connection. And I think that's the work that has been the most helpful for me as a client of having that re parenting experience of I can be the person that I needed as a kid, and I can create a home that is safe and that does allow for mistakes and that does allow every part of me to just be who I am. So I think that's something that, again, not like a logical and not necessarily a very cut and dry, like, treatment planned goal. But I think on that topic of the inner child stuff, that's the overarching end goal that has been really helpful for me.

That was brilliant. I think that'd be a really great place to end it. And, rob, if you have any closing remarks and if you want to point us to any resources or anything that your project, your Tinder profile, whatever it is, if you want to point us to anything that may be of use.

For the listeners, I guess it didn't come with homework prepared. In terms of that stuff, in terms of the specific resources, what I would like to emphasize. Right. Like, and I think this is, again, if the, you know, the audience that we want to target with this particular talk is, is those sort of in my shoes. Right. And understanding that for a lot of people, they don't even come from the beneficial foundation that I came from. So this needs to hit them a little bit harder. This is why I'm making this statement is I think I've come to realize through a lot of opportunities self created for the most part, but it's finally hitting home. And I'm talking hitting home within, like, the last month, month and a half. Is this idea that while I understand that there's something that drives me with this sense of an autopilot. Right. We can talk about these inner children, these. These frozen in time, traumatic pieces of our lives that tend to drive the car, so to speak, or carry the home with us on our backs or whatever. The thing that I think drives me these days is the very acute knowledge or acceptance that autopilot or not, all this fear of who I am and what that might become, should I actually dive in to ask to get help? The things that keep us from doing this for ourselves, none of it, none of it is as scary or as terrifying or will end up being as horrific as doing absolutely nothing. And I did nothing for 20 years. And while. While I am not a regretful person, I can't fix that 20 years without a time machine, nothing as a scary as living with what you're terrified with anything is better than that. So, I mean, it's scary. It's scary sending an email. It's scary phoning somebody. It's scary meeting a stranger. It's scary opening up. It's scary coming on podcasts. It's scary living life. But if just living life is terrifying, anything is better. That is the faith that anyone going through this shit needs to understand, because it is better than the alternative.

That was amazing. I think that's a good spot to end in. Don't worry, you end up reaching the end of therapy. You beat it super clear and easy.

There is no finality. That's, I guess, the good point to target, Tanya. I think you said it good. And that is I am a lifelong work in progress as so all should we be positive or negative. But me especially, I am never not going to be like something.

And that concludes this episode of therapy is my therapy. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider subscribing so you never miss an update. Once again, thanks for tuning in. The content discussed on this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not act as a replacement for therapy. Although we may share tools that have worked for us and talk about symptoms that we've experienced, it is not meant to be used for diagnostic purposes and does not constitute medical advice.