What bad shit is happening in your life and you are in the midst of a total shit storm it’s really hard to feel gratitude for it. You just want it to be over and done. It hurts and it sucks and it’s uncomfortable. But this is the only way to grow.
Everything that has ever happened in my life has lead me to be the person I am today.
So the other day I listened to this really interesting speech from Tony Robbins who explained that humans have six emotional needs, and we will do literally ANYTHING to get them:
- Certainty
- Uncertainty
- Significance
- Connection/ Love
- Growth
- Contribution
And we all weigh them differently, but we all generally have two big ones that stand out, which can also shift from time to time in our lives. And what I found to be really interesting is that he said when we find a thought or activity that fulfills three or more of those needs, there’s a good chance we can become addicted.
So five years ago I used to binge eat. Back then I was probably burning close to 3000 calories a day and consuming about 1400. I was hungry. My will power alone couldn’t do a damn thing. My body was literally starving and honestly, my binges were a good thing because they kept me alive and healthy. But I still had to unlearn that behavior of binge eating. There was an emotional attachment or possibly an addiction to it. No one helped me.. I did this on my own. I had to quit binge eating. I had to control my actions. And long story short, I was able to do it by giving myself permission to eat whatever I wanted. I had friends doing Whole 30 and I knew I could never go down that path, or quite honestly, have anyone give me a meal plan ever again, because I need to always feel like I have a CHOICE.
It is and will always be my decision to eat whatever I want to eat, whatever quantity, whenever I want. There cannot be any restriction in my diet. Nothing can be bad or off limits. I know that if I eat ice cream it makes me sick and it makes me feel bloated and gross so I CHOOSE to not eat ice cream.
And you know what, when I was going through that, it sucked. It made me feel insane how fast life would speed up and I had tunnel vision until I found myself sitting in my car in a parking lot with a half eaten jar of peanut butter. And it was really hard having to break myself of that habit. It wasn’t fun, but it was growth and I am grateful that is happened because now I can help others who have binge eating disorders because I get it.. I can relate. And when I create my clients’ meal plans I don’t get super strict with them and I give them lots of choices to make on their own because nothing should ever be off limits. A person needs to know they can eat whatever they want whenever they want and never be made to feel bad about it. And it helped me the other day when I was so distraught about a really bad fight my boyfriend and I had and I wanted to drink. I knew I didn’t want to drink – that is not how I deal with my problems, but I wanted to numb how bad the pain was and I knew that would be a quick fix. I also knew I needed to look inward and if I didn’t do it in that moment I was only delaying the inevitable. But, I knew I needed to give myself permission to make that decision and not restrict myself. So I set out to the store, credit card in hand, and kept on walking as soon as I made it to the store because I already felt better and I gave myself that permission and I CHOSE to keep walking.
For 7.5 years I was in a relationship with an alcoholic. At first I was young and it was fun – we could go drink together and hangout with friends and things seemed normal. I mean we were in our 20’s.. we all drank. I’ve always had my limitations because I don’t like how it makes me feel, I have other goals alcohol gets in the way of and it wasn’t how I was raised. Alcohol was never normalized in my formative years – it wasn’t around and my family had a very negative outlook on it.
Things started getting weird a couple years after he and I moved in together. Saturdays would start off with us having a good time, but he would leave me places, and I grew fine with it because I had my own coping mechanism – I would find other guys to replace the attention from him. Saturdays turned into Sundays and I’ve never been keen on Sunday Fundays, so for the most part, I would sit back and get my stuff done to prepare for the week ahead while I watched my boyfriend get black out drunk for the second day in a row. He had a friend that normalized his behavior for him, but I was sad. I still remember vividly the day I knew I would never bring a child into this world with him. He had passed out on the couch, fallen off the couch and rolled around on the floor in his own spit/ dip that he had knocked over. And my dog, Stringer, heard the commotion and came into the living room to see what happened and just sniffed him and looked scared. I knew that if my dog was scared from that, I would never have a child see that.
But I stayed. I was angry and I shut down. Many people would think, just leave, and I always thought I would too but I was afraid. I was afraid of growing old alone, of not having the money to support myself, to just being really unsure of my decision. And to be perfectly honest, I hadn’t hit my threshold yet.
See, I believe we all have a bullshit tolerance or threshold. Some people have a really low one. For example, I have two good friends – we are all three friends. One of which is this girl, let’s call her Jane, who was talking to a guy, trying to be in a long distance relationship with him, despite the fact that he straight up told her, he did not want a girlfriend, but for own various reasons, she wasn’t satisfied with taking no for an answer. He continued to talk to her because he was lonely and didn’t care about her enough to tell her to go away. And for months she drove herself crazy because he didn’t like her. She felt terrible about herself and didn’t know why she wasn’t good enough for him, etc. So my other friend, this guy, let’s call him Jack, started seeing a girl who, about six weeks in, started showing her true colors. She was really anal about a lot of things, and definitely had her own set of issues she took out on him. Right away he called it quits and cut her off. Well, Jack didn’t understand why Jane was still pining after her long distance dude, and I explained to Jack that Jane hasn’t hit her bullshit threshold yet. Jack’s threshold for what he considers bullshit is low, Jane’s is high. And we all have them for all kinds of different issues, whatever we consider to be bullshit, and for all different people and scenarios. And you can’t make someone else’s threshold change, but you can help your friends by helping them see what is bullshit and what isn’t and just be supportive whatever their decision may be.
So anyhow, I hadn’t hit my bullshit threshold with my alcoholic boyfriend yet – it took years. I mean, there was good there. When he was sober he was such a hard worker and I loved that about him. And to be honest, when his ego didn’t get in the way, he loved the fuck out of me. He would have done literally ANYTHING for me and it was comforting and nice. And I had developed such thick skin over the years. I knew how to navigate that relationship and life to meet my own needs. I wasn’t ever ecstatically happy in that relationship, but it was also safe. I couldn’t get hurt because I was so closed off emotionally. I found happiness through other things like Crossfit, travel, work, other men and friends. But I was no longer in love.
So we moved to Tampa together. It was my dream to move back to sunny Florida. He quit selling real estate and we were supposed to run our very successful business, The Get In Shape Girl, together. The move was too much for him. I adapted quickly. I rekindled friendships – but I brought him along to everything but he couldn’t just fit in. I started working out at a Crossfit gym and he couldn’t just go to class and meet new people. He was just closed off to living in a new place and refused to adapt for whatever reason. I offered him to move back home, temporarily, or whatever it took. I offered to do summers in Boston somehow. I just wanted to TRY Tampa. But all of it was met with resistance. The only thing he could do was drink. It was easy. He didn’t have to think – it was a quick fix to numb pain. But the problem with that is that the pain always comes back, and when you are addicted to something mentally, it can become a physical addiction and that took over. Where before he had never veered down the path for so long with alcohol, he went down it for so long the physical addiction eventually took over. And I exhausted myself in everything I could do, I had to walk away. I had to save myself because I knew I could not save him. So one day I packed all my shit.. He was home but he was so far gone in his own world he had no idea what I was doing. I left under the guise of going to the dog park and I drove to my friend’s house 4 hours away where he couldn’t find me. I signed a lease at a new apartment, gave him back the ring and that was it. I waited at my friend’s for a week until my dad flew to town to help me move. And he sat there, in the apartment with no furniture while I moved everything. That was so fucking hard and I feel terrible to this day because there aren’t many things more heart breaking than to watch someone do that to themselves while knowing you can’t do a damn thing to help them.
But I had to save me.
So I moved out and he eventually went back to Boston, and I did was any normal person would do… I tried to learn how to live my life as a single woman, business owner with no family around. I tried to push some of the past down for sure, but I had also experienced years of frustration and not feeling like I had a partner in life anyway, it wasn’t that hard. I just wanted to have fun. I felt hopeful and excited to find my partner in life, but without rushing it.
So from Memorial Day weekend 2015 to Labor Day weekend 2015 I was single. That is three months. Three months. But we don’t choose this shit folks.. we aren’t the ones in charge.
So into my life walks an old acquaintance. He was so not my type, but I thought he was funny. And I just kinda wanted to explore that so one day I made my move and he turned me down. Well.. he turned me down for about 16 hours. haha! On Sunday we had some drinks and we were hanging at a friends’ place, I asked him to come home with me and he did. I thought it was cool and fun but didn’t think much of it until the next morning when we were laughing hysterically, like kids, and everything just literally felt so perfect and I realized.. shit. This is my person. I mean, what the fuck?!?! I had plans to be single for a while. I had shit I wanted to do as a single lady. But when the love of your life walks through the door, you can’t fucking ignore it. This is your chance. You fucking take it. And he felt the exact same way. He hadn’t been single long either and he struggled with this in the beginning of our relationship, but he couldn’t deny me either. And within six weeks we considered ourselves BFGF, within two months we were saying ” I love you,” and within one year we were living together (and I hated co-habitating with ANYONE before him.) And we both say this, but it all happened so fast. We became really close, really quickly, but I think that is just what love does sometimes.
But when the fights happen, they are HARD. Like, harder than anything else I’ve experienced in a relationship. Because when I left my ex, I decided I never wanted to shut down emotionally to my partner, I wanted to be vulnerable and open and feel things and always just love. And that’s great, but you haveeeeee to look out for yourself first because they come in with their own shit and you can’t take that personally. But I have. I have become co-dependent on my boyfriend and it’s really unhealthy.
I’ve read a lot lately about co-dependency and it’s usually seen in people who grew up with alcoholics or emotionally abusive environments. You are constantly seeking to make things better for the person or pleasing someone in your family. But I was raised in a damn near perfect environment. Perhaps this happened because of my ex. Who knows, but it’s there and I know it and it’s not healthy. So when we fight or he makes a decision I do not approve of, it is like my world is coming to an end. So now it’s on me to find balance there.
But despite that, I worry. I see him drink and it scares me. Is he an alcoholic too, I question. And I blame him and I freak out on him and he doesn’t appreciate it and he pushes back. He doesn’t want to be controlled, and I don’t blame him. But I’m never going to stop calling him on his shit and his behaviors and choices because it is in my nature to push people to do better. And I know I am in his life for that reason. Because out of the millions of women in this world he could have fallen in love with, he fell in love with the girl who has experience with alcohol and is the most persistent human on the planet. But I need to find peace within myself to be the best girlfriend I can be to just love him and believe in him. And I know everything in my life has lead me to where I am now for a reason.
And because of him.. because he pushes my limits on what I think is right or okay.. he pushes me to see and think and feel outside of my little bubble and it helps me to understand my clients better and be more open to what others’ are experiencing and that helps me to be a better coach, and while it fucking sucks at the time, I am incredibly grateful for that.
So guess what.. everything in life is something we can learn and grow from if you let it. Don’t stifle your feelings. Don’t make something go away. Experience it for everything it is because life is trying to mold you into the best possible human you can be. And you are gonna fuck up and that’s okay. But experience it. Sunnier days are around the corner. They always have been, right?
Your Coach,
Kyra