What if You’re The Red Flag? And What Do You Do About It?

This is not a podcast about being broken, although you may have been. This is a podcast about strength for women who find themselves in difficult relationships, including that sometimes difficult one with yourself. We'll look at your relationship through a lens of psychology, faith, and a little dash of my own kind of feminism. We're not fixing them. We're fixing you. And that changes everything. Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. Save yourself, heal your relationships. Listen in. Hey there. Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe. Today's topic is, what if you're the red flag? How do you know? And you've just got me today, a solo episode. I feel like it's been a while since I've done a solo episode. So before we get started, my win and my fail. We'll start with my fails because it was kind of a doozy. I had a whole morning of fails. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, apparently, last Thursday, thinking that we had our normal homeschool group and that I had a client I needed to take in the car, which I often do client sessions in the car, and I needed to take my dogs to the groomers. And so Siggy and I were racing because she also had a paper due that day. And so we were working on editing the paper, racing to get ready. We needed to drop the dog off, dogs off at the groomers before we went to our homeschool co-op. And so we got out of the house running a little bit late as usual, got to the groomers, both of us wrangled the dogs in, and the groomer looks at me and says, your appointment's tomorrow. I'm like, oh man. And I looked at my calendar, my calendar said it was today, but you know, things happen. And so I did not have time to take the dogs back home before I had to get Siggy to her homeschool program and also do my session. So I was just like, okay, I'm just gonna have to keep the dogs in the car while I do my session. I'll drive them after I take Sig to, um, our homeschool program. I'll drive them back to the house. So we got to our, the church where we have our homeschool program and the parking lot was empty. Apparently we had no school that day. And for some reason, probably because I do not check my emails enough, I was unaware. So I didn't have time to go back home to do my session. So my poor daughter had to hang out outside while I did my session in the car. Meanwhile, my dogs pooped in the back seat. Never happens. Thank God I had my seat cover or they would've destroyed my car. But anyway, my dogs did that because they're dogs and my day was off. And that's how my morning started. Lots of fails, all because— I don't know. I got my calendar messed up and didn't check my emails. I usually don't have days like that anymore because I'm usually pretty good about my calendar, but something happened. Got things on the wrong date. It does tell me I need to double check and double check and check my email, but that was my fail. The win of that though is that I still got all the things done I needed to get done. Okay, so my win though. You guys, this is an amazing win for me. My editor emailed me the COVID design for my book, and I was in tears when I looked at it. The reason why is because unbeknownst to my editor, the graphic designer, I am obsessed with the Tree of Life. You know, when I went to Greece, it was really cool because everybody I ran into and I told them my name, They were so excited to tell me, do you know that's a Greek word and your name means the God kind of life? Which of course I knew because my dad named me that specifically, but it was so cool to see so many people identify with that. And the Tree of Life, for some reason, just has this really deep meaning for me. I even have a tree with roots tattooed on my back, the only tattoo I have. And the graphic designer in my book created a tree of life on many of the pages, most of the beginning of the chapters. It is amazing. And it was just the biggest win ever. I just felt like it was a little wink from God saying, I got you. I got you. I know the words you wrote in this book. I know who they are supposed to touch. And this book is a representation of you. And so, for me, that was the biggest— that's the biggest win ever. And of course, I wrote my editor back and I was like, oh my goodness! And I told her the whole story and how connected I am with the Tree of Life and how perfect this design was for the book. So, maybe you will see it one day if you buy my book. Okay, on to the most important stuff. I wanted to do a podcast today about What if you're the red flag and how do you know? Because you guys know what red flags are, right? There's, they're that warning sign, those things that you see in people. Um, maybe you're starting a relationship with them or maybe they're just in, you know, you're already married to them. Um, but they're red flags, meaning they are kind of usually unhealthy patterns or behavior that someone does that tells you, mm, that's going to be a problem in the relationship, or, mm, that is a problem in the relationship. Maybe I wanna avoid that, or maybe that's something I need to address. Either way, we're often thinking of looking outside of ourselves for red flags, right? Make sure we're avoiding red flags, make sure they're not the red flag. But if you think about it, it can't always be them, right? Sometimes we, and I use myself, sometimes we're the red flag. Sometimes we have those qualities that other people need to go, hmm. That could be a problem, and we need to be aware of that, and we need to own it. So I know these are not easy things for me to point out, and no, it's not because you're toxic. No, it's not because you're broken beyond repair, but it's because you, like many other people, may be operating from a place of unhealed pain, and you don't even know it. So stay with me. This is not an accusation. This is an invitation. To step into a deeper kind of healing and a deeper kind of awareness. I coined the term complex shame because I know how this deep tangled shame can show up in women's lives, especially in high-functioning, overachieving women who are strong on the outside, but are sometimes struggling on the inside. What I do know is that complex shame is sneaky. It can tell you that your worth is tied to your performance, that love must be earned. That your needs are a burden, that if someone leaves you, it must be your fault. And when that shame is running the show, it makes you over-function in relationships, lose yourself trying to keep the peace. You might feel threatened by boundaries, by other people's boundaries, threatened by creating your own. You might use control or caretaking as a way to feel safe. But let's be honest, those behaviors— can look a lot like red flags to someone else. So how do you know if you are the red flag? So I'm gonna give you a few signs that you can think about, reflect on. Don't judge yourself, but just be curious. Do you have a hard time tolerating silence or distance? So if someone pulls back, do you immediately need to do something or reach for control? Maybe you text them, maybe you Maybe you try to fix something, maybe you apologize, maybe you overexplain, maybe you manipulate to get attention. To others, that could feel like emotional pressure. And once again, I know where this comes from. It comes from a place of anxiety. It comes from a place of wanting to fix. It comes from a good place. You want to make things better. But if you recognize that you are not able to sit with someone else's feelings, If you're not able to tolerate silence, if it doesn't feel okay for you to be okay by yourself, even if other people are not okay, that's a red flag. Number 2, you're constantly in crisis or you're drawing attention to your pain. Okay. Once again, this is not me judging you. This is me pointing out places that you can look at your life and say, hmm, do I do that? Am I constantly in crisis? Do I draw attention to my pain? You might do this because you're searching for validation, for love, for connection. You might not be trying to be manipulative, but you've learned that pain is the only way that you can feel seen. And that, my dear friend, can emotionally exhaust people around you. The reality is, is that You can be seen even if you're not in crisis. You yourself are beautiful and interesting and valuable enough, even if you're not creating some big thing around you, or you're not magnifying something that's going on around you. So yes, you could be exhibiting red flags if you're constantly in crisis, and then you might say, but why do I feel like bad things always happen to me? That's a great question. And a really hard, harder question is, what choices do I make in my life that create these problems? Now, I know reality is sometimes storms happen. I mean, I told you my fail from this morning or from this week, right? And we can clearly see I created all of those problems. I wasn't careful enough. I put My appointment's on the wrong date, you know, but it felt like in that moment that all of these bad things were happening to me that day, and they were, but also because of me. And so part of the reason why I do those wins and my fails every week is for me to be able to sit and contemplate and look at myself and go, wait, wait, wait. You're always the common denominator. Lots of things, crises, are happening to you, it actually means you need to make different decisions. And I know that sometimes terrible things happen that are not your fault. Sometimes we're victims of things that we have that are beyond our control. But on the day-to-day, if you're always in crisis, it's you. And like I said, this isn't about judgment. This is just about A wake-up call for us to look at ourselves. Another red flag is that you give advice instead of empathy. I think I can be guilty of this sometimes. You might feel like you're being helpful, but it actually comes across as dismissive or controlling when someone actually just needs to feel heard. And so sometimes, whether it's in my personal life with my friends, my, you know, even as a therapist, I have to constantly remind myself, wait. Maybe they don't need my advice. Maybe they just need me to hear and sit and listen. And sometimes when we talk about this being a red flag, we do this because we don't feel and recognize that our value isn't necessarily in the things that we can offer, like tangible things that we can offer, like advice. Sometimes our value is just in our presence. You don't realize you have an energy. That draws certain people to you, and the people that love you love you. Like, you can just be sitting there with them and listening to them, and that's enough. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves— I'm reminding you— you are enough. You don't always have to do and give and provide for someone in your life in order to have given them a gift. So the next one is you hold grudges or emotionally withdraw instead of speaking up. Okay. Whew. Lots of us are guilty of that one. What happens is that conflict avoidance feels safer and it's always safer in the moment. And that's what I tell myself. And that's what I tell my clients. Yes, in the moment, it's always safer because when you avoid conflict, when you just hold a grudge or you give somebody the cold shoulder, it's so much easier than addressing the thing. But we cannot live a life that only benefits us in the present moment because all we're doing is sabotaging our future, right? So your conflict avoidance, it feels safe, but then it turns into passive-aggressive behavior, which can erode trust in relationships. We do not wanna be people who hold grudges, who emotionally withdraw instead of speaking up, who give people the cold shoulder, who distance ourselves, because that is not healthy for us or anyone else in relationships. So that is definitely a red flag. I think it's a thing that women get taught. I mean, everybody, I guess, in society gets taught it by someone who's done it to them, and then we respond in the same way. And so when you feel that need to emotionally withdraw, when you feel that need to hold a grudge instead of speaking up, tell yourself, I'm going to do the hard thing today. I'm going to say it. And I know I'm scared. I know I'm scared that I'm I might lose the relationship. Sometimes it's easier to go to anger instead of sadness, and sometimes it's easier to be quiet instead of speak the thing. But I'm gonna do the hard thing today because I know the hard thing today is gonna serve me in my future. Another red flag is that you just expect others to know what you need. Oh my goodness. Don't we all wish that the people we love the most in our lives would just Intuitively know how to show up the second we need them, how to say the perfect thing, how to take care of us in all the ways that we need to be taken care of, how to make us feel loved in all of our love languages. Wouldn't that be amazing? It would be. And that's not real life. It's not. And so what happens is we have that, that dream and that fantasy that if they really loved us, they would know what I need. And all that does is set our people up for failure, and it sets us up for failure. Because then when they don't do that, then guess what? Now we tell ourselves they don't really love us, they don't really care, when the reality is they had no idea. I've had people tell me, well, if I have to tell him, then it's not real when he gives it to me. And my answer is, oh yes, it is. Just because you tell somebody what you need doesn't mean they're going to give it to you. When they openly choose to give you the thing That you've told them you need, that's love. That's care. That matters, and it counts. So maybe you're not used to voicing your needs, and so of course you feel hurt and rejected when people don't meet them. But try saying them out loud. Just practice. Start with small ones. Just something little that would be wonderful or nice, or something small that you feel like you need. Just voice it and get in the habit of voicing it and see what happens when your people meet you. Oh, here's a good one. You over-identify with being the strong one. Now, a lot of people on the outside might not see this as a red flag. This is really a red flag for yourself because on the outside it does look admirable. But what happens is it creates emotional walls that push other people away, and then it makes them feel unnecessary. And I see it time and time again. I just had a client who has figured out how to reinforce this for herself. She asks people to do things with the expectation that they will do it at her level. And then when they don't do it the same way that she would do it, she gets hurt and disappointed. And she says, yep, that just confirms I got to do it all myself. It's a lie. It's a lie. But it's actually a lie that you create into the truth, because when you do everything yourself, All the people around you look at you and go, oh, you've got it. You don't need help from me. They're going to go help the people who actually aren't trying to do everything by themselves. And you're going to sit there and go, why does everybody else get help except for me? Because you've been the strong one. Because you have not allowed people to help you. Because you have not allowed people to do the things and do it their way. And maybe not perfectly, but that's actually how people show you they love you is to give you gifts like doing things for you, those acts of service, right? And deep down, we all want it. And so, if you believe you're the strong one and you show up as the strong one, and hey, the title of my podcast is Stronger in the Difficult Places, but, but that doesn't mean you have to be strong all the time, nor does it mean you should be. And so let's not over-identify with being the strong one. Let's be stronger in the necessary places. Let's be stronger in those difficult places, but let's allow other people in. Here's the last one I'm going to talk about, and then I'll, I'll kind of address some other ones. You're reactive instead of responsive. Now, when shame happens, when something happens in a relationship and you feel shame or you feel bad about it, your nervous system goes into this fight, flight, or fawn response, right? And so what happens is the fight response is pretty strong and you might lash out. Or you might shut people down, or you might people-please in ways that confuse or overwhelm yourself and others. I had a friend that was just talking to me and she said, you know, I don't know why I do this, but sometimes when I really don't like somebody, I go out of my way to please them. And that has something to do with your history and your trauma and your shame. And, you know, that's something for you to work out for yourself, but what we don't want to be is reactive. And it's hard because sometimes these reactions are a knee-jerk response. Things have flown out of my mouth, you guys, in ways that I have been appalled at what came out of my mouth. It was probably the truth, unfortunately. Truth meaning, in some way, shape, or form, I felt it, but it was because I was being reactive and I didn't allow myself to pause, and words came out that I didn't intend to say. And those words you can never get back. I imagine myself sometimes reaching for a word that flies out of my mouth like, no! But it's already out there. And so what we want to try to be is responsive, which means, okay, we have an internal reaction, but we don't respond immediately. We don't react immediately to that internal reaction. We let it sit for a minute. Because I can promise you, if you let it sit for a minute, you're going to start to see it in a very different light, one that you cannot see from your knee-jerk emotional And my little practice of that is when something is said to me or something happens that overwhelms me, maybe I just feel anger burning up, or I feel some kind of indignation, or I want to say something, I just stare at it or something in that direction for a minute. I take a few breaths and I tell myself, hmm, let me give a 360 to this one. Let me look at all angles. Because when you start to look at all angles, usually our reaction, right? Our reactive responses are very personal. They're very one-sided. We can't see anything else. But when we take the time to think, huh, let me give this a 360. Number one, you're already putting distance between that thing and the words that come out of your mouth. And number two, you're allowing yourself to see it in ways that you weren't able to see it when you were being strictly reactive. So I'm gonna read off a few other red flags. You're the giver, the fixer, but deep down you feel unsafe when you are vulnerable. It feels great to be able to listen to other people's stories, be the container for somebody else, but when it comes time for you to give, oh, that doesn't feel right. That's— that feels too scary. That's a red flag. Look into that one. You deserve to be heard, loved, cared for, held, seen, just like everybody else. Another one, you take responsibility for other people's feelings. Now this is codependency. And a lot of times we think that this is kind of an empath thing and, oh, I'm so sensitive. No, you're just trying to control. And a lot of people don't think of codependency as controlling, but codependency is controlling. And what we're doing Is we are trying to control other people's feelings so that we feel good. So we are hypervigilant and we pay attention to how is, how does this person feel? How can I assuage their feelings? How can I preempt this conversation I'm gonna have with them so it doesn't create this thing that's going to affect me? But when you take responsibility for other people's feelings, you are constantly doing a dance and you're twisting yourself up in a pretzel and it is not healthy. Those are not your feelings to control. You control yours and you sit with the uncomfortable feelings of allowing other people to have theirs that are different from yours. Ooh, another red flag is when you're uncomfortable when things are peaceful. You know, a lot of people don't talk about this and then they go about just creating drama so they feel a little bit more comfortable. I have had a couple of clients actually recognize this in themselves, and I hope That if you notice this in yourself, that you start to pay attention to it and go, hmm, hmm. Because if you're uncomfortable when things are peaceful, then you're going to have a drive to create chaos. And we don't want to do that. And so I think instead of thinking, how can I be more comfortable when things are peaceful? What I want you to say is, how can I just sit with my feelings, even though this feels really uncomfortable, even though this feels scary when things are peaceful, because I'm waiting for the draw, the— The next shoe to drop, or even when it just feels boring when things are peaceful because it just doesn't feel exciting, or if I feel sad when things are peaceful because it gives me time to focus on the things I haven't processed. There are plenty of reasons why you may feel uncomfortable when it's peaceful, but you need to look at that and you need to feel, allow yourself to feel those feelings because it's only through walking through Those uncomfortable feelings that we get to the other side. It doesn't work when you push them down. It doesn't work when we bury them. It doesn't work when we project them outside of ourselves. It's when we allow them to sit and we process them and we recognize that, oh, okay. Yeah, I can have that feeling. I see it. I see that sadness. I see that jealousy. I see that anger. I see that frustration. I see that fear. I see it, and I'm going to sit with it. And I know that it won't stay forever, and I probably know what it's about, or maybe I don't, but I'm going to become curious about it, and I'm going to sit with it. And when you're able to do that with these uncomfortable feelings over time, then all of a sudden, peace becomes peace. The last one I'm going to talk about is when you stir the pot. You pick a fight, or you sabotage intimacy. So we're talking about that actively avoidant person in relationships, and that is definitely a red flag. When you don't feel comfortable sitting in emotional intimacy, it's the very same thing about peace, right? When it feels scary to you to be vulnerable, or it feels scary for you for someone else to be vulnerable, or it feels scary for you for someone to rely on you. That's a red flag that you want to look at because health exists in relationships in that middle uninteresting place. And I say uninteresting, meaning, you know, if we, there's no spike on the graph where we're in that beautiful plateau and that's where health exists. That's where intimacy develops. And yeah, we can have some really beautiful spikes on top of that. But if we are not able to sit with each other, be open with each other, then it's hard to foster true health in relationships. Now, I also want to recognize, and I need to say, because I have so many women who listen to this podcast who are in my practice, who are in very unhealthy relationships, and some of these things are not available to you. I want to honor that. It's not your fault that you can't make it work. It's not your fault that you show up and you try to implement all of these skills and tools that maybe your therapist, if I'm your therapist, I give you, or you hear in podcasts, books, whatever. The reality is, is that it does take 2 people in a relationship, right? It takes 2 people to be intentional in some way, shape, or form in order for the relationship to have any kind of health and to be able to move forward in a healthy way. And yet, and still, You can only control your side of the ship. And so what I'm not saying is that if you address these red flags and you start to apply some of these tools, that it's going to fix your relationship. What I can say is that it will fix your relationship with yourself. What I can say is that when you change, other people in your system have to change. But the reality is that there are some relationships that will not move forward in health because the other person is not in a place of wanting to do that. But you can make your relationship with yourself better. You can make your relationship with other people better when you stay in your lane, when you address your things, and when you don't try to control them. The good news is that if you see any of these red flags in yourself, you don't have to stay there. When you start healing your relationship with yourself, When you untangle the shame, when you stop performing and you allow yourself to start being, then you stop needing to control. You stop overgiving. You stop trying to earn love that was always meant to be yours. You stop being the red flag and you start being the safe place for yourself and for other people in your relationship. So I want to leave you with a simple reflection today. Where am I operating from fear or shame instead of wholeness? Just sit with that. Journal about it. Pray about it. And know this: healing is not about shame. Healing is about truth. And truth, we all know, the truth is what sets you free. Thank you for spending this time with me today. If this episode spoke to you, I'd love it if you would share it with a friend. And leave a review. You never know who needs to hear that their healing is possible. And that's why I do this podcast, not just to point out all the bad things about other people and about yourself, but I do this because your healing is possible. Until next time, my friend, you are stronger than you think, especially in the difficult places. Have a strong week.