Flip Your Mindset

Stacey Uhrig
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  • Mental Health

Having spent over four decades overcoming childhood adversities and helping others with my post-traumatic wisdom, I decided to change careers and pursue my purpose at the age of 49. I became a Certified in Trauma Recovery, Rapid Transformational Therapy Practitioner, and Parts Work soon after, I launched Flip Your Mindset, a podcast that serves as a no-cost entry point for those looking to resolve their own traumas. Through Flip Your Mindset™, my goal is to help listeners transform their perspectives and see their lives through a new lens. As a foul-mouthed, unapologetic Buddhist enthusiast, I'm not afraid to use colorful language to express my emotions, but I draw the line at any derogatory or dehumanizing language. Join me and let's explore new ways to overcome life's challenges and emerge stronger and more resilient than ever before. Thank you for listening. flipyourmindset.substack.com

  1. 3 days ago

    Ep 208: Stop Asking "Why Am I Anxious?" Ask This Instead | Making Sense Of...

    Have you ever stopped to think about how much time we spend trying to get rid of something we don’t like about ourselves? For me, it was anxiety. For you it might be overthinking. The need for control. The inability to relax. People pleasing, perfectionism, or the way you shut down when things get hard. Whatever it is, we usually come at it with the same question. How do I make it stop? And listen, I get it. When something is interfering with your relationships, your sleep, or your ability to feel comfortable in your own skin, of course you want relief. Who wouldn’t? But here’s what I’ve come to understand, through my own life and through the work I do with my clients. Sometimes we’re so focused on getting rid of something that we never stop to ask what might be contributing to it in the first place. That’s what I want to make sense of this week. A label is not a why I was about 30 when I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. It felt like an Acela train running through my chest 24/7. My heart raced, my mind wouldn’t shut off, and I constantly felt like something bad was about to happen. Let me be very clear about something before I go any further. There is absolutely a place for diagnosis. There is a place for medication, for mental health support, and for other forms of treatment. For many people those things are incredibly helpful, and sometimes essential. They helped me too. But here’s where I think the conversation stops too soon. We had identified what I was experiencing. Nobody had explored why. People were very quick to tell me what was wrong with me. Nobody could explain the root cause. And those are two very different things. A diagnosis describes a collection of symptoms. It can guide treatment. But it doesn’t tell the whole story of how those symptoms developed, or what might be keeping them going. Anxious about being anxious At the time, I wasn’t interested in understanding anxiety. I just wanted it gone. I had no room for it in my body. If you’ve ever lived with anxiety that feels like it’s running your life, you know how debilitating it can be. And one of the most frustrating parts is that you can know there’s nothing to be anxious about and still feel incredibly anxious. Which makes you even more frustrated with yourself. So now you’re not just anxious. You’re anxious about being anxious, and you’re judging yourself for it. It’s an awful loop. One of the biggest takeaways from my own healing is self-compassion, which to me is the exact opposite of self-judgment. Because in that loop, we are judging ourselves for something we can’t seem to control. The question I stopped asking For a long time, I treated my anxiety as something wrong with me. Something to fix, kick to the curb, kill off. I hated that part of myself. But as I began to understand trauma and the nervous system, and the ways our experiences shape us, I started asking very different questions. Not “why am I anxious?” in that angry, judgmental voice. Instead: What have I learned about the world? What did I learn about safety, or security? What did I learn about uncertainty, or about predictability and the lack of it? What might my nervous system have learned to anticipate long before I had the language to understand it? That is where things shifted for me. When I looked at my anxiety through the lens of experiences from decades earlier, it started to make sense. Of course I wanted to know what was coming. Of course uncertainty felt uncomfortable. Of course I learned to stay one step ahead of everything, because there was a time in my life when I didn’t feel like I had any control at all. It was a learned, brilliant adaptation. Understanding that history did not magically eliminate my anxiety. But it changed my relationship with it. I was no longer fighting something I didn’t understand. I was beginning to understand myself. And that is a very different place to heal from. A symptom can also be a signal Not always. Not every symptom is rooted in trauma. Biological, medical, genetic, environmental and psychological factors can all play a part. I know that. But sometimes the responses we struggle with today developed in an environment where they served a purpose. Think about hypervigilance. Constantly on alert. Scanning faces, listening for changes in someone’s tone, anticipating what happens next. As an adult, it can look like overthinking conversations, not being able to relax, always feeling on edge. Now imagine growing up where someone’s mood could change without warning. Noticing the smallest shift may have helped you prepare for what was coming. Being watchful was useful. Your nervous system learned: pay attention, stay alert, don’t get caught off guard. Years later, it can still run the show, even when your circumstances have changed. So instead of “why can’t I relax?”, we might ask: what did I experience that made being on alert feel so necessary? And the answer might sound like: of course I notice every little change in someone’s mood. Of course my body responds before I have a chance to think. Perfectionism isn’t simply a personality trait For some people, perfectionism developed as a way to avoid criticism, rejection or disappointment. Maybe mistakes weren’t safe in your house. Maybe love felt conditional. Maybe being the responsible one, the accomplished one, the one who never caused problems was how you stayed connected. Fast forward 20 or 30 years, and you can’t turn off the internal pressure. Nothing feels good enough. You replay mistakes. You can’t celebrate a win because you’re already focused on what’s next. What if it began as a coping strategy, a way of holding on to safety, approval and belonging? Just because something once helped you doesn’t mean it has to keep running your life. Understanding why it developed can help you start making different choices. Making sense is not the same as making it OK When I say our symptoms make sense, I’m not saying they’re always healthy. I’m not saying we should ignore them. Sometimes they need medical attention. Sometimes the patterns we’ve built are hurting us or the people around us. Understanding why something developed doesn’t mean accepting its consequences. It gives us more information. And that matters, because if we only focus on eliminating a symptom, we may never address what keeps it going. Sometimes those conditions are still present. You might be trying to manage anxiety while living somewhere that still feels unpredictable or unsafe. Or trying to stop people pleasing while part of you still believes that disappointing someone means losing them. Insight alone doesn’t create change. But it shows you where change needs to begin. Three questions to try Not because they’ll magically make a symptom disappear, but because they’ll help you relate to it differently. 1. What am I experiencing? Without judgment. Not “I’m being ridiculous” or “I should be over this by now.” Just: I’m feeling anxious. I’m having a hard time relaxing. I need to control this situation. I’m shutting down. Name it without turning it into a character flaw. 2. What might this be responding to? This is where curiosity comes in. Is something happening in my life right now? Does this remind me of something I’ve lived before? Is a belief about myself shaping my response? Sometimes the answer is physical, medical or about your current circumstances. We’re not hunting for a trauma story behind every symptom. We’re staying curious. 3. What do I need right now? Even if a response started years ago, you live in the present. Maybe you need support, or a boundary. Maybe you need to challenge an old belief, learn a new way of responding, or reach out for professional help. Two simple words How much time do we spend fighting ourselves? Criticizing our anxiety, judging our reactions, telling ourselves we should know better. Maybe we do know better. But knowing better and being able to respond differently are not the same thing. Our responses are shaped by experience, by repetition, by what worked in the past, and sometimes by what our nervous system came to expect. So instead of asking “what is wrong with me?”, try asking “what makes this make sense?” And sometimes, for the first time, you can look at a response you’ve spent years trying to get rid of and say: of course. Of course I learned to do that. Not because it’s the only way you can respond, and not because it’s serving you now, but because there’s a story behind it, and that story deserves to be understood. Here’s the question I want you to sit with this week: What if the thing you’ve been trying hardest to change about yourself is something you just don’t fully understand yet? Sometimes healing doesn’t begin with another way to fix yourself. It begins with a different question. And maybe that question leads to two very simple words: of course. Keep getting curious about yourself. Understanding changes everything. With you, Stacey Go deeper: my conversation with filmmaker Ton Mazzone about his documentary Traumality: Understand your own patterns. Start with my free HURRT Assessment, or join my free Calm Code Open House. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit flipyourmindset.substack.com/subscribe

  2. 19 Oct

    Ep 207: Trauma Filmmaker: Your Anxiety Diagnosis Is Just A Checklist, And They're PROFITING From It!

    In his twenties, Ton Mazzone couldn’t get through a conversation without his mind going blank and his heart racing. He bought every confidence book he could find. Nothing worked. The only time he felt like himself was after a drink. So he did what so many of us do. He self-medicated, until that stopped working too. When he finally went to his doctor and asked for help, the appointment went the way so many of these appointments go. His symptoms were clustered into a diagnosis. Anxiety. Depression. Here’s the medication. He told me he left that room feeling even more broken than when he walked in, because the message underneath it was: you’re the problem, and this chemical is going to fix you. Nobody asked what had happened to him. It took Ton five more years to learn the word that changed everything: trauma. Not the big, one-off event he had always pictured, but the relational, developmental kind that stacks up quietly in a childhood that looks happy from the outside. Once he understood that, his whole belief flipped, from “I am broken” to “these are normal responses to abnormal experiences.” I felt that one in my bones, because it is my story too. I lived with anxiety for 30 years. I was told I had generalized anxiety disorder at 30, and with my grandmother’s history of shock treatment and lithium, I assumed it was simply my lot in life. When you get a label like that, you lose your agency. It took two breakdowns and a lot of learning before I understood that my nervous system had done exactly what it was designed to do. Ton turned his awakening into a film. Traumality took him four years, with no funding, no studio and no production company behind him. He reached out to more than a hundred of them and didn’t hear back from a single one. When he started, he didn’t even own a camera. The finished film features people every trauma practitioner I know studies and learns from, including Peter Levine, Deb Dana and Janina Fisher. It has since been screened for more than 100 healthcare professionals inside the very NHS that once handed him a prescription and sent him home. In this episode we go where the film goes, and yes, I got up on my soapbox. We talk about the DSM-5, the book often called the bible of psychiatry. As Ton puts it, mental health is the only field where they don’t scan the organ they’re treating. A diagnosis comes from a checklist of symptoms, and five different doctors can give you five different labels. Ton shares that roughly 60% of the people who wrote the DSM had funding from pharmaceutical companies. (A 2012 study in PLOS Medicine found that 69% of the DSM-5 task force reported ties to the pharmaceutical industry.) In his words: “I wouldn’t want to take the advice of somebody who’s profiting from the very thing that they’re diagnosing me from.” We also talk about why complex PTSD still isn’t in the DSM-5, even though the World Health Organization recognizes it, and how that gap leaves so many people carrying a label that never fit. And we talk about what a trauma-informed world could actually look like, from the belief systems we bring into a room, to Scotland’s trauma-informed experiment, to the way we parent. That last part matters to me more than almost anything. When a parent brings me a struggling child, I will very gently say, I won’t work with your child, but I will work with you. Not because anyone failed, but because so many of us are parenting with a playbook handed down by generations who were simply trying to survive. Our kids aren’t a collection of disorders. They learned brilliant adaptations. If you have ever been told something is wrong with you and quietly wondered whether there was more to the story, this conversation is for you. You are not broken. You adapted. Rent and stream Traumality here: https://traumality.com If this conversation stirs something about your own patterns, my free HURRT Assessment (Healing Unresolved Roots of Trauma) maps how experiences before 18 may still be shaping you now: Take it here: https://www.flipyourmindset.com/hurrt Prefer to watch? The full video version is on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCAQUNLlaDa262nD-iNvGHg Find Ton and Traumality on social media, where he shares every new screening. In this conversation: social anxiety and self-medicating, the appointment that left him more broken, discovering trauma five years later, why trauma isn’t always one big event, my own 30 years of anxiety, what the DSM-5 actually is, who writes it and who funds them, why complex PTSD isn’t in the DSM, bracing for pushback from psychiatry, the UK psychiatry apology, making a film with no funding, screening for NHS professionals, Scotland’s trauma-informed experiment, labels versus adaptations, and why it is so hard for parents to look at themselves. This conversation is for education and reflection, not medical advice. Please don’t start, stop or change any medication without talking to your doctor. New episodes every Monday. If someone you love needs this one, send it to them. We cannot heal what we do not understand. Stacey This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit flipyourmindset.substack.com/subscribe

    Ep 207: Trauma Filmmaker: Your Anxiety Diagnosis Is Just A Checklist, And They're PROFITING From It!

  3. 12 Oct

    Ep 206: Co-Parenting With a Narcissist: When Leaving Isn’t the End w/ Sybil Cummin

    Most people assume that once you leave an abusive relationship, the abuse is over. You got out. You did the hard thing. Now you get to start healing. But what happens when you share children with that person? What happens when you cannot go no contact? When the courts require you to keep communicating? When parenting schedules, finances and the family court system itself become a brand new avenue for power and control? For a lot of survivors, leaving is not the end of the abuse. It is the beginning of a very different chapter of it. I sat down with Sybil Cummin for this week’s episode. Sybil is a licensed professional counselor who started her career as a play therapist, working almost entirely with children. She has testified in court for years. She went into this work believing what most of us believe: that everyone in the room, the judges, the evaluators, the attorneys, the court-appointed professionals, is on Team Kid. What she learned is that the system is not always on Team Kid. In most states, she told me, a parent’s rights will trump what is in a child’s best interest almost every time. Even when there is evidence of abuse. Even when there is coercive control in the home. A parent has the right to access their child, and it falls on the protective parent to prove, document and fight for every single protection. And the person who abused you knows that. They know a loophole in the parenting plan means another trip back to court. They know a late child support payment, followed by “oh, I didn’t know it was supposed to go through this way,” costs them nothing and costs you a filing fee, an attorney and another week of your nervous system on high alert. They know that joint decision making means they can quietly say no to the dentist, or to therapy, for the kid who needs it most. I am not sharing this to scare you. I am sharing it because I have watched too many people walk out of a toxic relationship thinking the hard part was over, and then feel like they were losing their minds when it was not. If no one tells you the truth, you will blame yourself for it. You are not crazy. You are not imagining it. This is a pattern, and it has a name: post-separation abuse. So I asked Sybil the question I most wanted answered. How does someone heal when the thing they are healing from never really ends? She called it the million dollar question. Then she said something I have not stopped thinking about. So many of the moms she works with carry this belief: it is impossible to heal while I am still stuck in this. My child is four. I have fourteen more years. Can you heal anyway? Absolutely. Sybil talks about felt safety: the times, places and people where you are safe to feel safe. Your nervous system has been doing its only job, keeping you alive, and anything connected to that person registers as danger. Healing is not waiting for the danger to end. It is giving your body small moments of proof that right now, in this moment, you are safe. In the shower. Getting dressed. Thirty seconds in the bathroom. And the piece she says matters most is relational safety. You cannot heal from relationship trauma outside of safe relationships. The survivors she has worked with who had even one safe person healed years faster than the ones who were alone. Which brings me to you, if you are the friend, the sister, the coworker someone finally opens up to. Please do not say, “Wow, I can’t believe that. He’s always been so nice.” What happens behind closed doors is designed to be unbelievable. Instead, try: “Tell me more. I may not understand, but I want to try.” And: “I believe you.” We also talked about the kids. Not only the ones whose pain is loud, but the ones Sybil worries about most. The helpful ones. The straight-A ones. The kids with a smile on their face and no problems, who have learned to read every mood in the house and become whatever keeps things calm. Those are the kids we are missing, because those are not the ones getting therapy. You were not weak for staying, and you are not weak for struggling now. Your body adapted to keep you safe. It just has not gotten the memo yet that it is allowed to rest. Go listen to this conversation, especially if this is your story or the story of someone you love. Sybil runs an online community for moms walking through exactly this, Rising Beyond Power and Control, at risingbeyondpc.com, and she hosts The Rising Beyond Podcast. And if someone you used to be close to has slowly disappeared, reach out. It does not have to be about any of this. Just: “Hey, I’ve been thinking about you. Can we grab a coffee?” Isolation is part of the playbook. Connection is part of the way out. If you want to understand how your own history is still showing up in your body today, my free HURRT Self-Assessment takes about eight minutes: flipyourmindset.com/hurrt. If you are in danger, please call 911. In the US, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. We cannot heal what we do not understand. Stacey About this week’s guest Sybil Cummin, MA, LPC, ACS Sybil is a licensed professional counselor and approved clinical supervisor based in Arvada, Colorado. She has spent more than a decade working with victims and survivors of coercive control and domestic violence, including the children living inside these family systems. She began her career as a play therapist, has testified in family court for years, and is actively involved in family court reform efforts in Colorado. She is the founder of Rising Beyond Power and Control, an online community that supports moms navigating post-separation abuse, shared parenting and the family court system, and the host of The Rising Beyond Podcast. She also trains therapists and mental health professionals to recognize and work with domestic violence and coercive control, and is the author of And Then We Do Harm, a book on rethinking clinical interventions for survivors. Connect with Sybil: * Community for protective moms: risingbeyondpc.com * Podcast: The Rising Beyond Podcast, wherever you listen * Training for mental health professionals: beyondpowerandcontrol.com * Instagram: @risingbeyondpc * LinkedIn: Sybil Cummin This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit flipyourmindset.substack.com/subscribe

    Ep 206: Co-Parenting With a Narcissist: When Leaving Isn’t the End w/ Sybil Cummin

  4. 5 Oct

    Ep 205: Rich Dunning: Making Sense of the Silence We Learn to Survive

    There is a particular kind of person I keep meeting. From the outside, they look like the success story. The title. The career. The composure. And underneath, there is a child who learned a long time ago that needing things was not safe. Rich Dunning is one of those people. He grew up in a Bronx basement where silence was not calm. It was survival. By the time he was eleven, he had already stopped expecting anyone to come. So he did what so many of us do with that kind of beginning. He got good. He got useful. He climbed into one of the most demanding industries in the world and became a senior executive. On paper, he made it. But paper doesn’t show you the cost. The silence he learned as a boy did not leave when his circumstances changed. It came with him into the boardroom. Into his marriage. Into the quiet of his own house at night. And after all of it, after everything that was supposed to prove he was okay, he reached a moment where he wanted to end his life. Rich was never broken. I want to say something carefully here, because I think it is the whole point. Rich was never broken. He adapted. A young nervous system did something brilliant with what it was handed. It just never got the memo that the danger had passed. This is what we miss about childhood emotional neglect. It is not only what happened to us. It is also what did not happen. The comfort that never came. The feelings no one helped us hold. The reassurance we never received. A need ignored long enough stops feeling like a need. It starts feeling like who you are. And because it was quiet, because it was not dramatic, we never counted it. We told ourselves: It wasn’t that bad. That is the sentence that keeps it invisible. And what stays invisible stays in charge. A survival document Rich spent fifteen years and ten thousand hours turning his story into a book. He doesn’t call it a redemption. He calls it a survival document. When he told me that, I felt something settle. Because it is one of the most honest and hopeful things I have heard. He is not telling you that everything worked out in a neat arc. He is telling you he made it. That the past can shape you without getting the final word. If you see yourself in this... If you recognized yourself anywhere in this—in the over-functioning, the 3 a.m. waking, the exhaustion that sleep never touches—I want you to hear the same thing I told Rich: You are not too much. You were surviving. And you are allowed to put some of it down. I built a free assessment that helps you connect today’s patterns back to the roots they grew from. It takes about eight minutes, and it’s free. 👉 Take the free assessment And please go listen to this episode. If Rich’s story moves you, his book, Silence Was My First Language, is out October 6. 👉 Learn more about Rich’s book We cannot heal what we do not understand. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit flipyourmindset.substack.com/subscribe

    Ep 205: Rich Dunning: Making Sense of the Silence We Learn to Survive

  5. 28 Sept

    Ep 204: The Childhood Wound That Made You a Helper Is Burning You Out | Dr. Adam McCormick

    If You’re the Person Everyone Leans On, This One Is for You You are the one they call at 2 a.m. The one who reads the room before anyone says a word. The one who notices what everybody needs and quietly takes care of it. You are so good at it that no one thinks to ask the obvious question: Who takes care of you? My guest this week, Dr. Adam McCormick, has spent his whole career circling that question. He is a professor of social work and an author who taught childhood trauma for decades before realizing his own was still running the show. And here is the line from our conversation I keep coming back to: The survival strategies that got you through your childhood are often the same ones that made you want to help people, and the same ones that have quietly been burning you out. Sit with that for a second. The Little Boy Who Became His Dad’s Social Worker Adam describes becoming his father’s caretaker when he was, in his words, “about two feet tall.” A small boy in an alcoholic, chaotic home, learning to read moods, manage a grown adult, and keep the peace before he could tie his shoes. That was not weakness. That was brilliance. A child’s nervous system doing exactly what it was built to do: adapt, attach, and survive. But here is the part we do not talk about. That same little boy grows up. And the survival skill that once kept him safe becomes a career, a personality, an identity. The helper.The strong one.The fixer. Your Nervous System Is a Meaning-Making Machine In those early years, Adam says, we wire ourselves for the world we actually lived in. If that world felt unpredictable or unsafe, we learn to tend to everyone else’s needs before our own, because back then, that was genuinely the smartest thing we could do. Attachment keeps us alive. Authenticity is what lets us feel alive. And so many helpers trade the second for the first without ever noticing they did it. “It Is Not a Mental Illness. It Is a Mental Injury.” This is the reframe that stopped me. So much of what we carry gets labeled as anxiety, depression, a disorder, or something wrong with us. But as Adam puts it, more often than not: It is not a mental illness. It is a mental injury. You are not broken. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do because, on some level, the threat still feels present. That one word, injury instead of illness, changes everything about how you approach healing. You do not manage a wound forever. You tend to it. And it can heal. There Is Room in This Work for You, Too If you work in a helping profession, or you are simply the person everyone in your life depends on, Adam’s message is gentle and clear: It is never too late to tend to the wound. And doing that work does not make you less of a helper. It makes you a whole one. Press play above for the full conversation. We get into: * The difference between insight and healing * Why the best helpers are so often the most exhausted * How childhood survival strategies can follow us into adulthood * What it actually looks like to put yourself back on your own list And if any of this landed a little too close to home, start here. Take the Free HURRT Self-Assessment Get clarity on the patterns you have been carrying: flipyourmindset.com/hurrt Because we cannot heal what we do not understand. About Dr. Adam McCormick Adam McCormick is a professor of social work at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, and the author of Healing the Helping Professional: The Unfinished Business of Childhood Trauma. He is the recipient of the 2026 Minnie Stevens Piper Professor Award, Texas’s highest teaching honor. You can find Adam and his weekly author newsletter on LinkedIn, listed as Adam McCormick, St. Edward’s University. Take care of yourself this week. Yes, you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit flipyourmindset.substack.com/subscribe

    Ep 204: The Childhood Wound That Made You a Helper Is Burning You Out | Dr. Adam McCormick

  6. 25 Sept

    Ep 203: Why People Stay in Toxic Relationships (Even When They Know)

    There is a sentence I have heard in my office more times than I can count. “How can I logically know that relationship was devastatingly awful, and still feel so drawn toward it?” It usually comes with a list. Why did I stay?Why did I keep hoping?Why did I defend them?Why did I go back?Why do I still miss them?Why do I still want them to call, even after everything? And underneath the list is the part that does the most damage: I’m intelligent. I should have known better. How did I let this happen? When someone says “I blame myself,” we take a big pause. Because here is the thing. Intelligence doesn’t turn off conditioning. Insight doesn’t automatically override everything that happened inside that relationship. Knowing something is harmful does not immediately make your nervous system, or your heart, or your circumstances, feel safe enough to leave. That is what I want to make sense of this week. You Were Never Weak Let me be clear about what this is not. It is not a post that judges people who stay. It is not about telling anyone what they should do. And it is not about making abuse understandable or acceptable, because abuse is never the responsibility of the person experiencing it. People do not stay in harmful relationships because they enjoy being harmed. They stay because something about staying, appeasing, adapting, or waiting feels safer, or more possible, than the alternatives available to them. Until we understand that, “why didn’t they just leave?” will remain the wrong question. You Can Know, and Still Not Be Able to Leave You can recognize the behavior. You can see the pattern. You can tell a friend exactly what you would do if it were happening to them. You can make a plan, pack a bag, save the money, and speak to an attorney, and still feel pulled back. That does not mean your recognition was false. It means the part of you that can analyze the relationship is not the only part involved. Your logical brain might say: This is super unhealthy. Your attachment system might say: Please don’t leave me. Your nervous system might say: Do whatever you need to do to get us back to the calm part. A younger part of you might say: If I try harder, maybe I can finally make this work. A hopeful part says: What if they really mean it this time? And a practical part asks: Where will we live? How will we support ourselves? What if nobody believes me? All of these can exist inside the same person at the same time. That is not irrationality. That is conflict. And once we understand the conflict, the behavior starts to make much more sense. They Entered a Different Relationship People look at the end of a harmful relationship and ask why anyone would have entered it. What they miss is that the person did not enter the relationship that eventually existed. They met someone attentive. Affectionate. Generous. Protective. Someone who made them feel understood in a way they had never felt before. The harm rarely arrives all at once. It is a gradual breadcrumbing. A comment about your clothes. A problem with one friend. A request to share your location “out of concern.” A punishment disguised as a consequence. A demand that gets called a boundary. Each moment seems explainable on its own. And in between them there is love, connection, promises, vacations, good memories. Moments where the person becomes exactly who you believed they were when you first met them. So you spend your time trying to reconcile two versions of the same person. The one who hurts you and the one who comforts you afterward. That is an incredibly difficult reality to hold. Relief Is Not the Same as Safety Attachment is not a character flaw. It is part of our survival system. And being hurt by someone does not switch it off. Often it activates it even more. Picture this. You spend days being criticized, ignored, or given the silent treatment. Then the person softens. They apologize. They hold you. They become the person you have been desperately waiting to see again. Your whole body relaxes. You can breathe. You can sleep. That relief is real. But relief from distress is not the same thing as genuine connection, and it is not the same thing as safety. A relationship does not have to be fake to be harmful. You can genuinely love someone who is not safe for you. That may be one of the most painful truths a person ever has to accept. What a Trauma Bond Actually Is This word gets thrown around a lot, so I want to be responsible with it. A trauma bond is not two people becoming close because they both experienced trauma. It is not simply having strong feelings after a hard breakup. It describes a powerful attachment that can develop inside an abusive or controlling relationship, especially where there is an imbalance of power and an unpredictable push and pull between mistreatment and affection. Criticism interrupted by praise. Threats interrupted by promises. Fear interrupted by calm. Let me say that again: The person who creates the distress also becomes the person who provides the relief. That is the trap. You are not bonded only to the mistreatment. You are bonded to the cycle. The fear. The pursuit. The temporary repair. The relief. The renewed hope. And then the fear again. And because you cannot predict when the warmth will return, you become even more focused on getting back to it. It is not a formal diagnosis, and it is not the only explanation. But it helps explain why the bond can stay so powerful even after you understand, intellectually, that the relationship is not good for you. An Apology Is Not Change This is where hope becomes part of the trap. People do not only stay because of who the person is now. They stay because of who the person was, who they occasionally became, and who they promised to be. After a harmful incident there may be tears. Remorse. A promise to go to therapy, to stop drinking, to change. Some of it may even be true. Hurt people do hurt people. But a wound can help us understand behavior without excusing it. Change requires: * Acknowledgement * Responsibility * Accountability * Consistent action * Respect for your autonomy * A desire to repair without demanding immediate forgiveness * Different behavior, sustained over time Compassion for another person does not require continued access to you. Their potential is not the relationship you are living in. And their promises are not patterns. When Leaving Feels More Dangerous Than Staying This is the part I debated talking about. I hate it, because it is true. Leaving does not always end the abuse. Sometimes it begins another phase of it: * Harassment * Financial deprivation * Legal intimidation * Workplace interference * Using the children or the pets * Threats to release private information So the choice is often not between a harmful relationship and immediate freedom. It is between the danger someone knows and a danger they cannot predict. When we ignore that reality, we mistake survival calculations for weakness. Your nervous system does not ask what the healthiest choice is for the next ten years. It asks what will keep you safest right now. People-pleasing, hypervigilance, self-blame, even denial: behaviors that look self-defeating from the outside often make far more sense when we understand what they helped a person survive. Familiar Is Not the Same as Safe If love was unpredictable when you were growing up, unpredictability can feel familiar. If affection had to be earned, working for it can feel like love. If you learned to manage a caregiver’s emotions, managing another adult’s emotions can feel like your job. Familiar does not mean safe. It means known. And the nervous system loves the known. It is why consistency can feel boring to someone who grew up in chaos. Why space can feel like abandonment. Why calm can feel like waiting for something bad to happen. None of that means you are broken. It means your nervous system learned a particular relational language, and it can learn a new one. If You Left and Went Back I want to speak directly to you. Going back does not mean you consented to being harmed. It does not mean you lied about what happened. It does not mean you wasted anyone’s help. And it does not mean you are incapable of leaving again. Instead of asking: “What’s wrong with me that I keep going back?” Try asking: “What did returning provide in that moment?” What did it relieve? What did it protect me from? The answer does not make the relationship healthy. But it can show you what support you would need to make a different choice, safely. If You Are Supporting Someone You Love You can probably see the pattern clearly, and you want to yank them out of it. But remember, they may already be living with someone who tells them what to do. Ordering them to leave can repeat the very loss of choice they are living with. Instead, you can say things like: “I’m really concerned about what I’m seeing.” “You don’t seem like yourself. I miss you.” “You don’t deserve to be treated this way.” “I will not judge you if you’re not ready. I’ll still be here if you go back.” Please do not confront the controlling person without thinking about how that could affect their safety. Do not make your support conditional on them leaving immediately. And do not assume that because they defend the relationship, they do not see what is happening inside it. Isolation strengthens control. Connection weakens it. If You Recognize Yourself Here You do not have to make every decision today. You do not have to prove the relationship is toxic enough. You do not have to confront anyone or announce plans before you are ready or safe. Just start with curiosity. Am I free to disagree? Can I say no without punishment? Has my world become smaller? Do I trust myself less than I did before? Am I staying because I freely choose this, or because I am afraid of what happens if I leave? And here is the question I want you to si

    Ep 203: Why People Stay in Toxic Relationships (Even When They Know)

  7. 22 Sept

    Ep 202: 8 Signs You're Being Controlled — Not Loved | The Power & Control Wheel Explained

    You do not always know the moment a relationship starts to make you smaller. There is rarely one scene you can point to. No single blowup that explains it. Instead there is a slow narrowing. Your world gets a little quieter. Your choices get a little fewer. You start editing yourself before you speak, managing someone else’s mood, rehearsing how you will explain the most ordinary things. And if anyone asks, you hear yourself say, “It is fine. We just fight sometimes.” This episode of Making Sense Of... is for the version of you that has wondered, quietly, whether “fine” is really the right word. I want to talk about coercive control. THE THING WE WERE NEVER TAUGHT TO NAME Coercive control is not one bad argument. It is not one jealous moment. It is a pattern. It is the steady, repeated use of pressure, fear, isolation, and manipulation to shrink another person’s freedom until their whole life organizes around avoiding consequences. That is what makes it so hard to see from the inside. Each individual moment can be explained away. He was stressed. She was tired. It was not that bad. But the pattern is the point. Over time your nervous system stops living from choice and starts living from threat management. You are not weak for missing it. You were never handed the map. So let me hand you one. THE POWER AND CONTROL WHEEL Decades ago, advocates in Duluth, Minnesota built a tool called the Power and Control Wheel to make these invisible patterns visible. I use it in this episode because it does something rare. It takes a hundred confusing moments and organizes them into a system you can actually recognize. There are 8 spokes on the wheel. As you read them, notice what your body does. 1. Using coercion and threats Making you afraid of what happens if you do not comply. 2. Using intimidation Communicating danger through looks, gestures, or a sudden change in tone, without a word being said. 3. Using emotional abuse Put downs, name calling, humiliation, and mind games that slowly change how you see yourself. 4. Using isolation Controlling who you see, what you do, and where you go, until your outside relationships feel expensive to keep. 5. Minimizing, denying, and blaming Every conversation about their behavior somehow ends with you carrying the blame. 6. Using children and pets Turning a child’s or an animal’s safety, access, or love into leverage. 7. Using privilege Using status, money, gender, or authority to reduce your choices and your credibility. 8. Using economic abuse Controlling access to money, information, and resources so that leaving feels impossible. One note that matters to me. The original wheel says “using male privilege.” I say “using privilege,” because an abuser does not have to be male, and control can come through money, fame, citizenship, professional standing, or religious authority just as easily. I also add pets alongside children, because anyone who has loved an animal knows they can be used as leverage too. BEYOND THE WHEEL In the episode I also go into the patterns that travel across every spoke. The ruined sleep that keeps you too exhausted to think clearly. The constant creation of chaos. The control that continues after you leave. And the way this kind of prolonged stress can shape symptoms of complex PTSD, because trauma is not only about what happened to you. It is also about what your nervous system learned to expect. WHY IT IS SO HARD TO RECOGNIZE Because it usually does not start with control. It often starts with intensity. Attention that feels like being finally, fully seen. When that intensity later gives way to withdrawal, and then relief, and then hope, we do not become less attached. We become more focused on getting the good moments back. Unpredictable reward is one of the most powerful bonds there is. That is not a character flaw. That is being human. I also spend time in the episode on how these dynamics show up in culture, in the series Maid and Alice, Darling, and in two stories that have been everywhere lately. Brianna LaPaglia has publicly shared her account of a past relationship. The Mica Miller case has raised painful questions about credibility, faith, and who gets believed. I hold both of these carefully. I attribute everything to the person’s own account or to public reporting, allegations are not convictions, and I am not here to diagnose anyone. I am here to show how a framework helps us recognize a pattern. THE QUESTION I WANT YOU TO SIT WITH Has any relationship in your life required you to become smaller, quieter, less connected, or less yourself in order to avoid consequences? And the harder one underneath it: Was the relationship truly peaceful, or had you simply become compliant? Peace and compliance are not the same thing. Peace expands you. Compliance shrinks you. Learning to tell the difference can change everything. RECOGNITION HAS TO COME WITH SAFETY If any of this is landing close to home, please read this part slowly. Recognizing a pattern and acting on it are two different steps, and leaving can be the most dangerous time. You do not have to figure this out alone. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. To talk with someone any time, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788, or visit thehotline.org. If your internet use may be monitored, please consider using a safer device. LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE This post is the map. The full episode is the walk through it, one spoke at a time, with the stories and the nuance that a list cannot hold. You can listen right here on Substack, or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Apple Podcasts: Spotify: WANT TO UNDERSTAND YOUR OWN PATTERNS? So much of how we show up in relationships was shaped long before them. If you want to connect the experiences that formed you with the patterns you carry today, start with my HURRT Assessment. It is free, and it is a gentle place to begin. Take the HURRT Assessment:https://www.flipyourmindset.com/hurrt WHAT IS NEXT The next episode in this series is Making Sense Of... Why We Stay. We are going to retire the question “why didn’t they just leave,” and replace it with a better one. What made staying, or trying to leave, make sense inside the reality that person was actually living? Behavior makes sense when we understand the context. That has always been the heart of this work. Until next time, I will see you on the flip side. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit flipyourmindset.substack.com/subscribe

  8. 31 Aug

    Ep 201: "Addiction Is Actually a Gift" with Vincent Castellanos

    What if addiction isn’t the beginning of someone’s story, but somewhere in the middle? This week I’m starting a series I’ve wanted to make for a long time, and I’m starting it with a friend. Vincent Castellanos is a Certified Trauma Recovery Coach and addiction counselor with 32 years of sobriety. Before that, he was a working Hollywood actor. You’ve seen him in Anaconda, The Crow: City of Angels, and Mulholland Drive. And before that, he was a nine-year-old boy leaving Cuba in a taxi, watching his grandfather cry in the rearview. Vincent believes something that stopped me in my tracks when he first said it to me on the phone: addiction is not the problem. The substance is. Addiction, he says, is the drive underneath, the fire, and the same fire that burns your house down can cook your food and light a city. This episode is us defining that difference properly: what addiction actually is, what chronic alcoholism was originally meant to describe, why he says “you’re not an alcoholic” is a sentence that can set someone free, and what treatment, detox, and 12-step recovery can and cannot do. He also tells the story of the first drink his father handed him at age 10, and why he calls it, without flinching, the thing that saved his life. Stay for that one. It makes sense by the end, and it might change how you look at someone you love. If this conversation stirs something about your own patterns, my free HURRT Assessment (Healing Unresolved Roots of Trauma) maps how experiences before 18 may still be shaping you now: Take it here: https://www.flipyourmindset.com/hurrt Prefer to watch? The full video version is on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCAQUNLlaDa262nD-iNvGHg Find Vincent at https://www.vincentcastellanos.com In this conversation: 1:54 Why this series, and who Vincent is to me 4:49 What people get wrong about the word addiction 7:03 Catatonic for 23 hours: his rock bottom 9:17 “No bad parts”: addiction as protection 10:27 Fire and addiction are the same thing 14:30 A first drink at age 10 19:51 Detox, treatment, and what they can actually do 24:52 Born in Cuba: the childhood story underneath 32:42 The driver behind the driver 36:54 A Hollywood career, nine months sober 43:28 The addictions we praise 49:25 “You’re not an alcoholic” 54:40 Genes, ACEs, and what gets inherited 57:15 His message to clinicians 1:00:27 What we learned, and what’s next in the series Next in the series: how addiction impacts the family and everyone in the constellation around the person carrying it. New episodes every Monday. If someone you love needs this one, send it to them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit flipyourmindset.substack.com/subscribe

    Ep 201: "Addiction Is Actually a Gift" with Vincent Castellanos
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About

Having spent over four decades overcoming childhood adversities and helping others with my post-traumatic wisdom, I decided to change careers and pursue my purpose at the age of 49. I became a Certified in Trauma Recovery, Rapid Transformational Therapy Practitioner, and Parts Work soon after, I launched Flip Your Mindset, a podcast that serves as a no-cost entry point for those looking to resolve their own traumas. Through Flip Your Mindset™, my goal is to help listeners transform their perspectives and see their lives through a new lens. As a foul-mouthed, unapologetic Buddhist enthusiast, I'm not afraid to use colorful language to express my emotions, but I draw the line at any derogatory or dehumanizing language. Join me and let's explore new ways to overcome life's challenges and emerge stronger and more resilient than ever before. Thank you for listening. flipyourmindset.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Stacey Uhrig
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    212
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Stacey Uhrig
  • Show Website
    Flip Your Mindset

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