High Functioning Unhappiness Ft Rebeccah Silence

Just a note before we start: our show talks about touchy subjects that may be difficult for some of our listeners. Take care of yourself. If you feel you need to seek help, see the links at the end of our show notes for resources.

Hey y'all, and welcome to Touchy Subjects Podcast, the podcast that aims to break the silence that tends to come with conversations around domestic and sexual violence. I'm Shawn.

And I'm Amanda.

And today we're going to be discussing high-functioning unhappiness with our special guest, Rebeccah Silence. So thank you for joining us today, Rebeccah.

I am thrilled to be here, and I am always here for a touchy subject conversation.

We are pumped to have you here. Um, when we, we first met, we were just very excited to do this episode, so we are glad we were able to get you back on so quickly. Um, but before we dive into our fun discussion today, Rebeccah, would you like to introduce yourself to our audience?

Sure, I'm Rebeccah Silence, and I'm the space where all healing is possible. What I mean by that is I define healing as freedom, and I think for so many of us, we live in spite of the past versus being completely free from it. I specialize in generational trauma healing and what I call love trauma healing, and I just know regardless of who you are, where you come from, what you've been through, even what you might be facing right now, there's nothing outside of you more powerful than you. So I grew up in domestic violence, found myself later in a domestic violence marriage. I'm a cancer survivor. I've been in private practice for 16 and a half years serving people so that they can truly set themselves free and have the most magically delicious experience of life, love, family, and service possible.

Magically delicious. I love it.

Magically delicious.

Well, thank you for that brief introduction. Um, it is helpful, especially for our audience when it comes to topics that we're going to be discussing today to know that it's not just, you know, someone who just like, yep, this was something that I thought would be fun to learn about and talk about. So that's what I did. Um, you have lived experiences that really resonate with a lot of people who are going to be listening to our podcast. And I think that really helps bring some weight behind what our discussion is going to be at today. So thank you for all of that. And like we said at the start, we're talking about high-functioning unhappiness. Now, that might be a phrase that many of our listeners are unfamiliar with, as— yeah, Amanda and I were also unfamiliar with it when we first met. So would you like to kind of explain what that is and how this kind of process, this thought came about?

Yes, I'd be delighted to unpack this. So I came up with this term high-functioning unhappiness because I was really looking at— all right, you know, yes, there's no one who's immune to trauma. No one. And most people never actually fully heal through it in their one precious lifetime. But I was thinking about how scary the trauma conversation is and what's a way I could speak to what's really going on that would almost make it worth it for people to want to look at their trauma differently, right? So I thought, okay, the real issue is people are high-functioning and they're unhappy. And we talk about high-functioning depression, we talk about high-functioning addiction, we even talk about high-functioning autism, but nobody's talking about high-functioning unhappiness. And if it's not an epidemic, or the definition of an epidemic, I don't know what is. How many people are actually free and fulfilled and living their life on their terms as a version of themselves that they love and that they're proud of and that they resp— fact. And so I think high-functioning unhappiness is a perfect way to describe what most people are going through that they don't think can actually heal, and they just tolerate it, and they don't even realize it could get better than that. So I'm not here to threaten the high-functioning part of our lives, and I think the reason people don't pursue happiness is because they think it will threaten the high-functioning part of their lives, and they don't even know if it's a real thing. And I'm here to say, actually, We must threaten the unhappiness part of your life in order to preserve and elevate the high-functioning part of your life. And it gets to be both. You get to be high-functioning and happy. And I want kids to have healed parents, and I want generational trauma cycles to heal. And I really think taking on our high-functioning unhappiness is medicine that can heal trauma and liberate you. And then from there, you liberate every life you touch in a whole new way.

Yeah, and so if her explanation of that did not resonate with you, like, like Sean and I said, we'd never really heard this term, this high-functioning unhappiness, right? But once you start talking about it, it's like, oh well, yeah, for sure, that's, that's everyone I know. That's me, that's my partner, that's my friend group, whatever. And like, there's, there's never been like this tangible name we could attach to it. And so like without that name, without that identification, like there's been no way to address it. And I think that what you're doing is just, it's gonna be so helpful to people. So really excited for this.

Thank you. And if you're exhausted, chances are you're high functioning and unhappy. If you feel pressure, stress, if you're tolerating, if you're feeling obligated and pushing yourself to do more of what you think you should do, if you're trying to be who you think the people around you need you to be, if you're serving them and backburnering you and hoping someday it'll be your turn, these are all symptoms of high-functioning unhappiness.

Just like, think about how often is your response like, 'How are you doing?' It's like, 'Living the dream.' Or when something happens, just like, 'It is what it is.' Like, that's my constant two go-tos for everything. So Yeah, when, when you have things in your life, whether it be past trauma experiences that you aren't healed from yet, or you aren't, like you said, putting yourself first, or at least putting yourself in at least the passenger seat where you decide you're way in the trunk, like you're doing things in your life for other people instead of yourself, that's gonna make you unhappy because we want to do things that we enjoy. But if we are constantly putting other people's needs and desires before our own, we're going to continue that cycle, right?

Well, and then there's also the codependent factor, right? Like, I can't be happy until and unless everybody else is happy, so I'm going to try to help them get happy. And again, then maybe someday it'll be my turn. Someday isn't coming, and we can never be enough or do enough to be the source of other people's happiness. And happiness— I've got a really tangible way to define that as well. I think we're happy when we have a healthy relationship with our core human emotions of grief, anger, fear, joy, and excitement. It's not about being less human when we're talking about high-functioning happiness. It's about being all the way human. And that includes having a healthy relationship with all of our emotions, the dark, the light, and being vulnerably honest with ourselves about what we need and what we want and what we feel, and not contingent on everything else is good externally, everyone else is good externally. You know, it's about being as foundationally sound as we can be within ourselves, and we serve so much better and so much more profoundly from that place.

And I hope that this is a conversation that can spark this within people who are like, okay, these are all of these things that I'm feeling. This is something that I might be experiencing. Is this high-functioning unhappiness? And then they can then in turn be like, hey partner, hey coworker, hey whoever it is that I spend all my time trying to make happy. Why don't you listen to this too? Because I don't want this to just be like a, you know what, I'm just not doing stuff for you anymore, like, because I need to focus on me. That, that's something that people do say because they have to. But I think if there was like a segue into that conversation that says like, these are the things that I'm actually feeling, this is legit, maybe we can work on this stuff together.

Right. And I, I really appreciate the holistic kind of approach to it where it's not just taking like the happiness emotion, like you have to be able to be able to feel and experience all of your emotions in just a kind of like healthier way. Right. Like no one is going to make it through life without experiencing grief, without experiencing loss. But if you aren't putting yourself first and knowing what is going to help you in those moments, the way that you end up trying to quote-unquote like treat your grief could be in ways that are going to be unhealthy for you or are going to just further your unhappiness. And I kind of— I really appreciate having that focus on all of those emotions because you need to be able to experience all those emotions if you are gonna be like a human, right?

You can't live in that world of like toxic positivity, right, where it's just like, yeah, everything is just good all the time, like, everybody just be happy, like, that's all you have to do.

Some—

it's not sometimes. Like, we need to go through those other emotions, right?

I mean, I think if you're here listening to this podcast, then you signed up for the full human experience, because you don't want to touch touchy subjects unless you want the full human experience. And I think it's very important to point out happiness is an experience. It's not an emotion. We're only born with 5 naturally occurring emotions. Everything else is learned and everything else is an experience. We're having rejection, betrayal, competition, jealousy, you know, disappointment. We didn't know we could be overwhelmed or burnt out until we learned these are experiences that we can have and these are feelings that we learn to cope. And then underneath it all are these 5 core emotions. And the healthier we have a relationship with these emotions, the more in the driver's seat we are in our life. And it's possible to have a healthy relationship with anger, fear, grief, joy, and excitement so that we can be happy. It's not about positivity. I hate positivity, let alone toxic positivity. I just want us to know it's possible to be someone that we recognize that we wanna be, to feel how we wanna feel, and to have a healthy relationship with our 5 core emotions so we can be emotionally sound so we can serve at the highest levels from a healed place.

So you mentioned in there some of those like kind of symptoms or signs that someone might be high-functioning and unhappy. So I really want to like kind of focus in on those a little bit so our listeners have like a good clip and a good segment. So what are some of the symptoms that somebody may be experiencing high-functioning unhappiness?

Yeah, we'll maybe repeat some of them, but that's okay. We can't listen to this enough. So if you're exhausted, that means you're drained, which means there's some misalignment going on, right? And high-functioning unhappiness is the result of you disconnected from yourself, your spirit, your highest self, right? So exhaustion pressure, stress. You don't recognize yourself anymore. You wonder where you went. You're struggling to find a way to fit in. You're struggling to find a way to make sure everyone and everything externally is how you need it to be so you feel safe and okay and comfortable finally looking at what you need, what you want, how you feel, which again, that someday never comes. You're Feeling like other people are the cause of your stress and your suffering, and needing other people to be different or circumstances to change to be different, and then you can be okay— these are all signs of high-functioning unhappiness. Feeling like you're never enough, feeling like you can't trust or receive the good stuff, or you don't deserve it yet because you're so focused on achievement paradigms, right? Once I I get to this number on the scale, once I get to serving this many people, once I get this amount of money in the bank account or this amount of money donated or this amount of time donated to service, then I can. All of the, you know, once X, then Y traps that our brain takes us through, these are all signs and symptoms of high-functioning unhappiness. Being afraid that if other people that you love and care about aren't happy, you know, then I can't be happy, or that on some weird level is disrespectful. None of it's true, you know. You thriving and happy and that lighthouse that's unshakably resting in your wholeness, that is the best form of medicine that you could ever be for the people you serve and care about. But we don't know it's safe to stop basically going, all right, I'm going to lower my vibration in the hopes to try to pull you up with me We think that is love and service. It's not. Me holding the vision and giving you the opportunity to rise, whatever that looks like for you, if you want that for you, without me having to change myself to take you there— that's next level service, where you're just locked in, anchored in to your strength, to your power, to your resilience, to your wholeness, and then modeling being fully expressed and aligned. That's the opposite, right, of high-functioning unhappy. Yes.

And so like, it's just listening to you talk, like it makes me think of like the people who are living for the weekend or they're living for their next vacation, or they just have to get through this hump in the road and then things will be better. But if you've ever been in that situation, it's like there's always another hump in the road. There's always another work week coming up. And you might be, get like a little glimpse of that happiness, like when you're like, oh, finally it's the weekend or whatever. But if, if that's the way you're living life and you're just waiting for the next day, you're waiting for the next event or whatever, then you're not really being true to yourself. You're not experiencing the things that you could be experiencing every day.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

And I really like focusing on one of the symptoms you kind of pointed out in there is when we are working and trying to be in service of others, we kind of often will either put ourselves on the back burner, we'll worry about it when we get to it. Like, it's not as important as me helping this person right now who needs the help. But when you aren't helping yourself, you're not going to be able to fully help other people either. Because you're always bringing some of those pieces of your unsolved or unfinished or unworked shit. Like, you're bringing that into working with someone else, so your full focus isn't always going to be with that person when you want it to be. So not only that are you doing a disservice to yourself because you're not focusing on who you are or what you want, you're also doing a disservice to the people that you're trying to help. Because you're not able to be fully present in that moment for them either.

100%. And I have so much to say about this because, A, can we please elevate the paradigm of help, which implies helplessness, to support, which implies everybody's capable, everybody has the ability to empower themselves. And support means there's no dependency, right? So when we're in this help and helping the helplessness or the helpless people, you know, paradigm, we're actually doing a disservice because we're disempowering. When we're support, we can know they're okay with or without us, and now it becomes win-win where I don't have to be who you need me to be anymore. And I think that's another really great way to talk about high-functioning unhappiness. If you're just focusing on being who you think they need you to be and if you're afraid that they won't be okay without you, now we have dependency in the mix. Now we have disempowerment energy in the mix, completely unnecessarily. And I love what you're saying, Sean, about like, yes, we have to take care of ourselves first to be the most impactful and effective, but let's look at it through a lens of when you're being who you think they need you to be there isn't even a real relationship there. They're not relating to you. They're relating to the you you're showing up as that's inauthentic, even with the most pure, beautiful intentions. And I want us really modeling authenticity and transparency and the vulnerability to be honest about, here's who I am, here's what I want, here's what I need, here's how I feel. And I've got those boxes checked within myself. I know what I want. I know what I need, I know how I feel, and I'm feeling how I want to feel. From there, my God, can I be so much more of service to you and empower you to find those answers for yourself. But I'll just say, I find the number one hardest question I ask in 16 and a half years of private practice work and thousands of success stories is, what do you want? And I think a lot of us serve because we don't know what we want, and we're avoiding the discomfort of having to be honest with ourselves that I don't know who I am. I don't know what I want. I don't know what I need. I don't know how I feel. So if anybody here is listening and going, okay, this sounds great, but I don't know what I want, I don't know who I am, I don't know what I need, I don't know how I feel, you're not alone. And we can certainly talk about that too.

And I think it's important too for people to recognize it in all of that, as we're so focused on, well, what's my next step? How do I How do I improve or get to this, like, next thing? Like, using work as an example. Well, okay, I have this position, but how do I move up to the next position? How do I get there? And you don't take that time to think, like, do I want to be there? Do I want that position, or do I like where I'm at? It is okay to like where you're at. I love my job and I love where I'm at. I don't want to be my boss. Yeah, I don't want to be the CEO of our organization. I'm good here, and that's okay too. But we— I hear all the time on like other podcasts where people are like, you gotta have a growth mindset. I was like, you don't necessarily. Like, yes, you want to improve yourself, obviously, but it's always focused on like the career aspect or whatever else you're— whatever other things you're doing. And you don't need to— it's okay. Like, you're good if you're good where you're at. That's fine too. And maybe 10 years down the road you decide, you know what, I do want to move up the ladder, and that's fine too. But you're doing a disservice to yourself in the moment if you're always focusing on trying to move up instead of recognizing if you're even happy with where you're at currently.

And with relationships, you know, people are always like, no, I need to be in a relationship, then I need that relationship to become exclusive, then I need that relationship to turn into an engagement, and then I need that engagement to turn into marriage, and then I need that marriage to turn into a house with 3 kids. And then I need this, and then I need that. And then why are we so focused on like, we have to have all of these things to be happy, but then we get there and it's like, okay, maybe the next thing will be what really makes me happy? Because we're not happy with ourselves. We don't have that, that functioning happiness of where we are and who we are. Now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting those things as well, but if you're basing your happiness on achieving those things, then I think that's where the problem is, right?

I think it's a success metrics issue, right? Like, what are our success metrics? Because there's nothing to prove and there's really nothing to do, and you're not going to grow through generational trauma or heal through generational trauma by getting your life right on paper, because the generational trauma is actually about your inner world and the experiences that you had that you don't want to ever have happen again. And achieving and changing the external scenery doesn't get you finally feeling at peace or safe or enough or deserving or worthy or whatever it is that you're looking for. So I think this is a success metrics conversation. We've got to go beyond on paper, I've done enough, I've earned enough, because you won't— like, that void is never going to get filled. I've served, you know, hundreds of thousands of people a week. On the radio for 14 years, and I get every single day somebody pouring into me, thanking me for changing their life. Literally, it's never enough. It's not. And so it's about going, okay, what if my success metrics could be I'm emotionally free and sound, I know who I am and I'm proud of it, I know what I need and I prioritize getting my needs met so I can serve completely genuinely from that place. I know how I want to feel, and I feel how I want to feel, and I don't push. I relax into service. That is something so overlooked— the success metric of how relaxed are you. The most powerful person in the room is always the most relaxed person in the room, period. But are we even looking at— am I soft? And am I relaxed? And am I me without needing anyone or anything to be different for me to fully be me? These are just some examples of some success metrics that can literally have you high functioning and happy. And happiness isn't like— you were talking about how many people just want a vacation, or they're living for the vacation or for the weekend or to escape their lives. I want happiness to be the rule because you're so emotionally available and so emotionally mature, not you get glimpses of it. I want it to be the rule, not the exception. I want alignment to be the rule, not the exception. I want service to be about you serving you and then others to be the rule, not the exception.

So like in Shawn and I's work, and then, you know, I'm sure a lot of people that are listening to us today, uh, we work with a lot of people who are in the service industry. So those human services, whether that's therapists and counselors and social workers and whatever else is out there. There's a million things, right? Like, even we're talking nursing and whatever. All of these people need to kind of hear this conversation, right? Like, they need to, to focus in on this because those are the people who are out there being the caretakers of the world. And if our caretakers of the world are doing it from a place that's okay, I just got to get through this day. Where is that leaving everybody that needs the care?

Yeah. And what are we modeling, right? Like, if service is exhausting and we're burning the candle at both ends and running on fumes, not only are we not making service look attractive at all, but it's actually counterintuitive because I'm— if I'm of service to you at my own expense, there was no service. There. And I went through this personally for years. I couldn't do enough to help or to prove that I had broken cycles. And in the beginning of my private practice, I literally got on the radio, booked out 6 months in 2 weeks, and started seeing 10 people a day, 7 days a week. And for 4 years I did that, and I ended up getting a diagnosis of cancer and was given a 5% chance to live. I ran myself into the ground and got so sick. And I'm not saying I caused cancer, but I am saying I needed some wake-up call to stop the madness because it wasn't enough. And I was in a hamster wheel, and I'm doing my dream, and I'm serving, and all of these beautiful success stories are happening, but I'm exhausted, and I was getting sick, and I just kept pushing more and more and more. And I don't want us to get to the point where there's a breakdown to force a breakthrough. You don't need a breakdown to break through. You can just decide that the best service is you operating at the highest vibration and the highest version of you, serving you first in a way where this is all on your terms. Today I'm a lifestyle entrepreneur. I do what I do for the lifestyle I want, and it's a dream to get to be on shows like this talking to all of you, and it's a dream to get to work with my clients, but they are carefully vetted. And I'm never anywhere out of obligation or tolerating. I am very clear that this has to work for me or there's no service involved. And if there's no service because it didn't work for me, I am participating in radiating toxicity. And I'm coming from such pure intentions, and it doesn't have to be like that.

Yeah, it's— it really sounds like it's the 'I'm doing this because feel like I have to do this, not I'm doing this because this is something that I want to do and I know will be good for everyone. Because if I'm doing something because I feel like I have to do it, even if the message that I'm delivering is a good message, I might not be delivering that message in the most effective way possible because I'm just there. I might not be giving it the best, the most effective time. Because again, I don't want to be in this situation. I don't want to be doing this, but I feel like I have to. When we feel like we have to do something, we're not bringing in our full self. We're only bringing in that like customer service face, that customer service voice. Yes, thank you. How can I help you? And when we do that, we're losing the ability to be as effective and we are losing the ability to connect on a more personal level with the people that we are working with.

Absolutely. And if we think, I have to help you get to XYZ place because you couldn't do it without me, that's also a ton of pressure. I want us seeing ourselves and each other as innocent and holding ourselves and each other capable of being able to handle, like, the real truth. This is my real truth. And I make it this simple: everything is a spiritual yes please or spiritual no thank you. So if you're drained, if you're resonating with this idea of high-functioning unhappiness, likely you're saying yes, but it's really a no too many places. And it's okay to say no. And my hack is to go, okay, here's the no, but here's what the yes would be. If somebody asks me something and it's not going to work for me, I don't end on the no. I'm like, This is a no, but here's what would work. You can offer what the yes is. And the yes, it always has two parts. And I hope this is helpful for all of you in service, whatever that looks like. Don't just know what the yes is. What would set it up to win? I'm meeting with you guys today because this day and this time works for me. I'm not trying to squeeze in something that doesn't work for me because I really want to do it. I want us as practitioners and as human beings who really do get it, because if you're here, you get it. There's touchy subjects and we can master being the best of ourselves in those conversations and in those moments, but only by knowing what the yes is and what it would take to set it up to win for us. And so many of us weren't set up to win in our childhoods, so we just tolerate not being set up to win in our service work. Yeah, it's time to stop madness.

And this— okay, I just want to put out there too, like, this doesn't mean that every single client that you have is going to be on the same spiritual level as you. You don't have to sit around and sing Kumbaya with all your clients. Like, there's going to still be difficult clients that you have to work with because that is your job. But if you're doing it from a place of this is what I can offer you that will help you if you want to, you know, meet here in this middle ground where we can, we can empower you to do these things and to, to start working on yourself. It would— it's a big, it's a big thing. Like, people go into, into therapy and services and stuff like that because they want to fix stuff sometimes, right? They want people that they want to fix whatever the situation is, and we can't fix other people. Like, they're not something that's broken that's there for us to be fixed. There's something that we can offer that support, we can offer those tools, we can offer those resources and help walk them through it, but we're not going to be able to do that for them. Otherwise, we're not giving them what they deserve. There's no empowerment there.

Absolutely. You know, I had a case. I was on the radio. A caseworker called me saying that this girl had just stabbed a staff member in the eye with a fork at the residential treatment facility. She'd been to 12 therapists in 2 years. She was suicidal, multiple suicidal attempts. And she asked me, can you help? And I said, well, let's see. And basically I came in, got the family on board, got brand new boundaries, brand new agreements with the client, trained all the staff at this residential treatment facility. And it was 2 years. Of intensive work. And I just spoke to this woman's greatness and held her capable and saw her as innocent and not broken and not needing fixing. And I was modeling everything I was teaching. I wasn't coaching her to do anything I wasn't already, you know, committed to being and doing myself. Long story short, that woman's on the board of the facility now, has been in her own apartment for 7 years. The healing happened because Someone raised the bar and people meet the bar where it's set. And so often these difficult clients in these most difficult cases, we lower the bar instead of raising it even higher. And I just felt like it was important to share that story because I hear from her all the time thanking me still all these years later. And all I did was raise the bar and see her and speak to her greatness and demand that she at least consider nothing was wrong with her. She wasn't broken and she didn't need to fix anything. She had a decision to either stay in survival or rise and step into being a higher version of herself that she hadn't met yet, and she chose the latter.

Yeah, this, this whole discussion too has also kind of gotten me thinking about just the mo— the more recent change that Amanda and I made for our podcast specifically. So for those of you listening to this episode, we are now currently into our seasonal model for the podcast, and Amanda and I, we've ran this podcast since 2020. So we've— this is a 4 and a half year, almost 5-year-old podcast doing an episode every 2 weeks to where it got to the point where Amanda and I, I remember having this meetings like, what are we talking about in the next 2 weeks? Because we had an episode coming out and we had no guests lined up. We had no idea what we were going to talk about. So we just kind of would think of something because we're the model we had set for ourselves is every 2 weeks we have to be releasing an episode. And I got to a point where I'm like, we're probably not doing like the best episodes. Like, we're doing them because we felt like we had to do them. So in that discovery of like, this isn't working for us, we're burnt out from the podcast, we are burnt out doing the stuff that we're doing, we have to make some kind of change or it's just gonna completely blow up. And that change was moving it to the seasonal model. And hopefully you are able to hear the slight content increase in these episodes because this feels nicer.

Yes.

Having that like focus come in a little bit more is serving ourselves better, which therefore hopefully is serving our podcast audience better.

And I think we all deserve to give ourselves the gift of permission to reinvent when something was a win and now it just isn't. And there doesn't even need to be a reason why. It's just time to change it up. It's time to elevate. It's time to set it up to win as this version of me committed to this vision for my future. I think that's such a beautiful example of leadership because again, we're here for the full human experience, which means we don't want stale and stagnant. And we don't want to be, you know, serving in a way that our spirit is dying inside. We want to be serving in a way that keeps us fully alive and keeps us, you know, connected to our spirit and the truth of who we are. And that requires reinvention sometimes. So I think that's just great modeling.

And I love what you said earlier about you don't need— how did you say it? 'You don't need a breakdown to have a breakthrough.' Oh my God, like, I love that. So you don't have to hit rock bottom to start digging your way back out. Like, wherever you're at, you can start elevating.

Yes. And you know on the deepest levels what works for you, what doesn't, what you're tolerating, what you're waiting for to change so that then you can finally get your needs met. And back to this idea of like If you're someone who doesn't know what you want, here's 2 hacks. Number 1, what do you want for everybody else? That's what you want for you. I promise what you want for them, you want for you. And it's very real that often we have no idea how to answer that question, right? It's easy to go, well, I don't— this doesn't work for me anymore, but I don't know what I want instead, or I just don't know what I want at all. So I'm just going to go through the motions and do what I've always done, or do what I think I should do. But what you want for them, I promise you want for you. The second hack is, what don't you want anymore? Make a list. I'm all done with— then guess what you think you might want instead, and let yourself trial and error. Because if you know what you don't want, you know what you do want. So those are two ways you can access that information if you have no idea right now.

Yeah, and I do want to focus in on a little bit too of what don't you want? Because maybe what you wanted before now is something that you don't want. It's going to be a dumb example. I love to do new things because I'm like, my brain constantly wants to have like something occupying it. Most often it ends up being video games, but sometimes I try to develop other skills. I very loosely know how to play the ukulele. I spent a good couple weeks learning how to play a couple chords, learning a couple songs. After a while, I didn't want to do it anymore. So I know how to— I still have that skill. I can still play like a little bit on a ukulele. Not super great, but I can. Um, and yes, it's a very more minor kind of example, but If you want to find what you want to do, that's gonna require, like you said, trial and error. It's gonna be, well, this thing sounds cool, or that sounds like it might be something that I like, so I'm gonna try it. If you don't like it, that's fine. There's things we don't like. I don't like onions. There's gonna be things that we don't like after we try it, but that's okay.

Yeah, so I saw something that was like, make your anti-bucket list. Like what's something that you've done before that you never want to touch again? And like just going through it and seeing the things that people would comment and say, like, I did this and nope, that, that one wasn't for me. I'm done with that. I'm good on that. I had the experience once and now I know that I don't want it. So as you're going through these trial and error things, when something fails that's not a failure. That's just an indication of what you don't necessarily want anymore.

And it is okay to wake up one day and go, wait a minute, I used to love this and now I have no interest. You know, trauma bonding, great example. So many people feel very close and connected, trauma bonding, and then they have a relationship and they're realizing, I don't actually like this, I don't enjoy this anymore. But we don't know it's safe to go Can we reinvent this relationship? Because it feels like trauma bonding to me, and I want more intimacy with you. You know, my best friend and I have been best friends 20 years. We don't trauma bond anymore. And I remember thinking when I had to tell her, this relationship, it's starting to drain me, and it's not your fault. It's because I'm trauma bonding with you, and I don't want that anymore. I thought I was gonna have to grieve the relationship, that there's no way she would want beyond that. And she was like, oh, thank God. Shocked me. You know, this is— I just want to throw that out there because I think a lot of us are used to trauma bonding, and when we're in service, we trauma bond not just at work but personally in our personal lives as well. And it's okay to go, no more of this. And again, replace it with something like, tell them, here's what I would love to see instead. Be solution forward. We're not passing the problem back around like hot potato or pretending like the other person is the problem, but we can say, wow, this used to really feel good. And now it doesn't. I was a go-to for one of my mentors for years on speed dial, literally any time for her to like have me as her sounding board. And I felt so special. And then one day the special felt gross and I was like, what am I doing? You're actually my mentor and this isn't healthy. And no, like, no, no more. And that relationship I ended up letting go of because she didn't want to grow and reinvent. She wanted it the way it was. And so I just give those two examples of like one case that reinvented and worked out, one case that reinvented and worked out in a way where now I bless her into her future and love her from a distance. It's all okay. Yeah.

So I think this could be something really interesting for our listeners too, is how if they are analyzing their relationships, they're analyzing the— whether it be a dating relationship, a relationship with a colleague, a client or someone that they're working with, and they're recognizing that this isn't necessarily working for them.

Mm-hmm.

What would be a tip or a way that they could be able to have that conversation to reinvent the relationship to be more beneficial for the both of them?

Yeah. So I have so much to say, but let me just start by saying, what if your only job is to be you, and to keep turning the volume up even more on you. And when you do that, nothing bad can happen. I say this all the time: you know you can survive survival. What you don't know yet is you can survive alignment, alignment with the truth of who you are. And when we're aligned, it benefits everybody. Nobody gets hurt. The only thing that happens from you being aligned is you get information about who this person is, where there's, you know, compatibility and where there isn't. But don't be afraid of the information. Be more afraid to be willing to lose yourself in the name of love than you are afraid to see what happens from alignment, right? So that's the first thing I want to say. And then in terms of like tangible, real, how do I have the conversation, I love starting with celebrating. Here's what I appreciate and honor about you, right? So in the case with that mentor, I mean, it was over a decade. You saw me before I saw myself. You've been there with me through so much, including getting out of a domestic violence marriage with a 2-year-old, going through cancer with a 5% chance to live, reinventing myself so many times. Like, I honor you, I respect you, I'm so grateful for our history, and What I need to be different now is I need healthier boundaries. I am not here to be on speed dial as your sounding board, as your emotional support animal. I am here to be peers growing and serving and elevating each other's missions together. And I need you to come to me having done your work, and I come to you having done my work, and we're peers. And if that sounds great, great. And if it doesn't, that's okay too. But this is what I need from you now. This is who I am now. This is what's important to me now. Here's the support that I could use from you now. Here's what's no longer supportive. You know, you might need to listen to that back a couple of times, but just know there are ways to communicate unapologetically. I have your best interests at heart. I have my best interests at heart, and I want to reinvent this relationship if you want that. And if you don't, No problem. But here's who I am. Here's where I'm taking my life. And either you want to be a part of it in this season or not. And that's okay.

Yeah, it can be a really, really hard thing when you've been maybe working with a client for years and now all of a sudden, all of a sudden, quote unquote, you're working to set boundaries with them because the relationship isn't working. Or when you're with somebody, maybe a best friend of 20 years, and you're like, I don't— the relationship, the way that it's going isn't— is not going to— is not going in a way that's healthy for both of us. So how do we have that conversation? It starts with boundary setting. And that's a really scary thing when for however long you've been working with this person or friends with this person or dating this person, those boundaries weren't there. And that can be a really hard conversation, but it's an important conversation to have.

Yeah. And the boundaries are really with ourself, right? To go, I'm unwilling to betray myself. And nobody will tell you this, but I'm going to tell you, if you're unhappy in a relationship, whether it's personal or professional, you don't like you in that relationship. It's not the other person. The other person isn't the problem. You don't like you when you're unhappy in a relationship, and it doesn't mean they're not doing what they're doing or behaving badly or a pain in the ass. I'm just saying, if you're dissatisfied, it's you with you. And when you correct that, and only when you correct that, does the relationship actually have a chance of being reinvented. We're not gonna suddenly feel safe enough to be our true self once this person behaves how we need them to behave, because it will always be something, right? Having us backburner ourselves. So just know, you taking on being someone you respect in your relationships, that is the ultimate boundary to set and enforce within yourself.

Yeah, if, if you're just unhappy in a relationship um, it's because there is something that's going on that you don't like, that you know you don't like, but you have been unwilling to set that boundary. So to be able to say, you know what, I know that I deserve more than this, whatever the thing is, and I am unwilling to let you treat me in a way that doesn't feel authentic to me. And so when you can do that, when you can do that and look at the relationship as, what do I want for myself, not what do I want from someone, then you can look at it as this person fulfills those things that I want, or they don't fulfill those things that I want. And then you can make a maybe hard decision after that, that If this person isn't fulfilling that, maybe this isn't the relationship for me. And I think that in a small, like, obviously with some of the stuff that Sean and I work with, people who are in abusive relationships, there's control, there's domestic violence, there's assault going on in them. Um, so there are a lot of other factors at play, right? I'm not trying to say that like our our clients who have been abused can just decide to be someone different because there are more things to consider than that. But if it's an unhappy relationship, if it's an unhealthy relationship, maybe you can make those decisions before it gets to the point of that toxicity.

Before it gets to the point— what? You can make the decision to love and respect yourself the way you have always deserved to be loved and respected. I grew up in the darkest trauma. I coach some of the darkest cases. I was just working with a couple just a couple days ago. They have two kids under one. He's extremely verbally abusive. She grew up in domestic violence. She's panicking. He is hating how he's showing up because he's become his father. All of these patterns can heal and break. But I said to this guy I looked him in the eye and I said, do you want a family where love and respect and, and freedom to be who everyone really is, is the foundation? Or do you want to be someone who's lashing out, verbally abusive? Do you want your family to be scared of you? Do you want a family where everyone's free and safe? These are the choices you have to make right now. It is a decision. And he started bawling. And I said, my number one concern is I know you don't like who you're being and you're horrified, but I'm mostly concerned about how you talk to and treat yourself, how much you're disrespecting yourself. You can start working on that right now. And he's just bawling because he didn't want to end up in this place where he repeated his childhood with his family. And he really wants better, but he didn't know how to do it. And I'm not judging ever any of you. For the choices you're making right now. But I do want you to know there's never a moment where you don't have a choice. And you have a highest self and you have a survival self. And we can't do it without support, especially when we're talking about domestic violence. But we can go, I can love my survival self and I can get the support I need to trust that it's safe to become a higher version of myself that I don't even know or recognize, so that I am the one in the family breaking the cycle.

Yeah, and we talk about— when we talk about abuse, abuse is always a choice. The person who is being abusive is making the active choice to be abusive because they could have made the active choice to not be. But what I love about that example is we do talk about also how like abusive people can learn to not be abusive, but we cannot make that choice for them. If that person does not see what they are doing is wrong, if that person likes the outcomes because they are the ones who are in power, they are the ones in control, they're not going to want to change. And we cannot make them do that. They have to want to change. So this isn't to say that if you're in a relationship with an abusive person, they can change, so it's okay to stay. They may never change because they may not want to change. In the example you gave, Rebeccah Silence, it sounds like he wants to change. He wants to break that cycle.

Precious. And he's desperate to break that cycle, and he just doesn't know how. And so you don't have to engage in being abusive with yourself. And if you're being abused, chances are there's still a part of you that's willing to self-abuse, whether it's in your self-talk or other behaviors and ways of coping. But you can decide, enough with me being abused by myself or anyone else, and you can get help. And only from that place of, I'm no longer a vibrational match for this. Do you have a shot at reinventing a relationship? And I think all relationships are for our soul's evolution, right? They're not just here for, you know, you're supposed to be the source of my happiness and you're the source of my pain. You're the cure of my pain. You're, you know, the cause of my pain. Wait a minute. They're here to help you see how healed you are and where there's still healing work to do, where you're already free and where you're not. And I just want us brave enough to go, wait a minute. I don't deserve this anymore. So that means it's about not perfection, but bringing more consciousness and awareness to how are you treating you. And are you only treating yourself well when things are going well, or are you treating yourself even better, even more loving, even more gentle with yourself when shit's completely hit the fan and it feels like everything's falling apart? More love, more self-respect, always. The medicine, you with you, and then actually communicating. Here's what I need, here's what I want, here's how I feel. And giving people an opportunity to grow with you. And maybe they will and maybe they won't. My first husband wasn't going to grow with me. You know, my mentor I just shared about wasn't interested in that. Doesn't make them bad people. It's just not a vibrational match.

So if someone is then in that So like the client you would reference in— is in that cycle. He experienced abuse when he was a child. He is now the one who is doing the same thing, but he wants to break that. He doesn't want to continue on performing the same cycle that his dad, his father performed against him when he was a child. How can someone look at that cycle and start to try to break it?

Okay, so this is where I like to teach about what I call the anatomy of the trauma cycle, right? So when there's abuse— and I began getting sexually abused when I was 4 years old, so I made a decision that young that I was never going to be the perp, which meant I was going to stay the victim. But I didn't understand any of that, right? Someone's abused and they decide being the victim is better or being the perp is better. That's the first thing I want to explain about the anatomy of a trauma cycle. They want to be one more than the other. It doesn't mean they want to participate in the cycle, but they think this is love, this is part of what it means to be in a family, part of what it means to be loved, right? So we're not choosing to be a victim because we want to. We're choosing to be a victim because we don't want to ever do harm, or we're choosing to be the one that does harm even though there's so much shame and guilt and horror in that, because we never want to feel like it felt to be the victim again, right? So the perp was always abused, and that doesn't get talked about enough. The perp is just as powerless as the victim, and they're just trying to find a way to do what I call powerlessly taking their power back because they don't know that there's another option. So the other option is you fully expressed. The other option is you healing emotionally through the stuck age and the stuck emotion and the pattern so that you can be outside of this victim persecutor, victim persecutor, victim persecutor dynamic, or victim perpetrator, victim perpetrator dynamic. I used to think I could make any great guy turn into an abusive asshole. I thought I was doing it. What I didn't understand is I was so committed to not doing harm and to being the victim that tried to get the perpetrator to heal and be better that I was just in Groundhog Day. It's not your job to heal the perp. It's not your job to, you know, heal anyone other than yourself. And that's the beginning of breaking generational trauma cycles. But there life beyond the one who's getting hurt and the one that's doing harm. There really, really is. And it's about you becoming the age you are and the most emotionally healed you that you can be, versus the inner child, a vibrational match still for the cycle, you know, hoping the other person is going to change or be different, and then now you can be free of the cycle. That's not the way. You deciding you're going to be free of the cycle that you're never going to be a victim again. With a 5% chance to live with a cancer diagnosis, I can tell you, thank God for all of my healing through incest and sexual abuse, because if I hadn't have done that work on the front end of cancer, I would have felt like my inner child was being sexually abused all over again. But the healed me was in charge, and that allowed me to have access to guidance that allowed me to still be here today.

And we are glad you are.

Thank you.

One of the ways that I've tried to explain to people, at least in part, the cycle of— that cycle of abuse is when we know that the root causes of domestic violence, of sexual assault, all come down to power and control. That is what is causing it. Well, when somebody has been abused as a child, they were very much in a situation where they did not have power, they did not have control. So as they grow, not only have they learned that this is okay and acceptable behavior in a relationship, they have learned that is how somebody gains power and control. So if I want to have power over my partner and I want to feel like I have some power because my power was taken from me when I was younger, this is how I do it. So they are putting themselves then in that situation of, like you said, I don't want to be a victim. I want to be in control, so I will use those same tactics in order to gain that control.

Illusion of power and control, right? Because this is where I say no, the perp is powerlessly trying to take their power back as much as the victim is feeling powerless, right? And it's a consciousness, it's not who we are. You aren't broken, you're not a victim, you are resilient and incredible and so deserving of healthy love. But it's a decision to go, my inner child deserves better, and I have to be the source of giving them better. And I, I say this all the time, people think violence is anger, and it's not. The second that anger is at someone, it's avoidance to the healthy emotion. It isn't the healthy emotion, but we think anger and violence go together hand in hand. And that's just not true. And we think abuse is power, and the person in that abusive position has power over us. They are just as powerless as the person they are directing all of their unhealed toxicity and dysfunction at. But we don't talk about that enough. So it is the most loving thing you can do to say I'm deciding I'm not going to participate in anything that isn't healthy for me, in any dysfunction. And there's no, there's no justification. I just watched the movie It Ends With Us, and I have just read the book, and it was wild because it was my story. She grows up in domestic violence and then recreates it and gets pregnant in her marriage, and now What's she going to do? And the thing about it is, I think every family has a generational healer in it, and that person usually feels like they're crazy because nobody else seems to see the dysfunction. And abuse isn't love. And I loved this book and this movie because it's showing this abusive behavior isn't love and isn't acceptable. And the most loving thing to do is break the cycle and get out. But it's terrifying. I got out of a domestic violence marriage with a 2-year-old, and I was terrified. And I knew I was going to go bankrupt. I knew I was going to be on my own. I knew I was never going to get child support. I knew that it was my moment to decide to become a mom I could be proud of for my daughter. And, you know, I think the hardest part as the generational healer is knowing you can't get anybody else to want out of the cycle. But you can do the work and you can get you out of the cycle and you can model healthy love and healthy, magically delicious family and service and all the things. And not everybody's going to agree or get it, but you deserve it. And with the right support, you can have it.

And so, I mean, we talk about this sometimes, right? Like if somebody has committed harm against someone else. Where is their redemption for that? Where is their way out of that? Because that doesn't mean that they're a terrible person for the rest of their life, no questions asked. They can become that higher, more elevated person who doesn't actively cause that harm to someone else. It doesn't negate the harm that they've caused up to that point. It's not that you ever have to forgive them for what harm they've caused. But we do, I think, as a society, have to allow some people to get out of that cycle themselves instead of just stigmatizing them with, okay, you caused harm to someone, you're just a harm causer, you will cause harm to everyone who you touch for the rest of your life. That's not the case. And I think that's part of what we're trying to talk about here, right? Like, it's not this binary system that we're tend to look at things at where you're either the abuser or you're the victim. There is a whole spectrum in there of people who—

the third option is you're the healed highest expression of you. Yes, Amanda, this is so good.

No, go, go, go. Okay.

So here's, you know, I'm thinking about two specific cases. So one time I was doing a woman's retreat and a woman literally went into a trauma response and had an a repressed memory surface of her abusing a baby that she was babysitting when she was 12, sexually. And she was just losing it. And what we did— because again, the person abused is playing out the abuse in an effort to try to heal their inner child. The abuser is trying to heal their inner child. The person abused is trying to have a healing from the first time they were abused, right? So this woman, we had to heal through the shame and the guilt and the trauma and heal up the stuck age and heal stuck emotions and then give her permission to forgive herself. And she had a whole new lease on life. I mean, we literally— it was like watching an exorcism. It was wild. And that was the moment I knew I was ready to serve at the highest levels, because I'd never coached or facilitated the perp's breakthrough before. I had always just been facilitating the victim's breakthrough, right, and their inner child growing and healing into the adult and their age they actually were and releasing the emotion. But I'd never done it with a then a couple years ago I had a case where a client of mine that was a defense attorney called me and said he had someone that just was arrested for being blackout drunk, beating up the fiancée in front of the 10-year-old twins. She went into unconsciousness. The twins called 911. That family had healing because he wanted it, and I demanded, you're not going to live in the house with her or the kids yet. We're gonna separate you. You're gonna do your work. I'm gonna work with everyone separate and then bring everyone together. Um, and he had been raped as a kid in foster care, and nobody ever helped him heal that. And I don't even think he had admitted it to anybody before. So we're playing out what we need to heal. That doesn't make it okay, but once we recognize that's what's happening, we can do something about it. So this guy did his work, got sober, got a sponsor, and we literally worked for over a year before he was reintroduced back in the home. And then we kept working so that these two people didn't have their inner children who had been so traumatized growing up playing out their childhood trauma. We had two healed adults able to be the couple. They ended up getting married. The kids got to have healed parents. One of the wildest, most beautiful cases I've ever had the honor of coaching. And they are thriving to this day and came together. And the point is, we aren't bad people. We're just either committed to the dark and sourcing from the dark and playing out the trauma and normalizing the trauma, or we're committed to the light and life beyond the trauma. And I think it's scary to live beyond the trauma because, again, we know we can survive survival. I, I tell this story as well. One of the scariest nights of my life was the first night I spent with my second husband because I was like, I'm safe and this is an equal, and I don't know what to do with that. I know what to do with an abusive asshole. I don't know what to do with an equal who's safe. I had no idea, but I was going to be damned if I didn't figure out how to have healthy love in this lifetime, and I was going to be damned if my kids didn't have healed And I figured it out, and they do. And I'm just here to say, anybody that wants it for themselves, you can have it. You know, my book is a roadmap, Coming Back to Life: A Roadmap to Heal from Pain to Create the Life You Want. I walk you through how to use trauma to your advantage so you can become a next-level identity, a next-level you, the highest you. We don't wake up one day and know who we are. We wake up one day and know, enough with survival. And then we have to design that highest, wisest, healthiest version of ourselves because it doesn't happen by accident.

So then, um, before we wrap up today, Rebeccah Silence, because we are just a little bit over that hour mark, um, do you have any closing points you want to give to our audience before we wrap up?

Just know healing isn't promised, but it is possible, and if you want it, with the right support, you you can have it. I have a free gift, my masterclass, The 3 Must-Know Secrets to Heal and Save Your Family, that applies to life at home, applies to leadership, applies to you transforming on an identity level. And I'd love for you to have that. Check out my book, my course. The Emotional Survival Kit is available at rebeccahsilence.com. Just know it's not promised, but it's possible. And if you want it and you're unwilling not to have you can cross that line from surviving to truly living in alignment as your highest self. And I guess the last thing I'll just say is be careful with each other's hearts.

Well, thank you so much, Rebeccah. Links to the books and that masterclass will be in the show notes. So please check that out. And if people wanted to find you on social media, where could they find you?

@RebeccahSilence. Check out the Rebeccah Silence YouTube channels, full of goodness like Disney for your heart. And, you know, you can DM me anywhere.

Awesome. And links to those will also be in the show notes for people to check out. Well, thank you again, Rebeccah, for joining us today. And those of you listening, please feel free to check out season 2, our next season, when we have Rebeccah come back on for another episode. But thanks again, Rebeccah.

Thank you.

And thank you all for listening today. Please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads @touchysubspot to keep up to date when we have new episodes and other content coming out. Please email us any questions, comments, or concerns to touchysubjectspodcast@gmail.com, and please rate and follow us on your favorite podcast listening app. It really helps the show out.

And in the meantime, don't be afraid to challenge, ask, and discuss when it comes to touchy subjects.