How Controlling Relationships Impact Us - YLAM240030

SPEAKER 1 This program presents ways to optimise health and well-being. When considering lifestyle changes, please consult with your health care provider to ensure they are suitable for you. SPEAKER 2 Hello and welcome, I'm Kaysie Vokurka. It has been said, be with those who bring out the best in you, not the stress in you. Indeed, interpersonal relationships do have a way of bringing out the best or the stress in us. We're going to talk more about this next. This is yous Lifestyle As Medicine, a production of 3ABN Australia Television. It's so good to have you with us as we learn more about how you can shape your lifestyle as medicine. Today we are talking more about power in relationships and specifically how controlling relationships impact our health. Health Psychologist Jenifer Skues is with us once more to take us through this topic. Thank you for joining us Jenifer. SPEAKER 1 Thank you for having me. I love being here and doing these programs. SPEAKER 2 That's very good. And we're talking today about controlling relationships. Can you just give us in a nutshell what what they actually are. What do they look like? SPEAKER 1 A controlling relationship is where you have no control in your own life anymore. So what they're doing, the person who's the controller takes over and compromises us. And we often don't realise that if we're a yes person or a person who likes to please, we do everything we can, not realising we're being controlled until stress kicks in. And then becomes a very stressful relationship and we don't want to keep doing that anymore. SPEAKER 2 Okay, so that's essentially what is going on. And obviously we've talked in the previous session about different patterns in how that manifests and how to recognize those. And I guess what we're wanting to really look into today is how do those kind of dynamics actually affect our health? SPEAKER 1 It affects our health mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Because when we are not... because our brain goes out of balance. I guess that's part of it. It's a physical side is we're now emotionally oriented and we are thinking in terms of stress or in negatives. So the brain is out of balance, so then we can't feel good emotionally. We start having emotional reactions to things. We also find mentally we're compromised and usually the thoughts are racing, it's very negative and we just go over and over and over things that aren't working well. And I'm sure most people relate to that. We have a busy brain when that happens. And certainly spiritually, God can't connect with us when our brain is compromised or when we're focusing in what's happening around us and we don't maintain our prayerful connection with God. So spiritually then we're not being nurtured spiritually. And when you distance from God, you start to feel very stressed and you're on your own, you feel isolated on your own. And this is where then the physical body is totally compromised. And that's one of the things we're going to start looking at is what is, because all of that is incredibly stressful. So we're going to have a look at what is the stress response and what happens to us because most people don't know. I don't know what's going on. I have no idea why I'm like this or why I've got these particularly inflammatory disorders. Ongoing stress causes a lot of inflammation in the brain, in the cells. So people don't know what's wrong with them. They don't know why they're getting viruses or why their health is deteriorating. So this is where understanding this model will help us to see some of that and why we get to that point. It's a burnout. We get to the point of burnout. Even in relationships, whether it be work or whether it be home or wherever we are, we emotionally burn out. Burnout is more about the emotional burnout. SPEAKER 2 Okay, so basically when we have these unhealthy kind of dynamics where we are being controlled, maybe even if we are trying to control others, those elements at play, it actually triggers a stress reaction in us. Is that what we're getting at? SPEAKER 1 Yes, it does. Because our brain is wired for survival. And if we think we're under threat or whatever's happening to us, and this is where someone who's controlling you is very threatening, because they use ways of doing that, and the controller will use emotional, like guilt, shame, they will give negative feedback to the person. They berate them. And so it's the sort of thing where the action of that individual who's in control causes the brain to go, I'm not surviving. And then that goes into survival mode, which is our fight and flight mechanism. So then we have to survive. How am I going to survive? And sadly, in a lot of these relationships, people have no way out. particularly when it's a marital situation, because what happens is the person who's the controller tends to let everyone else think they're a wonderful person. And therefore the person who, and look, women can control too. Women can be like this, but a lot of what I get is the woman who's feeling undermined and struggling and stressed, and she'll go and talk to someone, and they don't believe it, but oh, he's such a nice man, you know, if you're looking at that one. Or, she's such a lovely person if it's the other way around. So this is where then the controller gets away with it, and that is doubly stressful. SPEAKER 2 Yes. SPEAKER 1 Because if you give a cry for help in those relationships and nobody believes you because they look at this person and think they're okay when they're not okay, it's ongoing. you've got no way out other than to run. That's that flight. So if that makes sense. SPEAKER 2 Yeah, so that's quite a serious then, like it's seriously triggering the brain in giving those signals of being threatening and everything. Your brain is reacting as if this is dangerous, almost like it's saying, we gotta respond to this to try and bring back the security and the normality that is needed. SPEAKER 1 That's it. Because that person is trapped. They feel trapped in that relationship. And when they're feeling trapped, the whole system is, as I said, on this fight-flight mode. They can't fight because they're immobilized. And when we look at this model, it'll explain some of that. And where are we going to run? And often we don't even think there's no way out. It's like, I can't leave. I've got nowhere to go. Or how will I cope? And particularly if it's a family with children. Mm-. And that's a really hard one too. So and of course the children are then stressed as well. SPEAKER 2 Yes. SPEAKER 1 So it's, yeah, it's not good. And look, we're not saying that there aren't healthy good relationships. We're looking at a relationship where one person is the controller. SPEAKER 2 Mm. SPEAKER 1 Look, children can control. Teens love to control. And they do things to get their own way. Tantrums are about control. So there's lots of controlling factors and a child will learn from the the controller in the family, whether it be mum or dad, they either go one way or the other. They are the brow-beaten and down, or the controller actually is the model, and therefore the child grows up wanting that control or learning how to do it. So this is why it gets perpetuated. SPEAKER 2 Yeah, so I guess then it can be stemming from an inner lack that's, say, from babyhood or something like we've talked about in previous sessions. Or it can really be a learned behavior, 'cause that's what they've been modeled. SPEAKER 1 Yep, that's it. SPEAKER 2 So that's the double thing. Yeah. SPEAKER 1 Because if you've got a controlling family dynamic, then the child isn't connected mentally, emotionally and spiritually. They are now feeling abandoned. They can't open the heart, they can't connect. So this is where they then grow up and struggle in relationships because of that. SPEAKER 2 Yeah. Okay, so explain to us a bit more in detail about this, the stress response and how that plays out. SPEAKER 1 Well, it's a very good model that's been around since the 50s called the General Adaptation Syndrome. And that it shows three aspects of what's happening there. And it is, you can just see the overview. You can look this up on Google. if anyone wants to know more about it because it's a popular model and it's one that explains stress. So we actually need a baseline where we're calm, we're doing okay and that's the healthy mind, happy body, we're in the present, we're not dissociating, we're not living in the past or fearing the future, we're having a good process happening. Okay? Then we have an alarm reaction, something will happen that triggers the alarm bells. Now I'm just going to use a very very simple example, like if you're out and you're gonna walk across a road and someone shoots around the corner, if you didn't have this alarm reaction, you'd walk straight in front of the car and get run over. So it's, I believe it's a God-given protective mechanism, but when we're constantly in the reaction or in what's happening and there's constant alarm bells going off and we can't bring it back down to the baseline where we're calm and focused, then that is incredibly stressful. So the aim is when we have the alarm reaction is to bring it back to baseline, calm down, refocus. If you can't do that, and that's where it's called resistance, and this is where you've got constant adrenaline and cortisol, and there are lots of other stress chemicals, but these are two main players here. So then what happens is you don't return to baseline, you start to have what we call resistance and you maintain the adrenaline and cortisol. And then the next step is with exhaustion, if that happens, then you've got a major health crisis. All along the way the body's been compromised. All our autoimmune disorders, which are, and they're over 80 autoimmune disorders, including things like bowel problems, cancers, it goes on, inflammatory disorders, fibromyalgia, all of these will be picked up when we maintain the adrenaline on the cortisol. It's a bit like being in a racing car and you're actually racing but you're on the spot. You're not going anywhere. It's carrying on like that. And then we've got the fight or flight. If we cannot fight back, if we cannot protect ourself, if we can't flight and escape the threat, then we go into freeze mode. And that's like a dissociative state where, and you probably, seen people in freeze mode, they can't speak, they're lost for words, they don't have a voice, and they're in fear. It's a fear mode. And there are lots of things that can put us in the freeze mode, and therefore that makes them less able to fight or flight. So part of what I do is help people, I call it, thaw out the freeze. So in other words, we have to deal with the freeze mode. When are you shutting down? When are you I don't know what to say. They did that to me and I couldn't think of the words and, you know, I just felt incredibly stressed. So the freeze mode is we're speechless, we can't do things, we can't fight, we can't fly, we just shut down. Yeah, yeah, awful place to be. To the point where some people have actually collapsed and the whole nervous system is shaking because the trauma is so great. that freeze response is so great that the system can't cope anymore. And that's someone who's been compromised and abused for a long, long time, many years. I'm not talking about our general relationships here, which probably a lot of people listening are, oh, I just like to be able to have a voice. Some of those listening might identify with the freeze mode. Fear, anxiety, freeze mode. When we're highly anxious, we can't do anything. We're stuck in it. And yeah, go on. SPEAKER 2 So I guess that's where you would be in a state where you feel like you can't fight back, but you also feel like you can't do anything. And so you just try and stop in time and escape. Like you're just trying to disconnect. SPEAKER 1 Yep, you shut up and try and disappear. And then you walk away and you feel really demoralized, you feel terrible, and you go, why didn't I say something? And yeah, so this is where we're going to look in our last session at boundaries, having a voice, how do you deal with this, getting the confidence to do it. So it undermines your self-worth and esteem. We don't value ourself because we've just let that person do it to us. And again, it can be any sort of relationship we're talking about here. Now, if you maintain that, that's where the exhaustion comes in and you do burnout, which is emotional burnout, burnout in your capacity to do things as well as in your relationships. So this, you start isolating, you know, some of the things we talked about. So that is, we end up with major stress related illness and people is where I see people come to me chronic body pain, fibromyalgia, they're getting all these symptoms of all these disorders, Crohn's bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, is a classic. Medication will not fix these problems because it only causes usually symptoms, they need help as well. I'm not saying medication can't help if you're highly anxious to reduce your medication, but you then need to learn how to deal with stress and work with the physiology of stress. And this is, if this continues, we are then, we call it post-traumatic stress, we end up with the post-traumatic stress disorder. Wow, that's better. Yep, anyone can have that disorder if you don't deal with it. A lot of people who've had abuse over the years have multiple traumas that make it very complex post-traumatic stress disorder. And that's that really towards that resistance and exhaustion stage we talked about, and they're running on adrenaline cortisol, their adrenals can burn out, their thyroids compromised, the immune system is compromised. So you can see how it's just a downhill run. And post-traumatic stress disorder is an umbrella. And underneath the umbrella is depression, anxiety, all sorts of disorders, phobias, and then if they're given the label and they believe there's no cure, these disorders get worse and worse and worse. and we can reset because what's happened with your whole nervous system, it is out of whack, out of balance, and it keeps, it's like it's on default where it's revving the engine constantly. And this is where we have, and we'll have a quick look at that, which is the main player is the autonomic nervous system. And you can see how all the organs of the body actually are connected to it. But we've got two branches and one of them is called the sympathetic nervous system and that is the accelerator. That's where the brain, the survival brain and the heart rate is compromised and we're going have to fight and flight and the accelerator is on and we are revving that engine constantly. Yet we have another branch called the parasympathetic nervous system, which we're not using. We don't put the brake on. So what might constitute the brake? How do we turn it off? That's the big question. People don't know. SPEAKER 2 So, because I guess in there's some situations, of course, where you distressor, it might even be a chronic stressor, but it eventually goes away. And there's others where people are living with it all the time. So how do they deal with this? ongoing activation, like there's got to be a way to go back to baseline. SPEAKER 1 There is, but they have to initiate it and they have to make decisions. If it's in an interpersonal relationship, it's a hard decision because some people have to leave and have time out because the other person, the controller, isn't going to give up control. So either they're going to be worn down and end up with a chronic like cancer or something where they don't survive. or so I work with all of these types of people in relationships and find that what I do is teach them to put the brake on. SPEAKER 2 Yes. SPEAKER 1 Right? And one way of doing that, which I've talked about before in our other series, and that is the breathing, is calming the heart, anything that calms the heart down. So I get these particular people, and it can be male, I've got males and females in these positions, if they like things like massage or body therapy, go, some of them would surf, go back to surfing, beach, going to the beach, doing beach walks, being in nature, going and swimming. Some people are near swimming pools and will go or do hydrotherapy. So you have to have a tool kit to work with, but the breathing is instantly powerful. And that's that type of breathing where I've said to people, you breathe to about the count of five in, the count of five out, but when you breathe, you need to Focus on the heart. Now, focusing on the heart, you can put your hand on your heart. And when you cover the heart, what happens? The brain sees it as protected and starts to calm the heart rate down, even if you just put your hand on there. Which is good news. SPEAKER 2 Yeah. SPEAKER 1 But you've got to think to do it. And the other one then is when you're focused on the heart, you do a slow breath in through the nose and like blowing through a straw out the mouth to about five. So the counting and breathing, when it gets your focus onto the body and off of your thinking and your emotions, but it also helps the autonomic nervous system responds by putting the brake on and releasing what we've dialed up, releasing that trauma response. So it's not going back in because every cell of the body has trauma. Every cell is programmed in trauma. So we're now downloading the trauma by doing that breathing when we know we're being compromised. and to use it regularly. Now I get people when they go to bed, just put your hand on your heart, do the breathing before you go to sleep. If you're having a nightmare, because often people with trauma have nightmares and bad dreams, when you wake up, wake yourself up, orient you back in the room, then do the breathing. And they do find it most helpful. So, and slowly it's a domino effect. When you do the breathing, it starts to kick down and gets the system to download the earlier traumas. So we're working from the body and the brain, we're working down to release the trauma or turn the volume down on it at a deeper level. So that means we don't have to bring the trauma up to deal with it. We can actually download on that level, like a domino. SPEAKER 2 That'S interesting. SPEAKER 1 Yeah, top down. It works very, very well. It's a slow process when you've had multiple traumas for a long time. If it's an initial trauma, like you're driving down the road and someone shoots out at you or someone at work yells at you, it's a one-off and you go into alarm mode. If you do that breathing, you'll get back to Baseline. SPEAKER 2 So what are the key things? Like, obviously, pretty much any of us could have. some serious trauma happened to us for various reasons and causes. What would be the key factors determining whether someone would go all the way through to say like a PTSD state versus just, you know, feeling stressed for a while and then eventually coming back? Like, what is the difference? Because some people go and get that far and other people don't. SPEAKER 1 Okay, it's when you bury the trauma and don't deal with it. An example would be a client I had who was in a bank hold-up. And she then had a phobia about banks, couldn't see them, go near them, even money. It got so bad she was immobilized because her brain said, it can happen again. I'm not safe. It's about safety. But then I've had other people who've been in a bank hold-up and they've said, oh, that's a one-off. Probably never happened to me again. We didn't get hurt. We survived. and the other factor they found in those trauma situations, and the same if there's a fight at home and someone is abusing physically, whoever comes is called to come. If you give the appropriate touch and if it's someone you know hugs you and it's like the child in trauma, you hold them, it starts to release the trauma and it will make the person feel safe again. So there's things that we can do. So it's getting to a safe zone when we're feeling traumatised to get us back to baseline. SPEAKER 2 Right, so even the way that other people who maybe haven't experienced the trauma but are trying to help those who have, that can be very therapeutic to help them defuse the stress of the trauma quickly, if you will, and then help them get back to baseline instead of perpetuating that stress response. SPEAKER 1 Absolutely, even holding their hands and getting them to do some breathing and things like that, that's really helpful because that person, it's just incredible how powerful touch is. The wrong touch versus the right touch. And it's not about how close you are to the person, any sort of touch resonates through the whole system. So it's something that we can work with. But it's also like that's why having a massage for some of these people, when they have someone they trust, even it's just your feet or your neck, they start to feel safe again. They're releasing that tension and they're feeling comfortable with touch. So this is where doing a whole package of things you can do to nurture yourself, to look after yourself. But if you're in a relationship and it's too aggressive, you need to remove yourself and even say, I'm going to go and have time out. You know, this is too much for me. Give a signal so the perpetrator won't or the controller will hopefully back off. But some controllers will follow you around the house and people lock themselves in a room and they get the door gets broken down. But that's the extreme and it's not the main norm. Usually it's because someone is upset with you and angry and they won't let it go and they go on and on and time out and then come back and talk about it. So there are ways you can actually diffuse it. SPEAKER 2 Mm-. Yeah, that's really important and helpful for us to understand that. And I'm also wondering, are there, like, is there a space for, say, tapping into spiritual resources to help diffuse stressors? SPEAKER 1 One of the most powerful is prayer. Being in creation, like where you're around and it's a more spiritual input, have a friend to pray with, if you've got favorite verses, I find I sing some of the children's songs I've learned, like Jesus loves me, things like that. And also listening to spiritual music, particularly I love certain hymns, and I have. SPEAKER 2 Certain. SPEAKER 1 Verses I've put to memory that in that time, like with Jesus, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, and I feel strong again. so it's having the person who is feeling down and out or in that compromise, if they use those things, it will give them strength, whether they need to say anything or not, but they will walk away feeling safer and protected. That's what God says He'll do. SPEAKER 2 Yeah, it's interesting to me that obviously we're talking about controlling relationships and obviously these are unhealthy dynamics. It's interesting to me that part of the remedy and to help us heal from those damaging situations is actually to insert healthy relationships. So like the healthy relationship with God, is it like spiritual or healthy interpersonal connection that helps us feel secure and safe, protected, loved. All of these things coming in is actually, it's healing in that process. SPEAKER 1 JH: yeah. BH: well, we feel disconnected and we want to connect. If we can connect in the right way, it's a healing process. It brings us back to that baseline. SPEAKER 2 Yeah, yeah, that's really, really powerful. And do you have any specific texts from the Bible that you would like to share? Just as like a takeaway that someone could hold onto if they're in that moment and they want to grab it. Yeah, something like that. SPEAKER 1 I've got plenty, but the one I've chosen is Isaiah 41:10. Right? And that says, Fear not, for I am with you. And I remember, no, God is with me. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. He is my God. I will strengthen you, I will help you. He gives me strength over and over again, and He always helps me if I trust Him. And I will uphold you, He says, with my righteous right hand. And the right hand is a symbol of strength. SPEAKER 2 Yes, absolutely. Oh, that's such a powerful thought to hold onto when you're feeling threatened or in trouble, that God is going to be with you as your strength. So thank you for sharing that. Thank you. And thank you for sharing on this topic for us today. We look forward to the next one with you. We've been talking about how controlling relationships impact us with health psychologist Jenifer Skues. In the next program, we will look at some tools for recovering relationships, which will be a very practical discussion you won't want to miss. If you have questions or comments about this program, or if there's a topic you would like us to discuss, contact us on [email protected] and remember to shape your lifestyle as medicine. SPEAKER A You've been listening to Your Lifestyle as Medicine, a production of 3ABN Australia television.