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Goodpain Season 02 Episode No. 007: The Masculine Principle – Fletcher Galeano, Finding Self within Estrangement
159 Plays3 months ago
This week we speak with Fletcher Galeano, author of Letters to a Living Ghost, a memoir of his personal journey that explores themes of identity, grief, and healing. His journey involved emotional abuse, parental neglect, mental illness, family estrangement, and trauma and he shares the vulnerable details in this discussion.
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Transcript
Introduction to Good Pain Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Jeremy. And I'm Tyler. Welcome to Good Pain, where we talk about life's true intensities without pretending they're easy solve. What if the things we're told to fix, optimize, or get over are actually where the real wisdom lives?
00:00:14
Speaker
Each week we gather for the kind of honest conversations you desire to be a part of more often about the relentless demands, the unexpected grief, the quiet victories, and everything in between. Because maybe, just maybe, the answer isn't to eliminate the hard stuff, it's to find the good in it. Welcome to the conversation.
Understanding Family Estrangement
00:00:43
Speaker
Today's guest is Fletcher Galliano, author of a book, Letters to a Living Ghost, where he explores a topic that has been running through social media and discussed at great length, particularly with older generations versus millennials and in other younger generations. And that is of estrangement and the concept of going no contact.
00:01:10
Speaker
Today, Fletcher is vulnerable in sharing his story about his own mother's decision to go no contact with him. And it's spread across two sections. We have our first conversation that took place ah during a thunderstorm that occurred in Colombia.
00:01:29
Speaker
That got interrupted and we will have a short break explaining that in between the two sections before we resume the conversation that took place about a week later with Fletcher again while he was in Columbia and I am in Denver, Colorado.
00:01:44
Speaker
It is a measured conversation. it is contemplative. There are some pauses and carefully chosen words throughout I hope that for those who have been wrestling with this topic will find a sense of voice for exploring the complications of this topic and what it means to be human and bump into each other, particularly with those who, via blood, are our family members who may not be that sense of nurturing and care and kindness that we hope for throughout the remainder of our lives once we find our own independence.
00:02:23
Speaker
am a person who is few things at heart.
00:02:30
Speaker
I'm teacher. a few things at heart im i'm a teacher and I'm an engineer and I'm also a chef. Only one of those things I actually have a degree in. I'm an engineer and I've been a teacher and i no longer teach regularly and I've loved cooking my entire life and that has all interweaved into my professional life, into my personal life, into what I do in my spare time. but I think that's the best way to introduce myself at the moment.
00:03:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Which of those yeah or which of them for you brings you energy in a way that's
Normativity in Education and Society
00:03:13
Speaker
expressive? You mentioned cooking, but I don't want to lead with just that.
00:03:16
Speaker
I think when I'm teaching and when I used to do it regularly, um that used to be my stage. Like it was where I felt really comfortable and where I felt like I could really share the things that I wanted to share and in the way that I wanted to do it because I've always been very much, I'd say a rebel when it comes to normativity and things that that have to do with um like how something should be done.
00:03:46
Speaker
So when I was a teacher, I used to do what I wanted. And it ended up turning into me teaching seminars for other teachers at the university to teach them about how I was teaching, which was really fun. Yeah. When you use the word rebel and and particularly against normativity, what does it what does that mean for you to be a rebel? And and what what is it about normativity that you feel rebellious against?
Autism and Societal Norms
00:04:17
Speaker
There's something about, for example, the word normal and how it carries certain connotations about social, not unanimity, but just like agreements, right?
00:04:31
Speaker
And as an autistic person, which I am, That's always been something that I've been kind of I felt friction with because i i don't agree with a lot of people's definition of normal. And i like to be I like to be very efficient with things and I like to do things in a way that I consider it's done well and done right. So, for example, as a teacher, the thing that I introduced and that I said that I was going against was something called rehearsal tasks.
00:05:02
Speaker
i don't know if you know what that is Tell me it's um rehearsal tasks are tasks that are supposed to put the student in a scenario where they will have to use the language in a way that is expected out in the world. So they're rehearsing for the world.
00:05:20
Speaker
Right. And what I said in in my presentation's thesis was the rehearsal tasks out the window. That's horrible. You should not be doing rehearsal tasks. You should be doing the strangest things you can come up with that will never come up in the real world to force them to use language in a way that is a tool for survival and communication in these scenarios that you put them in. And and i think that that's that's what makes me a rebel is is like taking myself out of these... um
00:05:54
Speaker
i don't know, like boxes, I should i suppose, and and putting myself in situations that are a lot more interesting. For you, I hear this subversion against the the the prescribed box for you. Why is that important to you? There could be a lot of reasons for that and reasons that I would end up talking to my therapist about.
00:06:17
Speaker
ah but But I'm not sure. I think it it comes from observing observing that which is called the norm and pitting it against my own set of internal norms and and like my ethics and the ways that I think and thinking that those things are questionable and giving myself permission to question them and to go against them.
Gaslighting and Family Norms
00:06:47
Speaker
what What is your story been in interacting with the norms? Let's start with you're you're your place of origin, you're your family. what What were the norms that was for you? i used to be very sheltered and very protected in a way that was presented, i would say almost as gaslighting.
00:07:10
Speaker
Like we were told that we were free to do whatever we wanted. but we were not free of their judgment and we were not free of their limits. So it would be like, yeah, you can go to that party.
00:07:21
Speaker
Just be back by 930 and you better tell me everything that happened there and I better approve of it. So it was very, i don't know, there was a dichotomy there that that was very uncomfortable for me because I never knew if I was actually trusted.
00:07:34
Speaker
How did you navigate that? During my childhood and my teenage years, I was very much, I would say, on autopilot at home. Like, I feel like most of my life that I remember during those times was things that was happening at school, things that were happening um in orchestra and just extracurriculars and things like that.
Appreciating Everyday Moments
00:07:55
Speaker
But when it comes to the home, I would just remember like the big events and everything else is just like going through the motions. It was, it was not until a lot later that I started to actually manage those situations that had already passed.
00:08:12
Speaker
Migrating from like peak to peak, big event to big event. Is there something you felt you lost with that focus of of just big events on the in-between? Definitely. i think i think the in-between is is where we live because the the big events are the things that That marker, sure. ah But when you're in the day-to-day and when I hang up this call, I'm going to be living in the in-between. And it's sad that I barely remember any of that. What do you feel you missed aside from you mentioned that's where we live. what does What does that mean in the in-between? What does it mean to live in the in-between for you? And can you think of examples that you wanted to experience and that you didn't get to do?
Nature as a Grounding Force
00:09:02
Speaker
I think some of that
00:09:07
Speaker
could be spending time with nature, oddly enough, because um we lived in front of a lake when I was growing up. This was in the US. ah um There was a lake in front of the house and there were often ducks and it was just really beautiful. And looking back, when people ask me, like, what is my safe place that I go to in my mind when when like something's going on, i usually go to that lake and it wasn't a thing that actually happened a lot. It's just in my memory.
00:09:40
Speaker
It's grounding in a way that it's not really what happened. Well, how how do you reconcile that? I feel that there's value in the things that don't happen. um Like when you have an important dream at night and you get up and it's like, oh man, that was very compelling. And it's something that may affect you in the future, but it didn't actually happen.
00:10:01
Speaker
It does still hold value for me. And I think that me holding value with that place is something that I owed myself, even if it didn't actually happen in real life. I owed myself.
00:10:13
Speaker
What about that do you feel is empowering about finding those things that you owe yourself and ways to pay them to yourself? It's one of the things that I consider that I've been able to do the longer that I have been in therapy.
Therapy and Self-Discovery
00:10:30
Speaker
It's been over five years now consistently and it's just been a process of recognizing the things that I want and need after such a long time of not recognizing at all what it was that I wanted or needed. What was getting in the way from recogniz recognizing those things? A few things, but honestly the biggest factor was my mom and me anticipating and having to be always so aware of her needs that
00:11:00
Speaker
It's like it became a filter that everything passed through before getting to me. Like if I had something I wanted, I would be thinking about whether she would mind, you know, and it was just very present.
00:11:13
Speaker
What was it like living in environment where it feels like the relationship, not only to yourself, but to your mom is these punctuated, big,
Emotional Minefield of Family Dynamics
00:11:28
Speaker
spiky moments? What is what is that like?
00:11:31
Speaker
it fell It felt dangerous. it felt like like living on a minefield. And the interesting part of it was that it's a minefield built by someone who reportedly loves you.
00:11:48
Speaker
So sometimes you would set off a a mine, it would be something good. And you wouldn't know how to react because you were expecting bad when you stepped. How has that shown up for you in other areas of your life? Not so much now in the present, but back a few years ago,
00:12:08
Speaker
i
00:12:14
Speaker
I expected unpredictability from people and it came to be troublesome because if I was dealing with someone who was not going to act in a certain way and I was expecting it, they would of course get either offended or sad that that I would expect something so wild from them. And it's just my my reflex.
00:12:37
Speaker
how How does that feel to you to get to know people, for people to get to know you? you think of times where that aspect was in the room with you impacting how you showed up with people, what you shared, what you protected, what you thought about? I think the best way I can describe it is...
Internal Conflict and Emotional Struggles
00:13:01
Speaker
You know Venom from the Spider-Man movies? Yeah. I've been trying to unstick myself from that ah for years, and i think right now it's at my toes and and it's doing really well, but up until very recently, I'd say like 2022, it was enveloping me and it was present in every room.
00:13:22
Speaker
So there's this in in this construct of venom, this separate symbiote, this alien entity that somehow binds you and almost creates a split mind that that on the one hand, you're there's an authentic self. And then there's this other thing that is calling and borrowing itself.
00:13:46
Speaker
from some of your authenticity, but either supercharging it or or even at times undermining some of that authenticity. what How did that show up for you? There's something called the amygdala sequester or amygdala kidnapping, but it's a state of mind that happens when you are basically held at gunpoint by your amygdala and you are in that moment only able to act according to your emotion and Logic is out the window. The amygdala is in control This is something that used to happen to me a lot i used to lose control with the people that I loved because this was a very normal occurrence When I would argue with my mom we would get very escalated we would um Yell at each other other things could get physical sometimes and
00:14:41
Speaker
it was so heavy that we would only be acting through our anger and that that type of state is something that stayed for a very long time and is still something that I can fight against. Not very often, but it it happens where I'll be experiencing such a strong emotion that I won't be able to really think through what I'm doing and I can say hurtful things or even like try to end friendships.
00:15:08
Speaker
what was emphasized for you growing up was a lot of that reactivity that may operate in conflict with your long-term values friendship being one of those and that the immediacy of the threat in front of you even if that's emanating from inside of you due to the deep programming that you received from your family of origin sometimes you were held felt held hostage to that.
00:15:41
Speaker
There were times when I would refer to myself as Jekyll and Hyde.
00:15:47
Speaker
I found that I would feel scared of myself in the moments where I wouldn't feel like I was in control.
00:15:57
Speaker
And it was always very complex because i would think about like, yes, it's me doing these things, but also it's not me doing these things. And how do I reconcile the fact that that I'm considering it like it's not a part of myself?
00:16:12
Speaker
even though it is my body and my words and my acting. So it's it's a whole brain puzzle.
00:16:24
Speaker
It was at this moment that nature took over and Fletcher's power went out in his rural home.
Imposter Syndrome and Family Impact
00:16:35
Speaker
And so we scheduled for another meeting a week later where we continue the conversation, not picking up exactly here, But moving into similar themes, starting with what it feels like to deal with imposter syndrome in this context, having grown up in a family of origin that eventually would lead to estrangement.
00:17:00
Speaker
Here is the rest of the interview with Fletcher.
00:17:07
Speaker
Last time we spoke, ah we ah were interrupted by things completely out of your control. I should have put in the memo is like, um have you sent um the request to the universe of the gods to make sure that it was nice and sunny and clear? I forgot to do that. So I'll take responsibility for that. Yeah. um but But we're reconvening now.
00:17:34
Speaker
And and i i in order to get us kind of back on track, I'd like to just hear from you.
Building Personal Stability
00:17:40
Speaker
What's your origin story? what what's what's What's the creation of Fletcher?
00:17:47
Speaker
I think where I would say my origin lies is
00:17:54
Speaker
and uncertainty and a very raw need to create that certainty for myself.
00:18:08
Speaker
from when I was very little. So there was always a lot of movement. there was we i lived in like 12 houses when I was little. um I had to change schools a few times and there was always a lot of things that were just not stable and I loved for myself to be a little source of order and system. And I think that itself also was taken advantage of by my parents because i became kind of their project manager over time.
00:18:40
Speaker
that experience of finding actually some safety in the solitude, having the continuity of relationships that travel across grades at sometimes felt isolating, but there was also a comfort in it. is that That's what I'm hearing for you is is that you were starting to find that for yourself.
00:19:01
Speaker
Yeah, and it's interesting that you mentioned... the friendships that stick around for years. Because very recently i did, um... I made a TikTok.
00:19:13
Speaker
Actually, I don't have TikTok anymore, but I made a TikTok and it was about the fact that I was auditioning for a lifelong friend because I feel that i missed out on the fact that people have friends from when they were much younger and now they are adults and they're still friends. And I said, I want that. So who wants to be my friend from second grade?
00:19:33
Speaker
And it was just a silly thing. But... ah But I did also appreciate my solitude interestingly enough, something that I don't have right now is the fact that when I was little, I used to be able to entertain myself so easily.
00:19:49
Speaker
So easily. And now I find it a little bit difficult to entertain myself on my own. In fact, this week I played on my new Nintendo Switch for like 10 minutes and I felt that that was like a huge win because i have many different consoles and many different things to have fun with and I don't touch any of them.
00:20:09
Speaker
so Talk to me a little bit more about about that, that stability first you had to create for yourself, and then that transition to being the manager of some of that stability for adults that were in your life.
Childhood Responsibilities and Parental Struggles
00:20:26
Speaker
My parents... um
00:20:32
Speaker
They were very young when they had me and i feel that that had a lot to do with
00:20:42
Speaker
like not just their their physical age, but also their mental age, because both of them had unstable homes. My mom had to leave her home at 14, and it was all very complex for them. So i I see their story as something that, yes, resulted in me, but also I see it kind of as ah like a tale of warning, because they were just...
00:21:11
Speaker
They were very naive and they they fell in love and they wanted to make a family and they didn't realize that they weren't ready. So they had me and they had my brother and we grew up with them and we had to watch them grow up.
00:21:27
Speaker
And as that was happening, they came to learn that their kids were really smart. And that we knew how to manage our emotions for some reason. And that became then our job to help them.
00:21:46
Speaker
And it wasn't something that they realized consciously, but just because they saw themselves benefited every time they talked to us, they started to use it as a therapist because they saw themselves benefited every time we we looked at the finances, then we should keep doing that. And it just became more and more and more. That sounds heavy.
00:22:05
Speaker
It's pretty heavy. it It feels like
00:22:13
Speaker
A lot of people talk about having to grow up really fast and they usually think about that in other scenarios about people who grew up in violent homes or people who grew up with parents who passed away things like that.
00:22:26
Speaker
But for me, my parents were there, but I feel like i I was forced to grow up really fast because I needed to catch up to them to be able to help them because it felt like they needed me.
00:22:38
Speaker
So that's what it felt like. It felt like i was i had a responsibility. As part of this, you did some processing for yourself. you You shared the work that you did from a therapeutic perspective with a guide, with other things. But one of the things that you also did was decided to focus on your relationship with your mom and you wrote a book.
00:23:03
Speaker
What was the journey to getting to that decision to document this, to to
Therapeutic Writing and Reconciliation
00:23:08
Speaker
write about it? It came about in in a couple of ways. There's a psychologist who came up with this method um that i wanted to try for myself. um It's called wall work.
00:23:21
Speaker
Wall work is basically this exercise that you do where you take bunch of little pieces of paper and you start narrating your life from beginning to end or like from beginning to where you are and stick all those pieces of paper up on your walls around you.
00:23:38
Speaker
and you get to start seeing patterns and you get to start seeing things and I wanted to do that. So i I didn't know how I was going to do it and I had bought the paper and I hadn't started and I said I want to start it when I have the guidance of a therapist and in that moment I was between therapists so I was like I don't want to do it on my own and maybe like spiral.
00:24:00
Speaker
um And that was one side of it. The other side of it is that I felt like And I think that I mentioned that in the the very first time, the not the prologue. I have different sections.
00:24:17
Speaker
Either way, I mentioned this, and it's the fact that I wanted to give my mother ah kind of a... blueprint to how she could ever return to my life if she wanted to.
00:24:32
Speaker
So between those two things, it it came to me just sitting down one day and starting to write a little timeline of myself. And interestingly enough, because of the focus that I was giving it, most of the stories revolved around my mom and it just started becoming this letter to her.
00:24:51
Speaker
So with this exercise that you're doing to pull these forward and the emergence of focusing on your mom started to bubble up, what did you do with it next?
00:25:03
Speaker
What do you do with that as those things start to come up? During this whole time, I was also living my life. So it wasn't an exercise that happened in one day or in one month. It actually took me two years to write the book.
00:25:19
Speaker
And it's something that If you read the book, you can observe that it did take two years because the perspective changes in the book. And I speak differently and I'm referring to things in a different light.
00:25:33
Speaker
And I like that it's visible and I didn't go back and edit it precisely because of that. um So the way that I i went ah about it was that I just let it a kind of cook within me every time I went down and I wrote something, even if it was just a couple of sentences.
00:25:56
Speaker
Then i would have that kind of like an LLM. I would have that with the original context and then I would let it sit and I would come back to it whenever I could. And it just became very organic.
00:26:08
Speaker
I think of my brain as this mysterious mass of flesh that I can somehow rifle through in a very efficient way with a lot of speed to have conversations like I am right now, to have memories, to think of ideas, to do all those things. I have no way about the machinations of it. I have no reason to understand how I can dig into this jelly and get these things out.
00:26:39
Speaker
But I know that it does things in the background. I always do because that's how you, for example, find things when you lose them. That's how you remember things after you've forgotten them and and you lost the context.
00:26:52
Speaker
Things come back because there's stuff going on back there. So I use that for good. You know, I say like, okay, I just had some new thoughts. I'm going to digest them and let me leave them in there in the RAM to see what happens.
00:27:07
Speaker
So that's what feels like.
Journey of Self-Acceptance
00:27:09
Speaker
The hope that we have where we get introduced to a family of origin is that there is an installed structure and stability and framework for processing some of these things. And what you just described is part of that stability you had to create for yourself. Now you just outlined that things are not always demanding that we need to react to them. Sometimes it just sits there.
00:27:37
Speaker
and marinates and, and we don't have to do something about it right, right away. That sounds like even mirroring some of your experience with your families is that you had a lot of things that came up and you learned to, you had to learn some degree of non-reactivity.
00:27:55
Speaker
i
00:27:59
Speaker
I, had to learn to let a lot of stuff sit. I had to learn to ignore a lot of stuff. I had to,
00:28:10
Speaker
basically accept the things that were unacceptable about my life but that were realities.
00:28:22
Speaker
Here's the thing.
00:28:25
Speaker
Sometimes people tell you to do things or they tell you
00:28:34
Speaker
to leave them alone or whatever. And it can be
00:28:42
Speaker
an expression of many different types and they can be meaning different things. But there have been two separate instances where my mom specifically asked me to stop talking to her forever.
00:28:56
Speaker
And the second time I decided to take her up on it.
00:29:04
Speaker
So it wasn't so much a decision that I had made on my own. I had already tried to be low contact with her, but it hadn't been very successful. But once I felt so repelled by her, it made it very easy.
00:29:18
Speaker
What's that journey like when you decide ultimately I'm going to take you up on, I'm going to listen to what you're saying. I'm not going to try and rationalize it other than to treat it as face value that you've made this request. I will take you up on it. What does that feel like?
Emotions of Estrangement
00:29:38
Speaker
It feels like a lot of things. And I think honestly, I don't remember the exact cocktail of feelings that I had in that moment. um What I do know is that it was a cocktail of feelings. It was so a variety of things that I was feeling at the same time.
00:29:55
Speaker
had to then take all of those feelings and kind of pay attention to each one separately over time. So my... It has been ah three years now that that we haven't spoken properly.
00:30:10
Speaker
and During that time, I have felt angry. i have felt sad. I have felt empathy and compassion for her. I have felt pity for her.
00:30:23
Speaker
And I've gone back to anger and I've i've been bitter. And it's it's been this whole thing. And I think that was all there at the beginning, but it was all just given to me in a a big package. Like, here you go.
00:30:34
Speaker
Next three years. So it changes on some days. It changes, but not... Like, it has been three years where all that was covered, but let's say that I spent three months angry and then like all this time, like, you know, it's not that sudden and it's not that fluctuating, but it does fluctuate when you look at it over the timeline.
00:30:54
Speaker
So right now, right now, i would say, how do I feel about my mom? I'd say I feel disappointed. We actually ended up speaking after I published my book and there was a little spark of of something that that could mean peace.
00:31:15
Speaker
And
00:31:19
Speaker
sadly, she behaved in a very immature and and rude way, and it just started to cycle again, and I knew that,
00:31:31
Speaker
it wasn't going to be worth it. So we aren't talking again, but I am very disappointed because I felt like after all that and after even she read the book, um it was just the same patterns.
00:31:44
Speaker
How do you reconcile the fact that I'm going to put myself out there, not just in the potential for your mom to re-engage, but also with your hopes?
Openness to Love Post-Estrangement
00:31:56
Speaker
And that that you're going to maybe this time. And then you get more of the same back. and how How do you keep that in balance with not turning to cynicism, to to stealing away from you your sense of wanting to be in the world?
00:32:17
Speaker
There's a couple of parts to that answer. I'd say, on the one hand, I've always been
00:32:27
Speaker
very much an advocate for opposing cynicism and and for
00:32:36
Speaker
For example, my friends would have breakups and they would be like, I am never gonna love again. i amm gonna be mean, I'm gonna be this and that. And I would always be like, but why would you lose yourself?
00:32:48
Speaker
for something that is external to you and then kind of poison the well for the future when you actually do meet someone that that you want to give that to you're going to be all filled with with anger instead of being able to share yourself so in the same way i have found solace in the fact that i don't need my mom anymore. i am very much a grown adult who has made my own life. I live separate to her and I have my pets and I have my spouse and everything that I need is here.
00:33:24
Speaker
And that was going to be maybe an addition like, hey, I might be able to have a mom. But that has changed. But all of this other stuff is still here.
00:33:37
Speaker
So it doesn't really feel like a loss because a loss would be that I'm missing something that I had been leaving a space for. And that's not the case.
Gaining Independence and Personal Growth
00:33:46
Speaker
How long did it take you to get to that point where it wasn't operating from this emptiness that needed to be filled to realizing that you were already whole? And this would be if your relationship with your mom took a different path, it adds a different flavor.
00:34:05
Speaker
But like you said, it's it's not filling a gap. It's new form of expression. How long did it take? I think that happened sometime between the pandemic and today. Those have been very, I think it sounds weird to say but those have been very formative years in my life, even though it's not part of my childhood. I feel like I've learned so many things in those five years.
00:34:35
Speaker
I really feel like a different person than who I was back then. And i left my mom's house in 2018. So it took me about two years away from her to really feel like I had my own life I was living with an ex and it was a very tumultuous relationship,
00:34:56
Speaker
um but also very beautiful. And I was living in another city from my mom, so i felt very free. I had spent all my life up until then living with my mom and being controlled by her rules and everything. So the first thing I did in those two years was gain 60 pounds.
00:35:24
Speaker
Because I could eat what I wanted when I wanted. And that was never a thing. It was kind of a reclaiming of myself. It was just like, yeah, like I'm doing this for me. I'm gonna go eat five cookies. And I would.
00:35:38
Speaker
I lived in that city. I lived on the second story of a bakery.
00:35:45
Speaker
and it was wonderful it was wonderful and i would never take back a second of it and i i love that it happened the way it did because it felt like i was soothing myself all that time that i hadn't been able to soothe myself in that way and then 2020 happens and what then starts to shift into the next five years this this period you were talking about as your formative I started going consistently to therapy. I started in November 2020.
00:36:19
Speaker
And by January 2021, had moved out of my ex's place and I was back in the city and I was, i moved in with a roommate who was one of my best friends. And I started learning a bunch of things, meeting a bunch of people. it just started, it was like,
00:36:39
Speaker
Like for the first time I was really on my own because I had been with a partner and we were doing things and everything was was kind of safe and and this time it was just me and i and my therapist against the world and it it just started feeling like i was
00:36:58
Speaker
seeing my life through my eyes for the first time, you know? i hear your story, Fletcher, and there's so many aspects of, like, the arc of leaving home, of creating separation, of of thrashing for a while, of reclaiming self, of, and then moving into this, turning the lens back on self and starting to do the work.
00:37:26
Speaker
But the the context of what you had in terms of your family of origin is uniquely you, but also has some parallels
Deciding to Go No Contact
00:37:36
Speaker
to others. And right now, that that question of the decision around going no contact is is rising for a lot of people. And what that means Sometimes people are so consumed in their own, whether you want to call it self-loathing or self-judgment, or that that they would like to feel less alone by convincing other people to engage in a similar activity. And it's very foreign when someone says, oh no, I'm not going to...
00:38:08
Speaker
I'm not engaging in this activity. You can meet me at this line where we're actually encouraging, kind. And and for for some people, that's, well, you just threatened their mode of security because their mode of security is bringing other people down into the pit with them. And that's what I hear you saying. Again, with your...
00:38:29
Speaker
Your mom with this individual is saying like, I want to be in relationship with you, but I must start first with honoring and taking in good faith the messages that you're putting forth and saying, I can't go there with you. I can't go there with you for my own safety, for my own security, for my own well-being.
00:38:50
Speaker
and for yours how does that level of needing to be the more mature the whatever you want to call it that says i'm going to hold lines and i'm going to get punished for them sometimes and i'm going to feel that sense of rejection yeah i i feel a couple ways about that because in the moment when i'm Being firm, I feel entirely confident and sure of myself. And I'm just trying to establish my boundary and and really lay it solid.
00:39:29
Speaker
But once the moment is over and I have left, I usually feel this frustration where i think, like the precise thing that I think is, I have left this moment, but the person that I have left feels that they are right. And that frustrates me.
Boundary Maintenance and Misunderstandings
00:39:48
Speaker
you're still human, right? It's like like like, yes, I can be that person that holds the boundary, but there's also an aspect of saying like, I want you to know that you caused me pain, that you're... yeah Yeah.
00:40:04
Speaker
Yeah. As you wrote this book that came out of this exploration of self, your relationship to yourself, your relationship to your mom, and you shared that example of her reading it and getting that glimpse of potentially acknowledging that pain and maybe driving towards
Reflecting on a Decade of Growth
00:40:25
Speaker
reconciliation. And then again, she didn't see it and it's back into the same.
00:40:30
Speaker
Where do you go from there?
00:40:34
Speaker
a few places because in that very moment when I got the disappointment again I was just like, well okay.
00:40:46
Speaker
There's nothing I can really do and I can just continue living. but there's also been an interesting shift and it's that um in the past few weeks I've discovered what my next focus is going to be.
00:41:06
Speaker
And it has been really beautiful to discover it. In fact, when I thought about this idea, i cried for like 15 minutes.
00:41:17
Speaker
But basically, it was going to be to take the last decade, 2015 and 2025, and cover that in
00:41:27
Speaker
and covered that in a book and not cover it in the same way at all, like chronologically or anything like that, but cover it in categories. So for example, all the firsts that I lived through in that decade the disappointments, the the fun times that I didn't expect, like all all these things, and lay out the book in an order that doesn't feel like you're reading a story, but rather like you're seeing a bubbling pot of water with just moments coming up.
00:42:09
Speaker
I don't know, it it came from a long train of thought. That's how I explained it to my spouse when they found me crying. ah But basically it was just this one thing that led to another that led to another that I was like, oh man, what if I wrote a book like this?
00:42:25
Speaker
And it was... no catalyzed by me remembering one moment from my life from 2015 precisely that ah that was with my first ex-girlfriend because I had only dated boys prior but this girl I remember telling her that it would be an honor to have my heart broken by her
00:42:57
Speaker
And I remember that moment and like thinking about how I would write that scene. i thought this would be a wonderful part of an anthology of just different moments that are disconnected, but all have to do with me.
00:43:13
Speaker
And I thought that would be really cool. What are you continuing to learn? What's continuing to be your, your teachers?
Unlearning Harmful Lessons
00:43:22
Speaker
Everybody's my teacher to be honest.
00:43:24
Speaker
I mean, interacting with people on the street or friends who you've known for a while or for a little bit of time, it's all a lesson if you're willing to listen.
00:43:38
Speaker
So I've been learning a lot about my own kindness and about
00:43:52
Speaker
Why it's not the same all the time. Throughout my life, my family taught me that your family is the people that
00:44:07
Speaker
you get to torture.
00:44:11
Speaker
And that your friends are the people you get to love. And that strangers are the people you get to disrespect. And I've had a long time to unlearn that. And I've stopped torturing my loved ones and I've kept loving my friends. But sometimes i do feel that I don't respect strangers im as as much as I should. And I think that's where I'm at.
00:44:37
Speaker
What are those forms of expression that you're seeing in the people that are starting to circle around you that you feel called to help them bring forward?
00:44:51
Speaker
And how does that interact with your unique expression and way of being in the world? I believe that I've been helping people explore their self-love.
00:45:05
Speaker
in a way that
00:45:09
Speaker
I've tried to intervene in very pointed and small ways but very important ways whenever I'm interacting with people and I notice in their language that they are not being kind to themselves and I always try to point that out I'm like hey I understand um that you may feel this way and you can talk about yourself like that in private but please don't do that in front of me and That has become a little thing where people have told me like, hey, you know, it's interesting when I'm around you, I try not to do that. And then when I'm alone, I notice it more.
00:45:48
Speaker
I kind of realized one day that the world has already been mean enough to me for me to participate in it as well.
Preparing for Life's Uncertainties
00:45:59
Speaker
And I think that's that's also part of what has given me peace and calm lately is the fact that since I know it's not my job, i don't have to continue worrying about it and I don't have to continue waiting. All i have to do is remain prepared for whatever may come.
00:46:23
Speaker
Thank you for sitting with us in this conversation, for bringing your own story, your own questions, and your own hard-won wisdom to what we're building together. If you want to keep this going, subscribe to Good Pain on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, where you can also leave us a review that helps others find their way to these conversations.
00:46:42
Speaker
And for weekly doses of conversations that go beyond quick fixes or surface level advice, subscribe to our kindling newsletter at goodpainco.com. Good Pain is recorded in Colorado on Arapaho, Ute, and Cheyenne ancestral lands.
00:46:58
Speaker
And let's remember, we are not alone in this. Our struggle is not our shame. Whatever we are carrying today, we don't have to carry it alone. We will see you next time.