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Shena Tubbs, Relational Trauma and Love Addiction Expert, Coach, and LPC, joins us to talk about how early trauma manifests in our adult relationships. Persistent love addiction/love avoidant adult relationships are often a recreation of early trauma, of seeking out people that would do the same, in hopes that it will turn out differently. Healing begins with getting the language and words around family trauma and what did/didn’t happen and then practicing the skill of loving yourself, which carries over into how you do relationships.
Shena is the host of the Black Girls Heal podcast and the founder of Black Girls Heal, an online community dedicated to helping women of color break the cycles of unavailable relationships & love addiction, heal unresolved childhood trauma and improve their self love to make way for the love they want.
EPISODE NOTES:
Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) is just as heavy of a trauma as other forms of abuse often leading to self-doubt and self-loathing. It manifests as feeling not enough, not chosen, being easily forgotten, needing someone to save them from that feeling.
Early trauma manifests in our adult relationships. Recreating a cycle from childhood, it's common to use the fantasy of relationships or the fantasy of love to self-medicate.
The pain of childhood is often played down and rationalized as adults. Those with difficult childhoods often forget/overlook their own pain, and don't have the words to express that they want to be cherished, seen, validated.
Every human being needs to know and have internalized the message that they are not defective and have value just for existing — this helps each of us feel whole and secure.
Healing is about living in more connected relationships. Healing begins with seeing your trauma and then practicing the skill of loving yourself, which carries over into how you do relationships.
Shena defines love addiction and love avoidance, both of which are on are based on attachment/developmental trauma, and are recreated in adult love relationships.
The unveiling of the wounds underneath is so painful which is why people don’t do it, often we miss the fact we struggle with this is because we interchange it one form of addiction/intensity/lack of control for another. (work/shopping/food/love/sex/substances/etc).
Not-enoughness drives underneath, the recovery work is in learning that we are the ones we're waiting for.
Boundaries aren't about saying no, it's about having qualifications to your yes. Boundaries offer an invitation. I want to be in relationship with you and this is what I need.
Grief around what’s been missed is both what we’re fearful of and the portal to healing. The feeling of joy/pain — connected to pain of what is, while also holding onto the joy of what’s opening.
We also discuss the impact of Generational/Racial Trauma: implicit and explicit abandonment and trauma passed down within families. Over incarceration of Black bodies and the overkilling of Black bodies results in the disruption of the family unit. Black mothers teach children to survive and be resilient in this racist world and often have to compartmentalized their own emotions, part of what gets passed down is the struggle to connect to emotions.
The power of being able to discern “is this my voice, or is this the voice of someone else?” — to stop blocking the emotion you have to lean into and understand the pain to be able to sense is this old or is this about my adult relationship and either let it go, forgive/release, bless ancestor, or use it to make your next decision, to form a new boundary.
Learning to give to yourself what you’re asking your partner to give you —it’s not their responsibility because they can’t, or even if they could — part of your healing is about learning to give it to yourself because part of your resentment is around being so dependent on other people to be a bridge for you.
RESOURCES:
Find Shena Tubbs’ Podcast, Recovery School, Self-Love Intensive, and Mini Program 'The Healed and Loved Woman', online at BlackGirlsHeal.org
Learn more about Rebecca’s connectfulness counseling practice at connectfulness.com/work-with-me and explore her upcoming online offerings:
Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp
October 24-25,2020
This is an authorized presentation of Terry Real's Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp. Open to individuals, couples and therapists. Through a combination of lecture, role-play, small group exercises and personal work, this workshop will help you to attain the relationships you want in your life.
Supporting Your Relational Self
6-week-online-course focuses on your relationship to Self, other intimate relations, and will help participants cultivate practices to sustain during these chaotic times filled with pandemic, uprising and beyond. Based on the teachings of Pia Mellody, we'll explore core issues that affect us all in relationships and the skills that will expand your Self & relational care practices.
