Coffee Break

S2E4: What's In Your Backpack?

• Dianne Whitford, Heather Abbe • Season 2 • Episode 4

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Happy 2020! The new year is here and in an effort to stretch ourselves this year, we're looking at what's in our backpacks that we want to unload. From family relationships to failed relationships, there's a lot we have to let go of if we're going to continue to grow. Join us to see if you identify with anything we're talking about! What's in YOUR backpack?

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Dianne:

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Coffee Break podcast. This is Dianne Whitford and I'm here with Heather and the podcast we're doing today is sort of in the spirit of New Year's. This episode will air on New Year's Day, so hopefully the message is a good one to take with you into the new year. Before we get started, we wanted to remind you that you can sign up for our newsletter if you haven't already by going to www.coffeegritandinspiration.com/subscription. You can check out our YouTube channel. There's a video that goes along with this podcast. If you're listening to it on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, you can also watch the video and see our smiling faces, and you can do that on YouTube. I'll put the link in the description. There's also the Pinterest and of course the blog that you can check out if you want more than just the podcast. So here we go. What we want to talk about today is what you have in your backpack. So when we think about new years and heading into the brand new year and everything that we're bringing with us, what you're carrying in your backpack is sort of an accumulation of all the experiences that you've had in your life. And those experiences is what is going to drive or control or influence how you react to new situations. Taking the time to understand what you're carrying in your backpack and how it's influencing your relationships with other people and the way you respond to certain things happening and things like that is an important part of self awareness. And it's an important part of learning how the ways that you are reacting to things is serving you or not serving you. How you respond to people really affects how you react to situations. So your experiences, in a way, jade you and influence you to react to the stimuli around you, regardless of whether it's a true reaction or not. And sometimes you may not even realize that it's happening. You know, you may have an instant emotional response and unless you've kind of done that investigation to know,"Oh, this is one of my triggers" or"this is, I'm reacting this way because this happened to me in my past" or you know,"the last time this happened, I had this really awful thing". And so that is influencing how you're reacting to that situation. It's really important to be aware of the things that are going to trigger you or the things that are going to influence your behavior because of your past experiences. Yup. So what we wanted to talk about today are some of the common things, at least that we are both carrying around in our backpacks, that we're working on in the upcoming year to sort of understand those things. And maybe the things we're dealing with is similar to things that you find yourselves dealing with as well. So my first one, I think Heather probably has similar experiences to mine as well. And that's with my family. I have not always had the best relationship with my family and I love them. And if they're listening, you guys know I love you. I haven't always shown up the way I want to show up. And I know that sometimes when I think back to, you know, some negative event that happened when I was younger or whatever, even even today, years and years later when something like something similar to that happens, I get caught up in what happened last time and how did the last time this happened, how did it change me and how did it influence me? And then you know, it's almost like your whole body tightens up and you fall back into these patterns of reacting in the same way. You really get like this kind of childish behavior, especially when you're around your family because you know you can get away with it, number one. And number two, it just feels like, I don't want to say they make you act a certain way because that's just totally not true. It influences you to act in a way that is harmful. Well, and when you think about it, like, I react in ways around my mom that I reacted like when I was a kid. And Taylor may react differently around me than he does when he's, for example, at work or something. Because you set up these patterns of behavior with certain people and you revert back to those patterns of behavior when you're around them. And it takes conscious effort to break out of that pattern and start behaving in a different way.

Heather:

Especially with your family members because you feel...

Dianne:

And you grew up with that.

Heather:

Well, you feel more free to act however you want to act because you know that they love you and they're going to love you after you act the fool. So that that's why when you have a little kid and somebody else brings a little kid to you and they're like,"he's, he's always such a jerk when I have him. But when you have him he's so good", and it's like because you're his mom and he knows he can act how he wants to act around you and you're still gonna love him.

Dianne:

That's true. That's true. It's, it kind of ties into how we tend to treat the people that were closest to the worst. Sometimes. One of the other things that I carry around in my backpack, related to family is with my son. I don't feel like when he was younger that I was there enough, I was there often enough or around enough. I didn't do enough with him. That's something that really weighs me down a lot and it makes it so now I am almost continually trying to make up for it. Like if I'm not careful, it's really hard for me to get out of that"Well I owe him", you know, or I I owe that to him and, and so I let things slide. Maybe I'm too permissive sometimes because I think, well I owe him'cause I wasn't around often enough. You know, and I have to be super aware of that because number one, I don't owe him. I think he's a happy, well adjusted kid and I love you son. And I don't think I'm doing him any favors by kind of being a softie because of some thing that I'm imagining happened years ago.

Heather:

I know that like my dad and I don't always get along and because we don't always get along like my first reaction to anything else to say. It's just like, Ugh!

Dianne:

And your ears close up!

Heather:

I don't, I'm not, I'm not listening and I'm not processing. I'm just getting irritated and it's unfair because it isn't always warranted. It isn't always warranted.

Dianne:

There's people in my life like that too, some not as much family as maybe work colleagues, you know, there's sometimes people that you know, you don't always have the best relationship with and then it's very hard to stop that in that first emotional reaction and really listen to what they're saying or what they're doing or what they need you to do without having that bias.

Heather:

It's like the opposite of the Rose colored glasses. It's like the red colored glasses, you just put them on and you see red all the time.

Dianne:

No matter what. Yeah. Another thing that I carry around in my backpack is financial failure. So there's been times in my life where I've been really down and out. Times where I was living out of a bag, like a bag of clothing. And that was all that I had or, you know, living off my grandparents or living with my, with my mom, even as an adult because I didn't have enough, I didn't have enough of my own stuff going on to be able to survive on my own. And even after moving out and being on my own, I've had times where I just screwed it all up. I'm not great at managing finances, I'm working on it. And it's something that I've always, I've always struggled with it and it's always been a challenge. There's a lot of people out there who are so good at it and I just kind of look at them and I'm like, man, I know that, you know, working at something like that, you have to put in the effort and you have to like learn it. It's not like it's something that comes super naturally to everybody or even a lot of people. But for me it seems like, I've just always really struggled with it. And so I've had some significant financial losses and it's been hard to recover from that. I think we're on an upward path now. Those kinds of financial problems in my past has influenced how I am now. So what you might think is that having been so down and out before that I would be super parsimonious now. Like maybe cheap, but I'm not. I spend a lot of money that I don't need to spend. And I think part of that is because number one, I enjoy shopping. But also there's that feeling of I am able to do it. And so I want to, to prove to myself that I have that capability now. You know what I mean? And so it's almost like I've gone from complete turnaround, where now I'm going in the wrong direction. And I have to be careful that I am not like spending money on frivolous things just because I can. Because eventually I won't, you know, that'll use up everything and I'll be right back where I was a while ago. So I have to learn that moderation and really think about things before I go spend money.

Heather:

So you know, I'm just the opposite. I'm really cheap. Because I have been poor, like no food poor. And because you, when you get really poor like that it's, it's hard to like spend money on stuff that I, I want to quick fix everything and that becomes more expensive in the long run, a lot of times.

Dianne:

The quick cheap fix.

Heather:

Yeah, you know, the bandaid. And because I want to bandaid everything because I don't want to put out the big money. I'm dumping out a bunch of money on bandaids.

Dianne:

I think also what I see is you don't like to spend money on yourself.

Heather:

No, I hate to spend money on myself. It's, it's a struggle.

Dianne:

Yup. And it comes from those, those past events in those past things that have happened, those challenges that happened to us in the past that has had very different impacts on how we look at money today. The last one is my favorite and that is relationship failures. My husband and I have been married for four years now. We were together before that for about 10 years I think before we got married. And this is by far my most successful and last relationship that I'll be having, which feels really good. But it hasn't always been easy. And I know that a lot of the challenges that we faced in our relationship has been a direct result of experiences that I've had in my first two. I've had two other major relationships. I was married twice before my current marriage and both of those didn't work for different reasons. My first marriage was one of those that you sort of refer to as a dark time in your life. Everything that could go wrong in a relationship pretty much went wrong in that relationship. And for a long time after that was over, it was very difficult for me to get involved or intimate with any, anyone, not even friends. Like it was really hard for me to take a relationship beyond just,"Hey, how are you doing? Oh great. Yeah, let's go get drunk and have happy hour". But to go like any deeper in terms of even a friendship was very, very difficult for me. My son's father was my second marriage and that, that had a lot of external pressure. In addition to some of the personal things that we introduced into the relationship. And then I was fortunate enough to find my current, my, my current and last husband who is also Heather's brother. And so I can't say all the bad things that I want to say. Not that I would say any bad things, but. And this relationship has not been easy either. You know, there's just- both of us bring things to the relationship that we experienced in other relationships and you have to recognize when stuff is going on in your relationship that is a direct result of your actions based on what you experienced in a previous relationship, if that makes sense. So a lot of times when things go wrong in relationships, it's not the other person. A lot of times it's us. And sometimes when we are reacting or behaving in certain ways, it's because of things we learned in previous relationships. And that's what you have to watch out for is what patterns from your previous relationship are you carrying into your new one. And so that's, I, I think that when it comes to relationships, that's what I really have to watch out for is that I'm not, you know, maybe I was betrayed in a previous relationship and so now I'm jealous. That hasn't happened luckily in this, in this relationship. But you know, that's a possibility. Or maybe when things got too hard, I would, I would stonewall, which I do do that a lot. And that's because previously when things got really hard, it got really bad. You have kind of these reactions that are built in based on certain things that happen. You've got to make sure they don't get in the way of what you're doing right now.

Heather:

Right. My previous relationships before my husband that I'm married to right now were not good. And a lot of that had to do with my behavior and my choices and it was hard to not put those expectations of bad behavior on him too. Like it was hard to not be like,"Oh, I, I believe that you are working late. I believe that you know, you're working a lot of hours or whatever". You know? It was hard to believe stuff that came out of his mouth because I had so often been lied to that it was so easy to perceive that he would not tell me the truth. And I'm not talking about cheating necessarily. I'm just talking about dishonesty in general. And it's hard for me to believe not just in a relationship with a significant other, but a relationship with another person that they're telling me the truth all the time. I have a big problem with taking things at face value. I spend a lot of time micromanaging and trying to figure it out. All their little motives and whatever, and they don't have any, there's no little motives. They're not trying to get me, they're not trying to be deceitful. It's just that's my own personal baggage that I carry around with me.

Dianne:

What you've got in your backpack.

Heather:

It is what I got my backpack and it's a struggle, but it's good to have. It's good to be open and honest with the person that you're with about the things that you're struggling with because, and not just in a significant other relationship, but in a relationship with your friends and family. Just be open and honest. I feel this way because I've been through X, Y, and Z and I'm fearful of, you know, this kind of behavior and that can be dealt with.

Dianne:

Yep. Yep. And when you're being transparent like that, the people around, you know, you get a little bit of grace. I think it's a lot easier to extend somebody, some grace when they understand where you're coming from and what's what's motivating you. And it really is true that when something happens to you and when, especially in relationships, when somebody that you love does something to you over and over again, you start to look for that same behavior in other people. And you almost lay that expectation that, that just like you said, that that person that you're with now is going to do the same thing to you that that other person did. And it just gets in the way and it is so hard to recognize I'm doing it, I'm doing it again, and this is not the other person. This is me, this is totally me that's doing it. And it's really hard to get out of that.

Heather:

Well, it's, it's a way to manipulate their relationships so you don't get hurt.

Dianne:

Yeah, that's true too. Oh, I just knew he was going to do this, so I'll just hurt him before I get hurt or something along those lines.

Heather:

Right. You're just protecting yourself with your little shell, you know, I'll keep him out or I'll keep them out or whoever. I'll keep them out by watching every little movement and by watching their every little movement, you're driving them away.

Dianne:

And at the first sign of trouble you can be like, I knew it. I knew I knew it. Time to move on. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that was kind of what we wanted to share today. I think the topic was good for us because coming into the new year, we want to try to start unloading our backpack a little bit and getting rid of some of that stuff that's been holding us back for a long time. Some of the things that's been keeping us in those destructive patterns. And maybe it's something that you guys identified with and can do that too. So we hope you have a wonderful, wonderful new year's, and I hope you all have lots of wonderful food to eat, and I hope you're able to spend a lot of time with the people that you care about. I think that's all we got. Yeah, yeah.

Heather:

Thank you.

Dianne:

Bye now. Bye.