Dr Amelia Kelly ( PhD), is an integrative, trauma-informed therapist who talks to Jeanne about Gaslighting recovery for women. They delve into this form of emotional abuse, using Jeanne's history as a foundation, and take the journey toward emotional healing from this trauma. This is Part 1.
Dr Amelia Kelly ( PhD), is an integrative, trauma-informed therapist who talks to Jeanne about Gaslighting recovery for women. They delve into this form of emotional abuse, using Jeanne's history as a foundation, and take the journey toward emotional healing from this trauma.
Key Moments
00:00 Introduction
04:30 What is gaslighting and what is it NOT?
07:15 Are gaslighters always motivated by power?
11:12 What is a trauma bond and why do gaslighters create this?
14:00 The 7 types of gaslighting / gaslighters.
22:52 What are the ACE and Trauma Bond question lists features in Dr. Kelly's new book.
27:12 The stages of gaslighting.
34:12 End of PART 1 - Tune in NEXT WEEK
Dr. Amelia Kelly Links
Website / Book - Gaslighting Recovery for Women / Instagram
Jeanne Retief
Shop FIGGI Beauty / Blog / Instagram
[00:00:00.150] - Jeanne
Hello, FIGGI Goddess. Today's episode is a big one. We're talking about surviving gaslighting and how you can recover from that. It is such a huge topic, and we have such a wonderful guest, Dr. Amelia Kelly. She is the author of the new book, Gaslighting Recovery for Women: The Complete Guide to recognizing manipulation and achieving freedom from emotional abuse. We had so much to cover in this topic, so I've split it into two parts. I hope you enjoy part one of this episode with Dr. Amelia Kelly. Hello, FIGGI Goddess, and welcome to the My FIGGI Life podcast. We are talking about gaslighting today. Have you been gaslit? Do you have a gas lighter in your life? And have you been a victim of this? If you don't know what it is, this is also the episode for you. We're talking to Dr. Amelia Kelly. So stay tuned and we'll see you soon.
[00:00:59.900] - Intro
Welcome, goddess, to Your sacred space. This is My FIGGI Life podcast, where we openly discuss life's wins and losses on our journeys to self-discovery. This is your best life. This is your FIGGI life. And now here is your host, Jeanne.
[00:01:26.180] - Jeanne
Welcome back, Goddess. I cannot wait to introduce you to our beautiful guest today, Dr. Amelia Kelly. She is a trauma-informed therapist, author, podcaster, and researcher. Her specialties include art therapy, internal family systems, EMDR, and brainspotting, as well as being a certified meditation and yoga instructor. Her work focuses on women's issues, empowering survivors of abuse and relationship trauma, highly sensitive persons, motivation, healthy living, and adult ADHD. She is currently a psychology professor at Yorkville University, as well as a nationally-recognized relationship expert featured on XM Radio's Doctor channel on The Psychiatry Show. Her private practice is part of the traumatic stress research consortium at the Kinsey Institute. She is the author of Gaslighting Recovery for Women: The Complete Guide to recognizing manipulation and achieving freedom from emotional abuse, as well as co-author of What I Wish I Knew: Surviving and Thriving After an Abusive Relationship, and a contributing author for psychology today, as well as The Highly Sensitive Refuge. Her work has been featured in Teenvogue, Yahoo News, Lifehacker, and The Insider. Welcome to the My FIGGI Life podcast, Dr. Kelly.
[00:02:44.350] - Dr. Kelly
Thank you so much for having me.
[00:02:45.740] - Jeanne
This is said to be such a great conversation. I will give you a little bit of my background. FIGGI goddess, if you tune into the FIGGI Life podcast, you know a lot about my history. But for me, in my environment, I grew up with a lot of narcissistic abuse and gaslighting, unfortunately, in relationships that were in a highly trust relationship to me, so parents, grandparents. The thing about gaslighting for me is that I never knew that this had taken place. I knew the word, and a lot of times, gaslighting goes with narcissism or narcissistic abuse. I knew the word narcissism. I knew about a movie called Gaslit, but it never in my life, rang true for me. It was only really three years ago when I was seeing a spiritual mentor, and she told me to read a book about gaslighting, narcissistic abuse, where this became such a moment of, Oh, my gosh, wow! I would have never thought that this was what was happening to me. I always thought it was me. I have bad self-esteem. I'm the problem. I have low self-confidence. I don't love myself. I don't accept myself. As you know, I was sexually abused by my grandfather for quite some time when I was younger and sexually assaulted as a young adult.
[00:04:11.260] - Jeanne
Even with this, when I realized that this was happening or had happened to me, I felt so mentally, for me, honestly, mentally raped and incredibly violated, and angry. I can't wait to get into this conversation with you. If you're wondering about narcissistic abuse and narcissism, check out our episode with Dr. Chelsey Brooke-Cole, who tells us all about that. We can cover that as well. Today, we're only talking about gaslighting. Dr. Kelly, tell us, before we start a deeper conversation, what is gaslighting? And more importantly, maybe what is it not? Because we hear this word in society so many times, and I'm fearful that that's diminishing the experience a true victim is having.
[00:04:59.790] - Intro
That is a wonderful point. One of the things that is so important to me when we talk about gaslighting is deciphering what it is not as well. What it is is a form of emotional abuse, where someone who is gaslighting another is trying to instill doubt, confusion, a disconnection from a sense of reality, and often disconnection from a sense of the self, that inner voice, what we know to be true. And so confusion and uncertainty is the hallmark of gaslighting. What is not, however, and this can be confusing for some folks, is it is not someone being upset with you. It is not someone disagreeing with you. It is not someone having a different opinion. It's not someone even seeing a specific situation differently because maybe their filter, their life experiences, make them see a circumstance differently than you do. I think that's where it can get very confusing and the word might be misused or overused is when we weaponize the word gaslighting just because I don't like what is happening or what this person is saying. It's really important to understand that gaslighting is intended to control someone else by changing their perception of what is happening in their world and in.
[00:06:18.510] - Jeanne
Their mind. Even as you say that, it feels like I have a knife going into my heart because that to me, I think, was the worst moment. That moment where I realized that somebody had in a very close relationship of trust to me had made me doubt my own reality. How dare you do something like that because it affects you. We will talk about this as we go through the episode, but it still affects me. That part that you're doubting your reality and you're doubting whether you remembered something correctly or said something or didn't say something or were you wrong or weren't you, it is brutal. B brutal to go through that. You say in your book, The need for power is the most common motive for gaslighting. This was really interesting to me because, again, my experience with this is twofold. One, the abuser, which was my grandfather who had sexually abused me, and then my parents. All people that you grow up being in awe of and placing on a pedestal and blindly trusting because that's the way it's supposed to be. Even in my generation, you were told, respect your elders, respect your mother, respect your father.
[00:07:38.440] - Jeanne
But I never in this instant felt like any one of them was needing power. To me, it always felt like they were the victim. They were always asking for more, wanting more. They were always hurt. They were always the ones that were wronged. When you said the sentence, I was like, I really have to ask you about that because I suppose then also goes about how you start defining power.
[00:08:01.210] - Intro
True. Well, if you think about someone who is insecure, you had said narcissism earlier, and while not all gaslighters are narcissistic, it is a driving force for gaslighting often. So when we consider someone like that, what normally drives narcissistic behaviors that are underneath the gaslighting is insecurity, is feeling like something could get taken away from you, i. E, it could be power. It could be a sense of being able to control or dictate how a relationship goes, how a dynamic goes. It doesn't even have to be someone that's necessarily in a position of power. But you actually just highlighted how they were in a way, though, because you were saying, I was supposed to trust them. They were supposed to be a safe space. They had these roles. And so in a way, that is a place of power. And for a child to have the power within them where they can go and say something is not right. I am being hurt. I am being abused. It really does take someone in that parental role or in that position of power to be willing to be vulnerable, to be willing to be wrong, to be willing to know that maybe they missed something, maybe they didn't know something.
[00:09:24.790] - Intro
And that takes courage and honesty. Whereas depending on family dynamics, for instance, and I'm so honored and amazed that you share so much of that experience with your listeners and with the people that you're helping because that's huge. But without knowing all the dynamics of your specific family, there can be cultural systems within a family that if you were to, not you specifically, but a child, for instance, that is abused, were to disrupt that system by saying something is wrong and something is not okay and I'm being hurt, it demands almost like a dismantling of whether it be patriarchy, whether it be hierarchy or cultural expectations in a family. And that can throw the whole power dynamic off.
[00:10:11.480] - Jeanne
It really can because it's so difficult, I think, especially when you're so young and you're not really at that emotional point of development yet where you're okay to question things, especially from somebody in a position of trusting authority to you. I think that's why it took me so long to realize this. Like I said, I only realized it three years ago. I think it's because for me, it was normal. I didn't have any other examples. I thought all parents were like this. I thought all grandfathers loved like this. I didn't have any other frame of reference. To me, that was just the way.
[00:10:52.610] - Dr. Kelly
It was. There has to be, sorry, just in reference to what you're saying, there almost has to be a certain form of almost unconscious or subtle gaslighting to even set that up, that belief.
[00:11:11.540] - Jeanne
You talk about the different types of gaslighting, but before that, you say that the gas lighter works on establishing and increasing that trauma bond. Can you take us through what that trauma bond is and maybe give us an example so that we understand exactly what that looks like?
[00:11:29.650] - Dr. Kelly
Well, it can be different depending on relationship, of course. When we were talking about family, for instance, the bond is technically already there from the beginning. You are family. You don't get to choose family all the time. But there becomes a point where speaking of a child, for instance, that they can grow and decide, This is not okay. This is unhealthy, and I need to un cleave from the family and go into the world on my own and be my own person. But if there's a trauma bond in place that can be riddled with guilt and uncertainty and, Well, that's not what you do. You don't leave your family. You don't not talk to your parents. That's just not okay. And so that sometimes beliefs can be what keep us bonded, expectations.
[00:12:20.760] - Jeanne
Things like, Look what I've done for you. How dare you do this to me? Do you know what you've put me through and how you've made me suffer? Those...
[00:12:30.450] - Dr. Kelly
Yes. And you know what? When you just said, Look what you made me do, or, Look what you put me through, that is gaslighting right there. Oh, wow. Because without any actual proof or without any actual... For instance, it's very different if someone says, That time when you said this thing to me, that hurt me. When there's proof, when there's something to it, but if it's just an overriding blanket of guilt and there's no actual story, there's nothing to hold it up, usually that's the foundation of gaslighting someone. One of the common... This actually came up in a mental health collective that I get to do monthly. We were talking about healthy boundary setting with family. One of the women in the group said something along the lines of, I always felt bad about how I treated my mom because of her abuse. Or like, there was this guilt about her reaction to her mother. It was within that same vein of, Well, you made me do this to you. When in reality, when someone is emotionally or physically abusive to you or neglectful, you are not doing something to the abuser. You are reacting to their behavior.
[00:13:48.010] - Jeanne
But when you're in it, you don't know it.
[00:13:50.770] - Dr. Kelly
It's hard to feel that. You don't know it.
[00:13:52.430] - Jeanne
That's the trauma bond. You're so convinced. You talk about the seven types of gas lighting. I'd like for you to take us through that. I'll tell you now, for me, the withholding and the countering, even as I'm looking at my notes, I made countering big and bold. Can you take us through the different types of gas lighting? I know it's a short podcast, so even if you can just give us an overview, because at the end of the show, we will give links to your brand new book coming out, and our audience can enjoy reading it in detail.
[00:14:30.590] - Dr. Kelly
The seven common gaslighting techniques that I did highlight in my book, and as you mentioned, there's so many ways to give examples of all these, but just a brief overview. First, you have denial, which can sound like things like, I never did that, I never said that, or thought that, or wanted that, is just complete outright ignoring of what you even heard the person say. Number two, withholding. This one's a little interesting because it's like someone is minimizing or diminishing who you are by making you doubt that you even know what you're talking about. You really need to speak up. You don't make any sense. You talk too fast. It sounds a lot like criticism, and it's meant to weaken what.
[00:15:16.520] - Jeanne
You're saying. For me, it was always, the world doesn't owe you anything. You're so sensitive. Your language, please, school, the podcast, and the audience listening. But for me, when I was crying, I was always told, Why are you pissing out of your eyes? Those things made me feel like something is wrong with me. I'm too sensitive. I'm too this. I'm crying too much.
[00:15:41.430] - Dr. Kelly
Well, and actually, that goes straight into trivializing. Withholding is almost as if you are taking the very moment and pulling their power away, pulling the power of your statement away. Whereas trivializing, which I think you were just speaking about, why are you so needy? Why are you so emotional, hysterical, ridiculous, dramatic, negative? So trivializing is making you feel like you don't have validity in your feelings. Whereas withholding is almost like you don't have power or certainty in what you're saying. Diverting is where the person will redirect and confuse you. You can't believe everything you read, hear, see. I would never believe that because you saw it on WebMD. That's a common diverting tactic. I will say be careful with medical gaslighting. Diverting is a technique that happens often with medical gaslighting. When a provider makes us doubt our own feelings about our symptoms or about the concerns we have about our medical wellness, and they say, You can't believe everything you read on the internet. That is medical gaslighting through the form of diverting. Wow.
[00:16:59.280] - Jeanne
I think we've all been in that situation. I literally think we've all have an example of that.
[00:17:06.230] - Dr. Kelly
But you do have a right to research and you do have a right to bring in the information that you have learned. Always. If someone, a provider, makes you feel you don't, then that's a good sign they're probably not the most supportive provider. Another example is countering, where a good example is saying, You totally do not remember what happened to you. You have such a bad memory. This is what happened. With countering, it's, I'm going to doubt you, and then I'm going to give you what you actually are thinking. They're trying to fill in the spaces for you despite what you know to.
[00:17:44.220] - Jeanne
Be true. And that is a hard position to be in, especially when you're young and you're vulnerable and you're open to so many things. I think that's why it hit me so hard when I realized this three years ago because it's really difficult to explain. I have panic disorder, and I've talked about what it feels like having a panic attack. But this to me, when I had that realization was that feeling of helplessness when you feel and you honestly believe you're going crazy. It is the worst position to be in because you doubt yourself to such a degree. To get yourself out of that, I mean, it feels like almost an impossibility.
[00:18:28.820] - Dr. Kelly
You're so correct. Because if you think about the term ego, we need ego strength to feel connected to the foundation and the root system of who we are. There's so many ways to say that. You can say soul, you can say self, you can say seed of the self, you can say ego strength. But these all are the foundation to things like self-esteem, self-worth, self-concept. And so breaking down the basic principles of that makes it more likely someone else can control you. I love that you brought up childhood because in a way, as a parent, if I'm trying to teach my child how to be polite, for instance, I do have to, in a way, control their reactions. Maybe they don't want to say thank you, or maybe they want to bolt from the table without grabbing your plate, something like that. I will counter what they're saying, and I will try to guide them. In a way, I am trying to sustain some level of control over their behaviors, but it's done with love and it's done with support, and it's done with also encouraging them to sustain their individuality with empathy. There's empathy and compassion behind it.
[00:19:45.010] - Dr. Kelly
Whereas if someone is countering and trying to insert their beliefs or what they think you should think and it makes you feel out of sorts, it makes you feel like you don't have contact with the self, makes you feel insecure, that's gaslighting as opposed to parenting, if that makes sense. The next one is stereotyping. This one I found very important to include in this book because this book is geared towards women. Anyone can benefit, honestly, from reading it. But women, especially because of certain patriarchal systems and ways that we've been controlled for centuries, stereotyping was a fabulous way to gaslight a woman historically, and we are constantly fighting against that. Examples, they won't believe you because they never believe women when they report abuse.
[00:20:36.930] - Jeanne
Yes. My background is in international human rights and criminal laws, and I have seen this so many times with victims of assault, especially in developing countries, it's like the go-to thing. The worst of it all is it's not just the abuser, it's the help network. It's the police officer. It's the judge. It's the lawyer. Honestly, you don't have proof. Nobody's going to believe you.
[00:21:05.830] - Dr. Kelly
It's so true. This is very scary, this form of gaslighting, because I do think that it keeps people quiet about their experiences and about what they've gone through. It almost makes the individual, and this doesn't just have to apply to women, this is very common in racialized gaslighting. If we think about the concept of the angry black woman, that's gaslighting. That is racial gaslighting right there. Minimizing their experience of what they feel and what they want to say just because of whether it be culture, ethnicity, that should never diminish what someone is actually feeling and what they have to say. In my opinion, stereotyping is a big part of these more microaggressions that happen for many groups of people. The final one that I highlighted was deflecting. This one is very... I noticed this one happens a lot in intimate relationships where maybe one of the partners wants to talk about something that's really important to them or that they're concerned about. The other person deflects with, Why are you always bringing this up when I get home from work? You are so pushy. Why can't you just let me relax? So while done in the right way, that could look like a boundary like, Hey, I would rather us have these really intense conversations when I can relax a little bit after work, that's okay.
[00:22:31.690] - Dr. Kelly
That's a healthy boundary. When it's not healthy is when it's used to never allow the other person to speak their mind, when it's used to gag them or quiet them. There's never any flexibility or room for when can we have these serious conversations?
[00:22:51.720] - Jeanne
When I went through the book, I completed the ACE and the trauma bond question list, and I scored a seven on both. When you read the book, FIGGI Potter, be sure to do these questionnaires. It's really, really eye-opening. But can you just tell us, in light of what we've just discussed, what is that ACE score and what is that trauma bond score? I think we already know the trauma bond score. It's related to the trauma bond you had already explained to us. But what is the ACE score?
[00:23:20.750] - Dr. Kelly
Ace stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences, and it is a scale that actually, interestingly, came out of a medical study that was first looking into obesity and mortality rates and health issues. What they started to find was that there were connections between traumas and mortality and health issues in the future. And so the study became grand scale, thousands and tens of thousands of participants. And they found that as you get above, I believe it's four, so yours was on the higher end, as you get above a certain number, it starts to impact your health scores. It starts to impact your health outcomes. Now, I want to be very clear about this. It is not a set and stone sentence. Just because you have a higher score doesn't mean that you will surely contract diseases or have certain health issues. But it is informative in the fact that if you have a higher score, it is that much more imperative that you engage in holistic health or traditional health, self-care, learning about your body, learning about ways to metabolize the trauma that impacts your body. I don't know if you've read the book What My Bones Know by Stephany Foo.
[00:24:41.820] - Dr. Kelly
It's amazing if.
[00:24:43.250] - Jeanne
You have not read it. No, it is literally on my night stand. Oh, my God. It is my next read.
[00:24:50.510] - Dr. Kelly
It is so good. We have a couple of serendipitous things happening today, but it's so well written and so good and informative. And she highlighted this really interesting study that was showing that if a female experiences trauma during their luteal phase of their cycle, they are more likely to have female-oriented medical issues in the future, such as endometriosis.
[00:25:17.730] - Jeanne
Yeah, I struggled a lot because of endometriosis.
[00:25:21.900] - Dr. Kelly
Okay, so yeah, because the inflammation response after a trauma and after stress. That's a lot of what they're seeing. It's that, but it's also when you've experienced more traumas, there can be things in your life structure that are not available that would help you have better health outcomes. Maybe you weren't equipped or given the narrative that it's okay to take care of yourself on a daily basis, that you deserve self-care, that you deserve health. If you're in a constant survival mode, that's not going to be at the forefront. That can also affect your health outcomes.
[00:25:59.750] - Jeanne
That was a really interesting thing for me to think through. It's just that I understand, and please, FIGGI Goddess, as always, talk to your medical healthcare professional. Reach out to your support group. Talk to your therapist or your doctor. But it was interesting to do this questionnaire or both of them, because for me personally, it's eye-opening and it takes you back a little bit to be asked those questions so forthright. Because these are things that you tend to hide away in your mind. To see that in black and white on paper, you're like, Oh, wow. You almost feel guilty that you have to say yes. You're doing something wrong. That was quite an intense experience for me to go through that list.
[00:26:47.490] - Dr. Kelly
Sure. Yes. I mean, it's only a 10-question questionnaire, but each question, yes, each question is so direct, so specific, and it really does demand that you go backwards in time and get there and remember those things. I validate that. It's hard.
[00:27:14.080] - Jeanne
You also talk about the stages of gaslighting, which I also want you to take us through, but there are many. Again, I know you can only give us the highlights, and our goddesses can enjoy the full detail of it when they get to your book. But this, again, brings up something interesting to me because when I went through the stages and I read through them, as I said, I only really realized that this had been happening to me three years ago. Even when I read through the stages and I think back to when I connected the dots, I thought it started with stage three or four. But reading it like this, I was like, Oh, wow, there was a stage one and two, and everything lit up to how these stages keep building up and increasing. It's like a building block that's going on. Can you just take us through that really broadly? It's not something that just happened. It's a thought-out, calculated process.
[00:28:12.410] - Dr. Kelly
Absolutely. As far as when you were saying going straight to stage three, sometimes it can feel like that because depending on someone's own past traumas, they may be targeted by a person who is likely to gaslight or likely to be emotionally abusive. In a way, you might have already experienced some of stage one and two in other relationships first. This will make more sense as I unpack this. Does that make sense?
[00:28:38.690] - Jeanne
Yes, but please unpack it for our audience. Okay.
[00:28:41.940] - Dr. Kelly
Stage one of gaslighting is where a false narrative needs to be created within the target or within the, I don't like the word victim, but within the victim. At this stage, the gaslighter is going to take anything and everything they can to over exaggerate or to accuse about, almost to see where it lands, to see how much can I start to degrade this person's inner narrative to begin with. This doesn't mean it's escalating to big topics yet. It could be something, I mean, in my book, I talked about something as simple as you're always late. You obviously don't care about me. Kind of a very accusatory statement. Now, if you think about what I was just saying that if you already have been in a relationship where someone treated you that way, it's not going to take as long for a gaslighter to break down that first stage. Unless you listen to podcasts like this and you read books and you are equipping yourself. I never want people to feel like you're just this open target at all times because you can also start to notice these things. The next stage is repetition. Think about a marketing scheme.
[00:29:54.260] - Dr. Kelly
In order for us to buy into certain things, we need to see things repeatedly. We need to hear it repeatedly. It's like a scaffolding of information. And so in this stage, after that first narrative is being created, the gaslighter will continue this cyclically to make sure that they are starting to be able to control you. Now, once they have instilled these initial doubts with lies and exaggeration, and then stage two, they use repetition, now you're primed for stage three, which was where you had said you felt like sometimes you started. And this is when things become escalated. This can happen very quickly. This is when those tactics that we were talking about, like denial, withholding, countering, all these things are going to be happening at lightning speed during this stage. The gaslighter will likely deny responsibility for anything that focuses on them being to blame. They are going to make sure that they are the ones that inform reality. Unfortunately, at this stage, what they're going to escalate to or what they're going to gaslight to, there's really no limit. The next stage is where they start to really wear you down. At this point, gaslighters are going to try to sustain control by stripping away your identity.
[00:31:10.580] - Dr. Kelly
No longer is it just about that initial narrative that they're breaking down and those lies and the withholding, but now they're going to target who you are. They want to make sure that things that you believe in or that you align with only match their own. What that creates then is going to be the final stage that what really creates that trauma bond you were asking about, which is codependency. The end of gaslighting and not the end, we would hope it'd be, there's a quick ending to it, but the end of these stages of creating the trauma bond with gaslighting is codependency. The gaslighter will leverage their power. They will threaten to take away things, threaten to take away love, threaten to take away relationships. At this point, your reality is their reality. And so for them to say, I'm going to take all of that away from you can be deeply terrifying. After that, to keep things going, though, I just want to say that this continues, though, because you're not going to stick around unless there is hope. And so while the end of the escalating is at stage five, at stage six, the gaslighter is going to have to sweeten the pot a little and show you what you fell in love with in the first place.
[00:32:28.660] - Dr. Kelly
I realize I'm referencing a romantic relationship right now. We could take these stages for all relationships. As a result, the victim or the target is going to start questioning their gut instincts. If you actually referenced my first book, What I Wish I Knew, I talked about.
[00:32:43.470] - Jeanne
The stages of- That's actually the book I read three years ago. Oh, my goodness. Yes. When I started with my spiritual mentor, I was having a lot of issues that I'm sure we will get to with negative self-concept. And she told me, Listen, I think you should read this book. So that is actually the book that led to this epiphany.
[00:33:06.360] - Dr. Kelly
Oh, my goodness, that's amazing. I will definitely have to share that with Kindle Land. That'll mean a lot to her. I mean, at that point, we highlighted it pretty in-depth in that book that there's going to be this honeymoon period that has to exist in order for you to stay in the relationship. Then when that happens, when there's such an inconsistent love, withholding love, love, withholding love, that's when the gaslighter has full domination and control. Isn't that wild how many stages there are and how confusing it can feel? It can almost feel confusing hearing about it. Imagine experiencing it.
[00:33:43.280] - Jeanne
It feels to me like you're standing in the eye of a storm and you don't know which way is up or down or left or right. It's so confusing. If you're so confused at your core about what your reality is, it becomes really difficult for you to be in a good space to be positive about specific things like, I'm okay with my body, I'm okay with who I am. I'm successful. I'm a good person. Because you're so ingrained in this hurricane that's just going on around you. It's so difficult to see through it. Thank you for listening, FIGGI Goddess. Remember to tune in next week when we discuss part two with Dr. Amelia Kelly, and we really dive deep into how to heal from these techniques you can use to heal from it and what the road to recovery is going to look like.