Toxic Relationships: Why We Stay When We Know Something Isn't Right | Lisa Walker

0:00This is Debbie Thompson and this is The Stone in My Shoe, the podcast where we explore the moments in life where something no longer feels quite right and what happens when we choose to listen. And today I'm joined by Lisa Walker. Lisa is a trauma-informed energy healer, coach and patent disruptor and her work comes from lived experience understanding how nervous system and subconscious patterns shape how we show up in love. Today she helps women break cycles, reclaim their power and create relationships that feel safe, aligned and true. Welcome, Lisa. Hi, thank you. It's good to be here. Yeah, it's lovely. Joining us from Sydney in Australia. Yes, yes. I'm here from Sydney in Cronulla. So beautiful. It's lovely to be on your podcast.

0:49Thank you. So Lisa, before we go into your story, I just want to frame this for the woman listening. When she finishes this episode, what do you hope she understands differently about herself and love? I just hope that women will see themselves more clearly and have the greatest perspective of how their choices shaped them conditionally or unconditionally and all those patterns and know that that's okay. And once we have an awareness about why our experiences shape our self-perception, that's freeing. So I hope that people can give themselves grace and feel a bit more free and carry less guilt or shame or any of those emotions moving.

1:35Oh, that's beautiful. So it's giving them, as you said, the grace to be I'm okay. And then also some framework so that they can start understanding some of the deeper things what's happening when it comes to love. Yes, yes. Beautiful. I know that in most people's lives, there are many stones in their shoe. And I'm sorry that I have to ask you to choose one or but what stone in your shoe would you like to talk about today? And if you could name it simply, what would it be called? If I could name it simply, it was why women are conditioned to minimise red flags. So it's why do we know that something's wrong? Why do we ignore that internal

2:21voice or those felt sense of warning signs and we choose to avoid them or we choose not to look at them and just push through it anyway. That's amazing because that's something that is so real for each and every one of us where we can later reflect and go gosh, that was a red flag. Why did I ignore it? So this is amazing. So can you take us back? Let's start where your story and what was the stone in your shoe and what were you ignoring? I was ignoring every red flag in every past relationship that I had. So I had quite a lot of family domestic violence and domestic violence partners. And even though I knew those relationships weren't good for me,

3:09I still chose. And the moment that stopped me in my tracks was just before COVID. I had a partner who threatened to kill me and I was in a refuge with my two children. I had to leave my job. I had to leave the state and we were on the run. And even though at that time I was in marketing in the city, my life stopped. And it was at that moment that was a pivotal point where I had to say, okay, Lisa, your corporate life is amazing. Your personal relationships are rubbish. You can't hold this in any more. And so it was at that point that I made the decision I need to start addressing these. And that's where I started. And I realized in that moment that I was

4:01I was avoiding feelings. I was avoiding looking at the bigger issues. And I did that by being perfect. I did that by being a high achiever. I did that by keeping on my feet and not allowing myself to stop and have that moment to reflect or to feel. So that was the big thing that I can we just go back to just framing and just get some context into this? Because you had two children had you been with this partner for many years, can you take us back to perhaps a few of the warning signs along the way that you hadn't noticed to get to the point where he threatened to kill you just so we can get some kind of context in this narrative? Okay. He was not the father of my children. He was the relationship after my children's father

4:55had left. And it was quite a long time after it. So I was with him for about four years. It was coming up to the fifth year. And there were so many signs that going out with his boys, the avoidance always gaslighting me. And when we'd have arguments, he would he was very charming. He would mirror me almost. So when we're in that courting stage, he would almost mirror what I liked what I like to do and be this perfect version of himself, the narcissist. And then when it all came to real when we moved in together, that was a point when we moved in together, it was like 30 days later that event happened. He was he could no longer wear that charming mask, he would have these tantrums and then deflect the blame on to me. He would womanize and flirt

5:45and all these other things. He'd have the woman on his Instagram where he would be liking all these these things. And it was there were so many red flags, but I being a single mother of three children, I just thought for myself, I don't want to be alone. Like, I don't want to be alone. Can I do this by myself? Or will anyone love me? Am I going to be unlovable? And the day that he left is, that's what he said, no one will ever love you will never find anyone. And he said those things to me. And to be honest, he mirrored back to me how I was feeling inside. And that's where I was like, I had this self belief pattern that I am unlovable. People are going to leave. I'm not going to be chosen. There was all these things

6:31that came up from my childhood that helped me realize and see that pattern. Not at first, but when I dismantled it, I understood that usually when partners are projecting or having that argument moment, this is what I've come to realize. They mirror back your feelings that you held in your subconscious mindset. And for me, that was I am unlovable. No one's ever going to love me. Well, that's incredibly powerful. And to have it mirrored back to have your childhood wound, but at some point, to have that realization that this is where so much of this stuff stems from. And it must have been absolutely terrifying to have to leave the state with your children knowing that your life was threatened. And then to find the time to

7:17reflect on this, to give yourself grace to see what was going on. How did that happen for you? Well, it happened just shortly before COVID actually. So at that time, it was 2018, 2019, when that ended. And then when I left, obviously I was very frightened. I had to pack up my life. I had to leave my job and start again. And starting again wasn't difficult for me because I'd done that so many times in all my relationships. And even though COVID happened shortly afterwards, and I guess the blessing that I can take away from COVID is it forced me to stop. It forced me to have that self reflection because we had so much time on our hands. And it allowed me the time

8:05to sit with my feelings and sit with it. And we don't have that usually when life's functioning. We don't make the choice to sit with our emotions or sit with our feelings. We avoid it. So for me, COVID was that awakening moment of Lisa, the only really terribly wrong here. We need to address this. And that stillness gave me the opportunity to go back inside and reflect on all the relationships and the patterns. And that was a moment for me. I then just looked at all my relationships and they all carried the same wound, the same pattern. So I had them, they were all mother's boys looking. There were so many archetypes and I

8:52could name them very clearly. And it all related back to the same wound that I was carrying from childhood, which was my first experience in childhood with I grew up with chaos. I had two narcissistic parents. It was a very extremely abusive toxic family dynamic. So I would fall on, I would people please just so I wouldn't be hurt. My love was conditioned. It's like I had to prove my love to my parents. It was never just given. And so me proving in love carried through to me in adulthood where I had to prove my worth in love for men. So I always had to give. I had to be the emotional punching bag. I had to be all these roles in relationships.

9:40And I learnt to minimise myself to be small so I would not be punished. So even when things that I knew weren't right, I had navigated this terrain since I was a child. I did not speak up. I didn't have needs or feelings because every time I expressed those, there was consequences. So that showed up in all my relationships with love. And I realised that my wounds, my unaddressed wounds that were stored in my nervous system was why I was making those choices. I was conditioned to love that way because it felt familiar. Even though when it wasn't safe, it was familiar. So that is so profound because coming to that realisation because so many of these wounds are

10:28subconscious and bringing them to the surface. Now you had the time to reflect and you saw this pattern. And that's one thing. The second is deciphering what does this mean and actually addressing that wound because so often these hurt parts of ourselves hide and they hide behind other things like people pleasing. And it's difficult to unravel and bring them apart and really see them for who they are and make peace with them. What modalities or what did you do during this time of reflection to give you this really deep insight of what was happening? Well, at the first I had never seen a psychologist or anything like that. So I started there. And while talk therapy works for certain people, for me because I had a complex history

11:21of trauma, talk therapy kept me in loops. It actually retreated me instead of desensitising the big emotions that I was feeling. So I found that was less effective for me. And then I tried EMDR that was supposed to less than the pattern. So just before we go on just for the person listening who might not know what EMDR is, can you just very briefly tell them what that is? It's where it's a talk therapist and they bring up the emotion or the experience and in a kind of hypnotic tries to help you bring up the feelings and really the experience at its worst. And then they bring you back and then do some

12:09talk therapy or resonance and then help your body to feel it less, less intensely. And it's mindset based and what I found with that therapy has its place that for me having 40 years of trauma, my body was my nervous system was so wired and I had a long history of trauma. So for me, it was too much emotions at once. So I found even tapping was too much for me because when you've been physically assaulted, the slightest thing or touch can be triggering because your body remembers the emotion, the trauma more than your mind does. So when it was bringing up in a therapeutic space, my body went automatically in survival freeze or flight mode.

12:58So what got me out of it was deep breath work, the holistic alternate methods which I now to say energy work. And I always knew that I was quite intuitive and an energetic healer. So I started self healing myself based on I went back inside, I went back into what I knew and my cultural energetic practices is what kind of got me out of it. And then I started talk therapy when I chose to but I found that talking in group sessions and joining community groups was my best method sharing those experiences. Thank you, Lisa. So when you when you started, you realize it was a problem,

13:44you sat down, you looked into yourself and then you tried all these modalities and it's really common to try different things and they don't work and a message for everybody is just because the first thing doesn't work, you've got to keep going because you don't know what is going to release that thing. How long did this whole process take? Yeah, so I am Polynesian, I am Maori Tahitian background with Mixed Scottish and British. We have a lot of people who are natural healers. So we have our own plant medicines, we have body work, which is deep tissue massage, chanting. We have kind of like Reiki but our energetic practices with our hands, it's just called energy healing. So it's like it's either a blessing from a spiritual leader and that's what I had had originally and that's what I'd grown up with

14:34when anything we would get this blessing. And I went back into those practices more and I was more aligned that way, not one for pharmaceutical medications. I'd never been medicated for any of my traumas and that was what naturally fit for me. So when I just started going back into hands-on touch healing, spirituality, yoga, Pilates, moving the body, doing body work with deep massage and deep touch hands healing, it helps bring my body back into safety and because that's where it was sat, it wasn't in the mind, it was in my body. So I had to learn to come back into my body first to feel safe before I could try all those other therapies

15:22and that's where it usually happens when you have systemic chronic abuse. When I spoke to a psychologist, she said, wow Lisa, how do you not have complex PTSD? How do you not have all these things? And I naturally was always self-healing and that's when I figured out I survived all those things because your body knows how to do these things anyway. It's just that we don't make sense of it until we are ready to. So I just had this gift to be able to process all my big emotions or I suppress them and it was just always a gift that I had. My nervous system always in a dysregulated state would stop and go into a survival mode but those skills became a

16:11strength for me. So I managed to instead of spiraling down and going into a depressed state or anxiety, I had small bouts of them or small bouts of low, low moods but I was always able to just, there would come up, well no, you're going to get up Lisa and you just sort of keep moving and. Thank you, I really appreciate that. So just how long did all of this take? Because that is a lot of insight, it's a lot of healing and it's a lot of awareness and a lot of modalities to come to that. So just how long did that all take? But may it took maybe about two years? Once you open yourself up to curiosity, so many other things become available that you hadn't even thought of. Just the wisdom because this is a huge transformation from where you

17:00went fearing your life and having to basically exit your life for your safety. To doing all this healing, kind of your own path, you created it. I mean this is gold. What do you understand about love now that you didn't then? What I understand about love is I was outsourcing love. I needed love to validate myself and then I realized that when I stopped looking externally for love and came back to knowing that I have to give love to myself, everything changed because I saw my worth in somebody else's eyes instead of my own. Wow. So when I could look in the mirror and that's what I want women to know is when we're searching for these perfect partners,

17:49we start having these stories and we start losing ourselves in relationships because we look for them to validate what's missing. When now as a 47-year-old woman, I'm like, I'm all that I need. And if I'm single for the rest of my life, then so be it. But I now have this conviction that I am enough. I am so loved and I will draw the person, the healthy relationship. But my standards are there now where before I had no standards, I had no boundaries because I was always outsourcing my need to be loved. And the only person that needed to love me was me. Amazing. So profound, so beautiful and just so powerful. And it's the bedrock,

18:40isn't it? So much is loving yourself, knowing that you're enough. And so have you had a new relationship since this new realization or what have you realized differently about relationships? I have just been dating and I at first I was, I wasn't ready to date. I needed to do all the work and obviously it was COVID, but no, I haven't had a relationship. I've just been dating, but my standards have changed and the quality of men have changed as well. And even on my dating path, I noticed a pattern straight away. So it was kind of like, University, you testing me, brought me back the same guys that I'd chosen over and over again. This time in real time,

19:28because I had embodied the lesson, I was like, Nope, not today. We are choosing making different choices this time. So you could see the red flag straight away. Correct. And to being so empowering to be able to just, in real time, as you said, to just go, Nope, Nope, Nope. And your intuition and your inner power and everything. Yeah. Because there's been guys that like to do on a go on date too. Well, I really like you and my need to be chosen by a man. Nope. Cause I could see them orbiting. Men will orbit, but never pick or choose or show, show up how I need them. So now I have the convictions a man's going to meet me or not

20:15at all. So that's how I'm at. And I love it because beautiful. I would take breadcrumbs and a lot of women do tolerate breadcrumbs and no, just wait for them because they'll find them. So your legacy, the ripple that you've, this self-work that you've done, this realization, this inner, this power that you have, what's the ripple out to your children, to your community? How's it changed your life? Well, I have been able to now connect with other women who have been through a similar journey or path and I help other women connect the resources or help them dealing with the emotional effects of running from domestic violence and how to set up again. I also help other women or even

21:06my friends who have known my story help them to, to understand that to support a woman going through this, it's just to be the friend. Don't ask questions. Don't judge her choices. Don't judge why she's not leaving, why she's choosing to stay because it goes deeper than that. And what women need to understand is sometimes we don't know the answers. We don't know why we're subconsciously making these choices. So for other women, don't judge a woman that's in that position because it's very difficult and usually it's a conditioning from childhood and she hasn't unpacked it yet. So having that education piece also helps other women understand and then can support other women a lot more effectively. That's beautiful. So I will link

21:57all your details below so people can get in touch with you. But what is your website or Instagram or what's the main way they can get in touch with you? I am at Dady Circle and my website is www.dadycircle.com. So just before we finish off, just one message to the listener. If you could just impart one bit of wisdom to them, what would that be? My wisdom would be the greatest thing that we have in life is love. I have this belief system that we are born from love. Our greatest lesson that we learn is love is our greatest teacher. So in life, we are born from love. In life, it's to be able to love and give love to others. And when we

22:44lead this life, we return to love. So for me, the whole point of life is to love yourself fully and to know that everything is going to be okay. When we lead from love and from our heart, everything works. Everything is, it helps us navigate chaos so much better. That would be my message. I love it. I love it. It's magical. And this is something that I ask all my guests is if today was your last day on earth, what would you do and why? If it was my last day on earth, I would have all my closest friends and family and animals. And I would just be at the

23:32beach, have a picnic and watch the sunset. It's been the whole day swimming, enjoying the moment, having connected conversations and then seeing a very last sunset because I love sunsets. So I'd start with a sunrise and sunset. I would just spend the day with all my favorite people. And it's all going back to love. It's all going back to love. I want to be surrounded by love. I would spend my whole day bringing in all the people that I love and spend that time. That's beautiful. Lisa, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for being so vulnerable. Thank you for sharing something that's very difficult, something that's very raw, that's very real and all the everything that you did to help yourself and all those amazing

24:19wisdoms that you came and how you articulated those so beautifully and so clearly for everybody. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you so much. And for the person listening today, just take a moment to notice one thing that stayed with you. Just one truth, one question, one feeling that you ignore and just take one small step because awareness only becomes change when you do something about it. Thank you so much for listening.