The Truth About Toxic Relationships

That's the most important thing to know about

all toxic relationships. We have not been set up for success.

There are so many different systems that have been

brainwashing us our whole lives that rob us from being really

connected. But I just think of the impact on children nowadays.

I watch people at the airports, people in restaurants, and these

kids who are dying for attention, starving for

attention, and their parents are are so distracted. Even if

they're still connecting and engaging, everyone is on this

high level distraction. So it's not your fault, but it's such an

important conversation to have because we as humans, I believe,

until we've gone on a long, deep journey of awakening, and you

know, breaking free from all of these paradigms that we've been

stuck in for so long. Until that happens, most of us are in many

toxic relationships.

Hello, beautiful. Welcome back to the New Truth for this

incredibly important conversation about toxic

relationships. And you know, I think this conversation started

last week with Mark Roves. If you haven't listened to that

episode, Mark Roves is a human connection specialist, and he

this conversation he's just amazing. I love Mark, and I love

how his mind works and all the conversations that he's always

having, challenging the norm, challenging perspectives,

challenging what's happening in the world? We connect in a lot

of beautiful ways, and the conversation last week was about

technology and how much technology is hurting people and

hurting their relationships. And just think it alone about

technology and kids, like not to mention like the technology that

they're consuming directly. But I'm talking about parents who

are so overwhelmed, who are so overscheduled, who are so

overstressed, and their go-to is to be on their phone to check

their messages, to check their email, to text people, you know,

check social media, whatever it is you're doing on your phone.

When you think of all the children growing up in the

modern world, in this time, this day and age, whose parents are

so distracted, you know their moms are full of Botox, they're

numb on antidepressants, they're on their phones, you know

they're so distracted and stressed out, and it's not to

put anyone down. It is absolutely not your fault.

That's the most important thing to know about all toxic

relationships.

We have not been set up for success, and there are so many

different systems that have been brainwashing us our whole lives

that rob us from being really connected. But I just think of

the impact on children nowadays. I watch people at the airports.

I watch people in restaurants, and these kids who are dying for

attention, starving for attention, and their parents are

are so distracted. Even if they're still connecting and

engaging, everyone is on this low level distraction or high

level distraction. So, it's not your fault, but it's such an

important conversation to have because we as humans, I believe,

until we have really, really learned to shift our

relationship inside of ourselves and live from our sovereignty

and our souls, as I call it, your heroine, until we until

we've gone on a long, deep journey of awakening and you

know breaking free from all of these paradigms that we've been

stuck in for so long, until that happens, most of us are in many

toxic relationships, right? Like if you're if you watch the news

every day, there's a toxic relationship, and then people's

little saboteurs will say, "Well, it's not good to not be

informed. You got to watch the news." But how do you feel when

you watch the news? How do you sleep when you watch the news?

You know how unnatural is it for us to have access 24 hours a day

on our phones to have access to all the horrific things

happening all around the world. That is absolutely the most

unnatural thing ever. We're not supposed to know. You know, like

a an elephant doesn't know what's happening to the

elephants. Two conservancies over. The elephant just knows

what's happening right now. You know, it knows where its babies

are. It knows where its siblings are. It's like with the family

unit, and it's moving through the world one present moment at

a time. Right. Same with children. That's where we all

started. Little kids are just in the moment. They don't know it's

Tuesday.

They don't know that the weekend is coming. They don't know about

what the vacation is. I, whenever I'm with my little

niece Ronan, I always talk. We always talk about Africa. She

knows I live in Africa, and she's always like, "And Auntie

Katie lives in Kenya. Do I live in Kenya?" And then, and then

she'll follow that by saying, "I live in Kelowna, but do I live

in Kenya? She doesn't even understand what it means to live

somewhere, and she's four. You know, like she gets it to a

degree, but really doesn't get it. Why? Because it doesn't

matter. She's in the present moment, and she knows Auntie

Katie is always with her, no matter where in the world Auntie

Katie is. She has no concept for the fact that I. Like three

plane rides away, 27-hour travel journey to get to her. She has

no concept of that. She's just present in the moment. And when

we meet on Facetime, we connect. And when we're not together,

she's talking about me. We're still together in her heart.

She's still together in my heart. Right? Kids don't get it,

but we do. So we're all programmed in the like, gotta

know what's happening in the world. Gotta know, you know,

gotta like, we're constantly programmed to live in our minds,

and it is a dumpster fire up there of fear, right? Because

we're programmed with fear-based messages. So toxic relationships

are all around. You know, many people have toxic relationships

with food. A lot of women have toxic relationships with

cosmetic surgery because that's on a on a all time you know

trend right now. It's trending, so they don't even question

like, is this actually deeply loving this thing that I'm doing

right now? How does it feel? Does it feel nourishing to not

be able to move my face when I'm trying to express my feelings?

No, we don't even question or consider how something feels

because we're so busy just doing the thing that everyone else is

doing and following the script of what we're supposed to be

look like. Our life is supposed to look like, right? We have

toxic relationships with our bodies. When was the last time

you said something loving to yourself when you looked in the

mirror, do you do you love yourself when you look in the

mirror every day? Are you like I love you so much, you're

beautiful? Do you see your eyes when you when you lock in the

mirror in the morning? Let's say you go, you look in the mirror.

Do you connect with your eyes? I do meditations. I've talked

about this in the past, but I do meditations every morning,

sitting in front of my mirror. Usually, my eyes are closed. I

do a lot of chanting and singing. My eyes are closed. I'm

sitting on a meditation cushion, and then at the end of the

meditation, I open my eyes and I eye gaze with myself, not from

an egotistical place like "Oh my God, look at me! I'm so

perfect." No, in fact, it's in the morning, so I'm puffy and

I'm, you know, half asleep. But I do it to connect with myself

and to pour love into myself. Right? We have so many toxic

relationships that we're all experiencing. Toxic relationship

with technology, with our phones now with AI, toxic relationships

with our exes, toxic relationships with friends,

toxic relationships with your boss, or maybe your employees,

or maybe your friend. I already said friends. Toxic

relationships maybe with your parents, right? And you know the

cool thing from sitting over here in the coaching, mentoring,

and and transformation space for over almost 20 years now, which

is wild. Actually, it's 2027. I think it's going to be over 20

years. I can start saying over 20 years. And you know, at the I

was here at the very beginning of this industry. Obviously,

there's been many waves of it, but coaching was brand new when

I started. Nobody even knew what a coach was.

So this this phase of transformation, I'm on the the

leading edge of it, and I have worked with hundreds and

hundreds, actually 1000s, if we include the business coaching I

did, which was kind of the same thing, helping women untether

from their conditioned self and unleash who they truly are, and

live from their soul, and and express their gifts from their

soul and purpose from their soul. So it's really all the

same thing. But I've done enough legwork to see that when a woman

actually takes full responsibility for her life, for

her own patterns and her own toxic behavior internally,

everything changes. Everything changes, and I have witnessed

the most "quote unquote" toxic characters in a woman's life: an

ex-husband that's got narcissistic personality

disorder, or a parent who was totally emotionally neglectful

when they were kids, or you know, they're like everything. I

have seen it all, where when the woman really shows up and learns

how to change how she's showing up and what part of her is

leading her life, her relationships around her change.

So the first betrayal started with you. This is the

conversation I had with Mark. We were talking about the the you

know the phone toxicity. We talked a little bit about toxic

romantic relationships. You would not be in any toxic

relational dynamic, not with your phone, not with Netflix,

not with your friends, not with your boss, not with your

coworkers, not with your family, not with your parents, not with

your ex partner or your current partner. If you were rooted in

love for yourself, if you were rooted in your sovereign

heroine, you would not have any toxic relationships. It's a

lifelong practice of releasing the toxic relationships. But one

of the problems that happens for. Is they learn in therapy,

or they learn from Instagram and the algorithm, or they learn

from their friends or from a self-help book that their

partner is toxic, right? That they're in a toxic relationship

with a horrible person.

Now, I'm not saying there aren't people that are incredibly toxic

out there. Yes, absolutely, there are. And what I see is

wounded little kids. There's a lot of wounded little kids

running around pretending to be adults and behaving in toxic

ways. So, are there toxic men in the world? Absolutely. I've

connected with a new friend recently, and she's been sharing

stories of this nightmare of a divorce she's been going

through, and she's trying to protect her son. And this person

she's was married to is incredibly toxic and in like

beyond, beyond, beyond. It's undeniable. So it's not to say

that there aren't really toxic people in the world, but all

toxic people are just traumatized people, just like

you. They've just had more extreme trauma, and their

patterns are more extreme. So, any woman I've worked with who

had an incredibly toxic ex or an incredibly toxic parent, when we

unpacked the childhood of that person, whatever they knew,

100%, it was extraordinarily abusive. People don't just

become monsters for no reason, right? It is this their

protective mechanism. So if we look back on what happens when

we're little, we are absolutely pure. Every single one of us is

so pure, but we go through traumas, and some even in the

womb, right? Some babies are going through traumas even in

the womb or even in inception, right? Think of a baby that came

from rape. That's a huge trauma because that baby is feeling the

mom's pain. So there are so many traumas that happen in childhood

for all of us. But when someone goes through extreme trauma, not

100% of the time, sometimes people go through extreme

trauma, and then they become the most beautiful people. And it's

like, how did you come from that? And yet you're so loving

and caring. That's totally possible. They still develop

patterns, right? Maybe it's self-sacrifice. Maybe it's

people pleasing. But in a lot of cases, they become really,

really toxic themselves. Right, the abuser then becomes, or the

abused becomes the abuser. So there's a reason for all of

this, right? Hurt people, hurt people, and it just spreads. So

yes, there are toxic people out there. You know, there's toxic

people in politics. I, my opinion, I don't think anyone's

healthy in the political field.

You know, not to say like maybe the ones who don't make it to

the top for sure. There's Marianne Williamson is trying

to, you know, she's run for president several times and

she's a spiritual teacher and she's here to actually change

the world. But the people who actually make it to the top,

there's usually some serious personality disorders that get

them there, right? Like, how would you get there without

having disconnection from your heart? You might present really

lovely on the on the front, the face, right? But how many of you

have dated a narcissist or a sociopath, or a psychopath, all

present really nicely up front. They all are very charming,

right? That's how they like. They wouldn't be in

relationships with anyone if they weren't charming. That's

how so many amazing women end up in relationships with

psychopaths and sociopaths and narcissists because they're

lovely at first, right? They have charisma. They're usually,

typically, very attractive. They're magnetic. So a woman

who's not rooted in herself will fall for that, right? So that's

the first thing to know: is when you've been in toxic

relationships, you cannot have a toxic relationship from

sovereignty. In fact, I've been on the my own journey of

untethering from my saboteur and my conditioned self for a very

long time. As you know, if you've been listening for a

while, it's been you know over 20 years. I've been unleashing

and unlocking my sovereign woman inside, and the more sovereign I

become, all the toxic relationships fall away.

Like I can't even watch Netflix anymore. I I let it go for a

couple months. I tried to go back, and I noticed, you know,

when you do a cleanse and you cut out gluten or sugar or all

of the above, and then you add it back later, and you feel so

horrible when you add it back. That's the feeling when you

clear anything toxic out of your system, and you're so rooted,

and your frequency is higher, and you feel more expanded, more

alive. And then that toxic things that comes back, it no

longer is a fit because you become your standards become

higher, right? You become more refined in your sensitivity to

that which is not aligned for you now. Did you know it wasn't

aligned to begin with? Every woman I've ever worked with

who's ended up in a relationship with a man or a woman who is has

a personality disorder, every single one of them had a bad

feeling when they met them, or when they were getting married

to them, or you know, as the relationship started to

progress, there was like some texture that felt off, but what

did their saboteur do? And it's important to note: it's your

saboteur, not who you truly are. But your saboteur, your survival

self, your protective mechanisms immediately are like, oh no no

no, this guy's so lovely. He's like really into you, and look,

he's showing you so much love. No one's ever showed you this

much love, so she'll convince you to stay.

But your compass always knew something felt off. So the more

you live from that compass, and we talk in so many episodes

about that, like really living from resonance, noting noticing

when you feel really calm and really grounded and really

centered around certain people, places, experiences, and when

you feel chaotic. Now, in when you're in your saboteur

protective mechanisms all the time, sometimes you always feel

anxious underneath because you have never found that centered

place inside. But I want you to know your heroine has always

been there, and she's she'll always be there. Whether you

learn to live from her is a different story, and that's a

practice, right? That takes a lot of practice and devotion,

self-awareness, community support to actually learn to

live from that sovereign heroine inside of you. But it's

absolutely possible, and when you do, all the toxic

relationships start to change. So no matter what, you can

actually have a relational dynamic with anyone, and it can

change.

So, for example, I work with a lot of women who are divorced,

who are navigating co-parenting with someone that is a nightmare

to co-parent with because they have some sort of personality

disorder, some sort of toxic trait, and the woman is just on

a roller coaster, feeling so miserable and so stressed out

all the time, and wishing things were were to be different, and

you know, gossiping, complaining to her friends, like constantly

getting having people, you know, pat her on the back. Maybe she's

going to therapy to talk about it, and she's like stuck in this

dynamic with a with another human who is toxic. I love the

line from the movie Eat Pray Love. Julia Roberts' friend in

that movie says, "Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your

face. You want to make sure you're certain." And I think of

like how many people have babies from fantasy, right? They're

like, "Oh my gosh, it's a certain age. Even though their

gut's screaming, "Don't do it with this guy," you know, you

might not, you might not know that's what your gut is saying.

But your gut is like screaming, but you're like, "Nope." But I'm

35, and if I don't have a baby by 40, so I've got to have one

with this person. Okay, you're you're actually choosing to get

a tattoo on your face of this person's name, right? You can

get out of a marriage anytime. Might be stressful. It might be

expensive. It might be complicated, but you can get out

of a marriage. Can you get out of a co-parenting partnership?

Maybe if you if a judge warrants you 100% custody, but on some

level you are tied to that person for life, right? So to

me, I'm like, oh, gotta get this work out there to young women

because how tragic that most women are in the fairy tale

fantasy story about love and life, you know, working so hard

to achieve the script perfectly and to make life look how she

thinks it's supposed to look. That so many women make the

choice to marry someone who's toxic, and then to have children

with someone who's toxic. So that makes for, I'll say, from

the heroine perspective, a huge opportunity to grow, but from

the saboteur perspective, a fricking nightmare, right?

Co-parenting your child with someone who you don't feel safe

with, who you don't trust, who is constantly manipulating and

strategizing, and and it is you know. So my heart goes out to

you.

If you are in a situation like that, or you know a woman who's

in a situation like that, my heart goes out to you, and I'm

sending you so much love. And I want you to know that there is a

sovereign woman inside of you, who can do this relationship

differently? And I promise you, if you commit and devote

yourself to doing it differently, this person and

this dynamic with this person will change. It doesn't mean

they're going to stop being a narcissist, but you will stop

being their supply, even if you're still in a in a parenting

dynamic with them, where you have to have a form of a

relationship, you can actually create a healthy relationship

from your heroine, from your sovereignty. But most women are

trying to do the relationship from their patterns, and they're

constantly in resentment, and they're constantly complaining,

and they're constantly telling this story over and over and

over again. About how bad this person is. Now, yes, there are

bad people, but if we stay in the belief that this guy's the

bad guy, and you do not own your part, we talked so much about

this in the starting over weekend that I did a couple

weeks ago. We're actually doing it again in a couple weeks, so

I'll tell you about that soon. But we're doing it again,

november 20 to 22nd, and it's such a great opportunity to

rewrite your story. Even if you are in a toxic relationship now,

or you had one a long, long time ago, you still feel impacted by.

What a great way to clean the slate before the new year,

because no matter how toxic the relational dynamic is, you can

change it by no longer participating in it. When you

learn to not take the bait, right?

Right now, in a in a toxic relationship, you are powerless

until you when you don't know what you don't know. Right? The

world around us teaches us like women are victims. You know the

Me Too movement. It's like all of these horrible things are

happening to women. Women down with patriarchy. You know we

need to fight everyone and everything. And and I okay, I'm

sound like I'm I'm making fun of this, but but blaming the system

is not going to change the system. It's just not blaming

the system, blaming the person blaming the toxic man or woman

in your story is phase one. We have to go to that place first,

right? You have to go to that place and be like, "Oh my God,

this thing that's happening is wrong, and I didn't realize it."

My partner calls me a fucking okay, I can't even say it out

loud. Horrible names calls me a horrible names every day, and

I'm now learning it's emotional abuse. And I didn't even know

what I didn't know because my dad used to do that to my mom.

Right? We we are victims at first when you don't know and

you're inside of an incredibly toxic relational dynamic that

you are a victim 100. But if we stay victims, nothing changes.

If we stay victims, the toxic relational dynamics in our lives

lead. It's even true about the phone, right? If I'm just a

victim to technology and like, oh my God, it's so crazy. The

world is so crazy, and like AI is gonna take over. It's like,

okay, you can be a victim to AI. You can be a victim to social

media, or you can choose to engage with it differently.

Right. So in terms of technology, talk.

Listen to Mark's episode last week about how to do that. You

can choose to become empowered inside of that toxic

relationship. Your phone is a psychopath, actually, because

your phone does not care about you, your phone has no empathy,

even though your Chat GPT seems like it does. Your phone does

not care about your life or how much it's hurting you, but it's

always going to try and lure you in. It's incredibly magnetic. It

has so many exciting colors and exciting, unpredictable things.

Like sometimes it's giving you so much attention and love and

validation, and sometimes it's mean and it's bullying you.

Sometimes it's brainwashing you to believe you're worthless and

you need to get more Botox, or you need to you need to buy

another thing, another skincare product, or you need to do, you

need to lose 10 pounds, or you need to have a perfect

relationship like everybody else on Instagram, right? It's toxic

your phone, yes, but you have choice. That's step two. Step

two is I can become, I can.

You are sovereign internally. When you were three, you were

sovereign fully. You you needed adults to keep you safe in the

world because you didn't know what you didn't know. But you

were rooted in your sovereignty and your wholeness and your

love. But when you're operating from your small self, aka your

saboteur, your conditioned self, your fear-based self, and that

wounded little girl who's been traumatized many, many, many,

many, many, many times. You're gonna notice at the beginning of

your journey that you are in a lot of toxic relationships.

What's your relationship to food? What's your relationship

to alcohol? What's your relationship to your phone?

What's your relationship to Netflix? Do you watch it every

night. Can you not only watch one episode? And why are you

watching an episode every night? Are you watching other people's

fake lives that create emotion in your body versus creating a

life that feels so alive that you don't have to escape yours?

Right? Like there are so many toxic dynamics happening in

people's lives that they don't even know, but I promise you,

the more you learn to live from that sovereignty and to take

responsibility for your part, take responsibility for your

choices, and learn how to be way more intentional and thoughtful

with everything in your life when you devote yourself like

this. There is no greater investment in yourself than

learning how to have a healthy, thriving relationship within.

Because at the core of every toxic relationship is your

relationship with yourself. Right? That's the most toxic of

all.

If you have ever been in an abusive relationship or in a

relationship with people with toxic personality disorders,

which I have in work situations many times. I've been in toxic

relationships romantically. I've been toxic. Like I've had many

stories over the years because I was a fantasy addict and a

self-sacrificing shapeshifter. I was fully living for my saboteur

and inside hating myself, so if someone else was treating me

like shit, it would be hard to notice because I treated myself

worse, right? But I would go to therapy and they would be like,

"That's a bad relationship." Like, wow, you really need to

leave that relationship. That person's a bad person. You need

just set a boundary. Meanwhile, the relationship inside of me

was the worst of all. Right, Regina, my saboteur was the

meanest mean girl of all time. And I'll tell you, 20 years

later, I am like the most loving person to myself. I treat myself

and my life with the utmost reverence, and that's why I have

a life I love, and that's why I'm living an unscripted, like

totally unconventional life that feels so nourishing and so good

inside, because I was willing to actually learn how to untether

from my small self that was always rooted in fear, always

thinking like, oh, if I just lose 10 pounds, then I'm gonna

feel good about myself. If I just get another boyfriend, then

I'll feel good about myself.

Fuck, I gotta get married like everyone else. Then I'll feel

good about myself. If I, if I can just get that person's

approval, if I can become friends with that person or get

that job, then I'll feel good about myself. It is a self

fulfilling prophecy that is a toxic relationship. When your

small self is seeking external validation and buying into the

fantasy that in the future you'll feel better when you get

to the weekend when you get to the vacation when you get to the

end of the day when you finally get to retirement when you quit

your job when you leave this relationship wherever you go

there, you are. That is a book again. I don't know who wrote

it. I say that statement a lot. I should read that book. But

wherever you go, there you are. Right? You leave toxic

relationships behind. You talk to your friends about how bad

and wrong that guy was, and how horrific he was, and you've been

harmed and wronged. And then what happens? You get into

another toxic relationship, right? Until you heal inside of

yourself. Now, none of this is to say any of it was your fault.

You are innocent. We are all innocent. We don't know what we

don't know. And many, I mean, I don't believe there's a human on

planet Earth who hasn't experienced extraordinary trauma

with toxic people.

Don't believe it's possible. You know, I think every single one

of us goes through it, and if we zoom out from a spiritual

perspective, it's kind of part of the human experience. But

unfortunately, some people come to planet Earth; they only

expect experience the toxic traumas, and they never have

their awakening. They never end up listening to the call that

life sends them over and over again to like heal their heart

and learn how to do life differently, but you have

because you're here, and I'm celebrating you for that. And

I'm celebrating. I'm sure in your life you read books, you

hopefully have worked with mentors and coaches, you go to

retreats, you do things to transform your relationship with

yourself, because if we don't take responsibility for our

relationship with ourselves, we are guaranteed in toxic

relationships. Since I have healed my saboteur, it doesn't

mean my saboteur is not there. Your saboteur, to be clear, is

always there, but she becomes quieter and quieter, and then

it's incredibly obvious when she's there, right? My saboteur

shows up now every time I'm growing and expanding into my

next level of my work in the world of myself. She's like, "Oh

no, no, it's not safe. Don't be brighter. Don't be bigger. Don't

be more creative. Don't have more fun. Don't have more love."

She'll show up and try and sabotage it because that's what

she was hired for, right? She's she's hired for life. She never,

she will never give up that job, which is beautiful.

But when you have a relationship with your saboteur, your

conditioned self, your protector, she's not really

protecting you as an adult. But once you have a relationship

with her, now you have choice. Right now, you can say thank you

so much for trying to protect me. We are safe. You don't have

to lead this one, Regina. I've got, I've got it. That's the

name of my saboteur. I've got it, Regina George for Mean

Girls. That's what the inspiration was. But your

saboteur is not in charge anymore, right? If you want to

become the heroine of your own life, aka the leading lady who

has an extraordinary life. That lives an expansive life that is

not just the basic script that we've been taught to have, where

you're not just alone in a box like doing what everyone else is

doing and then chronically feeling anxious underneath and

looking for ways to numb your anxiety. That is not what you're

here for. You are here to live an extraordinary life, and your

extraordinary life doesn't mean you have to move to Africa like

me, right? Your extraordinary life is going to be unique to

you, but your mind will tell you what that means. And the reality

is, your soul can't see the path. Your soul, it like what is

aligned for your soul is not what your mind sees or or wants.

Your soul's path is unpredictable, but when you

learn to live from that place, your toxic dynamics disappear.

They fall away and they transform. And I've seen it over

and over again. I have supported so many women on the deep heroin

journey that I take them on with the one-on-one and untethering

from their patterns in one-on-one work, and then they

come to the immersion in Greece, which is an unleashing of all of

the repressed aspects of yourself and deeply learning how

to live from that love and that center and all the gift of who

you are, that's the heroin journey that I take women on.

And I have witnessed again and again and again women who, when

we start working together, they're tied to someone super

toxic. Maybe it's their one of their parents, maybe it's their

sibling, maybe it's their ex partner, but their tie, or maybe

it's their current partner. Those dynamics change. It's

unbelievable to witness. Some people fall away, right? Some

people are not aligned to be in your life, and they'll magically

fall away. You don't have to break up with them.

They fall away when, when if they can, right? But if you're

co-parenting with someone, obviously they can't fall away.

But how you relate to them and how you are with them can

absolutely transform. And it's the most empowering thing, like

to actually be in the place where you're where you're you're

engaging with someone who used to trigger the crap out of you,

and now you're no longer triggered, and you feel like a

different version of yourself with them. It is so empowering.

It feels so good. And guess what? That dynamic will change

because whatever dynamic you have currently with that person

that was quote unquote toxic cannot exist when you're not

participating in it. It's not possible. That toxic dynamic

will fall away because you are playing a part, and this is

where we take our power back again. Not to blame ourselves.

There's a lot of horrible things that women have been through and

men. But when you take responsibility for knowing what

was my pattern, how did I attract a toxic, narcissistic,

abusive relationship? Because I tell you, I attracted a lot of

them in different forms when I was younger, when I was in my

saboteur. Now that I'm living from my heroin and my

sovereignty, all the relationships in my life are

healthy. Like not just healthy, like heroin relationships. I

only attract women that are sovereign, that are deeply

compassionate and vulnerable and real, but also super expansive

and always growing and always evolving and not letting fear

lead their lives. Who are doing something really amazing and

inspiring? Those are the friends that I attract because that's

how I'm living my life. It's a mirror, right?

And also, like every single person that I attract now is

coming from that sovereign place, and even the women that

work with me, they sit in front of me and are like, "Okay, I'm

ready, let's go." Right, I'm done living in that old way, in

constantly in toxic relationships with people, with

things, with technology, with places, with experiences, like

I'm ready to take responsibility for my life because until you do

that, nothing will change. You, what is that saying? You, if you

keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what

you've always got. The definition of insanity is to do

the same thing over and over again and expect a different

result. But all saboteurs are out there doing that. Okay, got

to leave this relationship. There's another one that's

better for me, and so they swing to the other side of the

pendulum. Maybe they go from a super toxic relationship to the

boring nice guy who's like in his people pleaser collapsed

energy, and she's like, "Oh, this feels safe." Okay, finally,

I have an amazing partner, but she doesn't want to have sex

with him. She's not even attracted to him, why? Because

her saboteur and the wounded little girl, who's terrified of

toxic patterns and toxic behavior, toxic men, has chosen

this as a safety mechanism. Right? You get to have the love

you desire. It's not going to come from your small self.

So, if your strategy is to go from that kind of guy to that

kind of guy, then you're you're going to get a different version

of the same problem. So you're, you know, I also think about all

the messaging out there around educating women around

narcissism. Now, education's important. It's important for us

to know toxic behaviors. Like now, everybody seems like every.

Everybody knows about gaslighting, and everybody knows

about love bombing. Okay, I'll speak to those things if you

don't. Gaslighting is when someone negates your experience,

like they're like, "That never happened. You're crazy." Like

they, you're trying to share a feeling, and they negate your

experience, like it's not real. And love bombing is when you're

in a new relationship, and someone's constantly friends do

this too, right? There's if you end up attracting a narcissist

in a friendship, they do the same. There's like an obsession.

There's constant love. There's constant praise. And to the

wounded little girl, that's delicious, right? The wounded

little girl who feels unlovable, unworthy, not good enough

because her whole life she was taught by the school system and

her family system and the world around her that she wasn't okay

to be who she is, so she had to behave and perform and be

different. So she's like starving. This little wounded

girl who's like so far away from her soul and her own magic is

starving for attention. So a love bomber comes along from

that wounded self.

Oh my gosh, it's gonna look so attractive. The love bomber

looks amazing. Love bomber is like, oh my god, finally I'm

rescued. Like here he is. You know, all the Disney movies and

all the rom coms. My whole life told me he was coming, and I

didn't believe it. Here he is. Next thing you know, she's

married to a psychopath or married to a narcissist and

having kids with him. Right? We are set up. It's a setup because

we're all programmed to be in relationship. That's a

non-negotiable. You have to be in relationship, and you should

find one person that lasts forever. That programming is

still in our everything. It's in the water we drink. It's

everywhere, and yet nobody teaches us how, and nobody's

doing it from the magic of their soul and their being. Everyone's

doing it from their wounded little girl, wounded little boy,

and trying to fill a void of emptiness. Even the narcissists,

they're empty too, so they're being rescued as well, right? It

just looks different. So we are not set up for success. It is

not your fault. But now that you know, and now that there's so

many support systems and resources and programs out there

to help you learn to live from a different place, you get to

choose. You get to choose to do it different. So I invite you.

We are getting close to the end of 2026, which is wild, and 2027

gets to be like a whole new story, and if you are done with

toxic relationships in your life, I'm talking. It could be

with your family, with friends, with coworkers, with someone you

work for. Could be with your ex partner or your current partner

or your kids. If you are done with toxic relationships, join

me in the starting over weekend. It's November 20th to 22nd. It's

such a beautiful weekend that when we did it last time, the

reason I'm doing it again so soon it wasn't intended this

way. But some of the women that came were like, "Oh, I have

friends who want to do it. When's your next one?" And I

wasn't planning on doing it till next year, but I decided to just

do it again because there's so many women that didn't get to

make it last time. But even if you're not going through a

rupture or breakup right now. It's such a great way to rewrite

your story because none of us had a rite of passage to walk

through when we went through traumatic endings. We just like

drag all of that into our next relationship, or we shut down

from love altogether. But regardless, your trauma affects

you, and these toxic relationships you've been in

that you have not processed and healed and rewritten and owned

your part and rewritten the story. Like if you have not gone

through a rite of passage from that situation, it is impacting

you whether you know it or not. So the starting over weekend is

such a powerful, beautiful opportunity to meet amazing

women, to be supported, and start to also meet and make some

heroin friends.

Women who are really taking responsibility for their lives

and rewriting the stories, rather than the old paradigm of

friendship, which is like, oh, poor you, he's bad, he's toxic.

That's a red flag. You gotta run from the red flags. Like if

we're all obsessed with red flags, we are now our nervous

systems are so dysregulated, and we're out there dating from

fear, right? You don't need to date from fear. Your compass

will tell you, and if you learn to live from your compass,

you'll experience very different dating and relationship

experiences. Like everything is different when you're dating

from sovereignty, right? But if you're just in the old paradigm

of like, look for all the bad guys out there, and then talk to

your friends about it. And everyone fear men. All men are

bad. All men are wrong. Like that's what most women are

is out there just blaming and shaming men, rather than

being like, wait, what is our part? How can we shift this?

Because there's something happening inside. The common

denominator is me, right? Michael Jackson. Look at

searching for the man in the mirror. I'm asking him to change

his way.

No message could have been any clearer. If you want to make the

world a better place, you better look at yourself and make a

change. Right? It's like in so many songs from the past. It's

so cool. But like, look in the mirror. This is your chance. So

join us for the starting over weekend. It's. Cultivated three

mornings, slightly earlier this time because there was a time

change and it's really late for me. So 7:30am. Pacific is what

we're starting at every day. 7:30am. Pacific till probably

about 10. Usually it's about two and a half hours each day, and

it's Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It's $22, and it is such a

beautiful, powerful experience. Again, you're going to meet

other women. It's interactive. It's on Zoom. We don't record

it, so it's super intimate and safe. A beautiful space where

you get to totally go through a process of of letting go of

these old toxic dynamics. You have to change your way of doing

relationship. So I like to look at the like your saboteur takes

life so seriously and wants to just stay in the story of like

the bad guy, you know, the bad guy in the White House and the

bad guy in my best relationship and the bad guy out there and

everyone's bad guys, and and when you look at your life as a

movie, there has to be bad guys.

Like growth doesn't happen without the bad guy, right?

Every hero's journey in a movie, the antagonist comes in to

activate the protagonist, so they can grow and evolve, and

take the you know the refuse the call to adventure, and then take

the call, and then like it's all about adventure and growing and

evolving from life. We have some fantasy that life should just be

blissful and utopian in every minute. It's not. That's not

this human experience. But what this human experience is is we

walk through crazy challenges as humans, and it's not a cakewalk,

right? We go through really painful experiences. But when

you know how to take those painful experiences as your

curriculum, right? That's what we say in the heroin community.

Every time life brings you something painful, hard,

challenging, your saboteur wants to be like, "This shouldn't be

happening. I wish this wasn't happening." And your saboteur is

just arguing with reality, which only perpetuates suffering and

keeps you small.

Your heroine is like, "Oh, this is happening, the thing itself

is neutral, and how I do this is determines what my life looks

like and how I get to grow, and so it is absolutely incredible

to witness this journey. I feel so honored to be on the path I'm

on and to support women in the way I do because it's so

beautiful to witness a woman who's in deep pain and suffering

in her life, and watch her take her power back, and watch her

completely rewrite her story. And I have hundreds of stories

of women who've completely rewritten their story. You know,

I have heroines that say this is the best investment I ever made

my life because it's the investment that keeps giving

again and again and again because it's every facet of your

life and how you do everything, how you do your life's purpose,

how you share your gifts with the world, how you relate, how

you how you are in relationship to everything. So, if you have a

toxic relationship with anyone or anything in your life, you

can change it. The power was within you all along, my dear.

That's a quote from Wizard of Oz. Love that one. Safety is

within you; it's not out there. And the little girl's been

looking for safety in a toxic relationship, thinking like,

"That's safe. I have a man now. Look, he has a big bank account.

Like, there's that safety." And the heroine is like, "Safety's

here." And little girl, I've got you. You are safe, and I will

never abandon you again and ignore my compass again for

something that doesn't feel good, right?

When you learn to change that relationship where your heroine

is leading your little girl and not your saboteur, your whole

entire world will change. You can change your relationship

with anyone, and that relationship dynamic will change

if you're learning to do to be in that dynamic from your

heroin, so much as possible. So I would love to support you with

this. Join me on the Starting Over weekend, november 20 to

22nd. I'll put the link below this episode. It's also on my

website, kateharlow.com or theunscriptivewoman.com. Also on

my Instagram, Kate Harlow the Unscripted Woman. So have a

look. Find the link for the starting over weekend again in

the show notes below this episode. Would love to have you

there. Tell all your friends that have been that are

exhausted from toxic relationships that are ready to

rewrite their story for 2027. Let's make 2027 the most

expansive year yet. You get to take responsibility for how your

story goes and for what kind of life that you live and where you

live it from within yourself. So you are amazing. Thank you so

much for being on this journey with me. We'll see you at the

starting over weekend. And spread this message, this

episode to any woman who you know needs to hear it. Go back

and listen to Mark Grove's episode last week about toxic

relationships to phones, and let's be the change in the world

we wish to see. Love you, and we'll see you next week.