Kristen:

Welcome to this week's Close the Chapter podcast. It is so good to be with you. Wherever you are listening to this episode, we are going to be talking about an important topic that I don't think is talked about very often. But before I get into it, I wanted to be sure to share the free resource of the close the chapter journal, you can get it for free. It's a template, it's what I use to walk clients through the healing journey. And you can get it no charge at www/kristendboice/free resources, be sure to grab it now. You can hit pause, go grab it and start the healing journey.

Now, it is one of the most important resources because you can use it over and over and over again. And you can join the mailing list that same way so you won't miss an episode or free content that I send out. And I'm so excited. I'm going to be starting a programme in 2023. And you can be on the list. If you're on the mailing list, you'll be first to know about it. And I'm really excited. So more information is coming. So be sure to jump on the list at Kristen D boice.com. forward slash free resources and follow along on social media at Kristen D Boice, on Instagram, and Facebook, and then trying out the Tiktok at KristenBoice. and YouTube as well.

Let's get into today's episode, I was trying to figure out where I wanted to go today. Because I'm seeing such an epidemic of lack of transparency in relationships. As a marriage and family therapist, I work a lot with couples, and individuals that are afraid to be themselves. They're afraid to show up, whether they're in a dating relationship as themselves. So we present this best version of our shell selves. And we're not showing our what I call the shadow sides or the sides we don't like about ourselves, we're hiding those. And I want to get into this today why transparency is the key to joy, happiness, and connection and relationships not only with yourself, but with other people. And I'm going to be talking about four benefits right out of the gate, and then ways to be more transparent. But before we get into that, we've got to jump into what I'm exactly talking about with transparency. Transparency means the willingness and the courage to have tough conversations, to be real with what you're feeling. Your thoughts, your desires, your fears, all of your emotions, from sadness, to anger, to disgust, excitement, sexual excitement, all of it. And we were not trained, I would say are conditioned to be transparent. We were conditioned to tell people what they want to hear. Because we didn't want disconnection in our relationships, because there might have been a safety issue. So we learn to protect ourselves from disappointing other people from hurting other people from rejection. Or maybe you've learned to manipulate to get what you want. But it doesn't work long term. It's not sustainable. So what are some of the things that we're not transparent about? This is really important. And I would love for you to get a pen and paper if you have access. If not, take this in, sit with it. Be with it. Have a willingness to get uncomfortable and be honest with yourself about what aren't you sharing? What aren't you transparent about it? Maybe you feel like I'm really transparent Kristin, like I live transparently. Maybe you're holding back more of your authentic self. Maybe you're really struggling with saying how you really feel because you're afraid someone's gonna get upset with you mad at you. Judge you'll abandon you reject you. So let's open up and expand to see what might come through for you.

That is an invitation. This isn't to shame anybody. This is an invitation for growth per usual as this whole podcast is. So as humans we inherently want to hide shadow sides of ourselves and the poor hearts that we hide oftentimes will destroy a relationship. So if you're hiding something, it often will come out or come through. And it will be what's blocking you from living in your joy from living in the full, embodied, connected possibility of a relationship. And so what are some of the things people hide? I've heard so many. And most of the time I hear people hide how they really feel. They're scared to tell the truth with love and grace. This isn't to be mean to somebody, somebody, we have to take accountability for our tone of voice and how we say it. But they're scared to say how they really feel. Maybe they're hiding mistakes that they've made in the past. Trauma, abuse. Maybe they're hiding an addiction. And I'm seeing this a lot of family systems where there is a hidden component to addiction because of the shame involved. Maybe we're in denial about the addiction, maybe the family system is in denial. And it's a tough conversation, because the addicts might not even tell you the truth. I love my addicts that I talked to. And I think everybody has some form of addiction if we're really honest about it, whether it's sugar, caffeine, shopping, likes on the internet, social media, movies, I mean, we could go on and on with all the choices we have in addictions. It's on a continuum. But how willing are you to say that you deprive a dependency on something. I think people hide bank accounts, passwords, they're not transparent about their time and what they're doing. They hide shadow sides of themselves parts of themselves, they don't like we don't show our shadow sides, the beginning of a relationship. Because guess what, we want to present our best foot forward, we want someone to like us. And in doing so we are not being 100% authentic. And I'm not saying show your shadow self right out of the gate. I'm saying name it. Own it own your past patterns own your current patterns. I see people hide sexual fantasies, which turn into addictions and hiding, which can turn into feelings of betrayal and trauma, betrayal, or betrayal trauma, however you want to frame that we can hide what happened in past relationships, we can paint a picture of it was all the other person's fault. When in actuality, you definitely played a role in that dynamic. Perhaps you're, you're hiding anger, management issues that you have real trouble self regulating, maybe you're hiding a drink too much. Smoking pot, taking pills, shot shopping too much. I grew up in a family system where my mom had and I don't know if you've heard me share this before on the podcast. But my mom who has since passed, and I believe is in so much more peace than she was here was in so much pain, and felt so bad about herself, that she would use shopping to try to make herself feel better. And lo and behold, we had QVC came on the market and HSN growing up, they had just come on the market. And she loved the hosts and the hostesses and there's nothing wrong with this. It's on a continuum. So think about this on a continuum. How severe is it? Was it a dependency, it turned into she really felt less lonely in her mind watching the show hosts. And at one point the UPS driver knew me and my sister. He would call us by name he would ask us how school was going because we got so many packages every single day. And I can't disclose how much she racked up in the addiction. But the shopping she would buy makeup, hair products, skin care products, clothing items, shoes, purses, accessories, jewellery, because she didn't feel good about herself. She was in so much shame, of feeling not good enough and pain. That that was the outlet. She didn't drink. She didn't use drugs. That was her vice shopping was her vice. And the other day as I had a grief burst come through because we had here in the US we have what's called Thanksgiving, as you may know, and it was the day before Thanksgiving And I really had this moment of just feeling so sad. I felt sad. I felt kind of disconnected from the family. And my family was asking what what's going on and I just burst out crying. I said, I'm having a beat, a grief burst. And it's okay. And this is what happens when you have a grief burst. And I'm just need to let it out in it just kept coming in, it kept coming. And that was a moment of opportunity for me to be transparent.

This is what I'm talking about. When I say transparency, I'm giving you examples. With that moment of transparency, I had the grief burst. And what I wanted from my mom, was transparency. And what comes with transparency is accountability and ownership. Those are married together, transparency, plus accountability and ownership or responsibility, however you want to frame that are all married together, and they synergistically work together. What I wanted from my mother was truth. I wanted her to own that she had this addiction, because it consumed her energy. When she would get home from work, she would want to watch the show, which I get. We all have that. I mean, I get on my phone, I am just, I don't want to throw stones at her when I do. I don't shop, but I get on my phone, and I numb out which is very similar to shopping. And I wanted her to be transparent. And I asked her towards the end of her life, I said, How's that, you know, how is the shopping going? Oh, I'm over that I'm over that. We'll come to find out. She wasn't over that. As I was cleaning out her beautiful home. She just had unopened boxes and packages and the grief that surrounded me, because what that represented all the packages and boxes and stuff represented her pain. It was an outward representation of her pain. And it wasn't mine to manage the pain. It was her to manage and I wanted her to face the pain. Transparency means facing discomfort, facing the trauma facing the pain. And it's hard. I'm doing it myself. And I don't want to paint this picture like oh, you just face the pain and you go on what we want from other people in relationships is ownership. We want them to rumble through her patterns, behaviour, Shadow sides addictions, and take a hard look at them. And I pretty much begged my mom to look at her pain, because I knew she didn't feel good about herself. And I knew in my heart of hearts, I wanted her to find the freedom and the healing, of taking a look. And sitting with the pain as hard as it is to be able to find the healing. And I had to let go and release that she wasn't able to do that. And so what she hid away and wasn't transparent about but was obvious to everybody else was she couldn't acknowledge your pain, which really, the shopping was a manifestation of that. And that's what people hide. Oftentimes, when they come into relationships, they might hide sexual sexual fantasies, they may hide a trauma, they might not even be aware of the trauma. So want to make sure I'm clear on this. A lot of people don't realise that shame is rooted in that addiction. And pain is rooted in shame and fear, and trauma sometimes from generations ago, pre verbal and early childhood. And when we don't have the awareness, it's hard to heal it. That's why I'm so passionate about doing this podcast for anybody that doesn't know this. This is the invitation that possibility and the hope for healing is there. And I like to share real life examples because then it's more relatable. And I want to make sure that what I share, I've processed myself so what I shares, I don't share from an open wound, although sometimes it still feels that way. It's fully been sat with and I feel like it's important because truth and transparency is a key to health, healing and help. And when you believe that's true, and you can create a family system where truth is, and I don't mean vomiting on somebody, I mean you're taking responsibility for how you Say it, your own feelings, your own behaviour, you change generations for ever. And we don't have to go through betrayal traumas, because we're living transparent lives, which means I'm living in truth. And I want to circle back to how I felt the day I had the grief burst the day before Thanksgiving, I wanted to hide, I wanted to run away, I wanted to put on my mask, and try to pretend like I was fine. I've done too much of the healing journey. And if you've done your healing journey, you know, you can't go back. Sometimes Sometimes we do unconsciously, I my grief, my body would let me do it. It was forcing me into being with the grief, being with the sadness. And I couldn't pretend it wouldn't have been healthy for me to pretend with my kids, because I know, they need to feel authentic mom, they need to feel authentic Kristen come onto the scene. Otherwise, there's no trust. And so meats sharing with them that it's a grief burst. And it just comes and goes. And this is probably going to last a little bit. And that's okay. was giving them permission to feel their feelings as well. So taking care of me. And at the same time, I'm breaking patterns. In the moment, I don't feel like that I feel like dog doo doo. I don't feel like oh, changing patterns. And this is fantastic. I really want to don't want to feel that way. I don't want to feel the grief bursts. I don't, I want to feel happy. I want to feel excited. And I don't want to feel like my energy is tainting the family system. And that's all that shame stories from generations. That's all cultural shame stories saying, Oh, everybody needs to be happy. And this is what happiness looks like on social media. You cannot get to happiness without going through the discomfort without going through grief without connecting to your emotions. And I love what Dr. Brene Brown says if you sever or numb, you're any of the emotions. So you're trying to get rid of anger, you're trying to get rid of sadness, because you don't want to feel all that you're not going to be able to get to joy because you're numbing it all out. This is the truth. And so I sat in that discomfort I wrote, I texted a few friends saying I'm having a hard day. And I was transparent and vulnerable, even though every ounce of my being wanted to be just shut it down and hide and don't say anything. And don't be vulnerable act like you have it all together. Well, I didn't and I couldn't. It was okay. It was exactly what I needed to access, empathy and compassion. Because after I allowed those feelings to come through, I was able to feel so much more empathy, which I wasn't really able to access a lot when my mom was here. Because she didn't feel safe to me, she would turn things on me she she really was in pain. And so she was projecting her pain onto me. And I'm not picking on her. It's just how it was. And so I was in a much more protective place and myself. And that's okay to all the permission slips to everybody out there. cluding and giving it to myself. And what I was able to do on Wednesday, was access so much more compassion for her pain. I saw it, I saw the pain, I was able to go, Oh my gosh, that addiction, which I knew intellectually, but emotionally I was able to get there because I stayed I stayed with it. I allowed it to come up and out up and out like waves to see and access the empathy for her and her pain. I feel like right now we're the walking wounded. And we are not transparent about it. Because social media says to glam it up, make it look like a picture. And I think we're moving away from that somewhat, but we compare ourselves which then doesn't allow us to be transparent and truthful. It really is rooted in early early childhood dynamics and family systems, lack of transparency and truth. Because we just go on to recreate the same thing. So we don't know any different. And there's so much pain derived from lack of transparency. Now do I mean you need to tell everybody everything? No, that's why we have boundaries. What I am saying is I need you to hear that you will not be able to have deep connections without transparency and truth. It just isn't possible. And there's four key benefits to having more trans Parents in truth, one, it builds trust. So if I'm truthful, consistently, guess what happens? You just trust that what I'm telling you is truthful.

And we start building, intimacy and connection, which is the second benefit. We have deeper connection and more authentic, sustainable connection that lasts forever. In my opinion, I really believe that to be true. The couples that come in, in they're able to take accountability and ownership, and they're transparent about their feelings, their thoughts and their beliefs. They make it through the hard stuff. Because they're only their staff. They make it through the transparent and when you can come into a relationship out of the gate without hiding your shadow side and you go, Hey, I have been dealing with this caffeine addiction. I'm making this up but or this alcohol addiction, and I really need to get some help. Oh my gosh, what is that is a cat I'm a loss for words, because we rarely that rarely happens. It usually comes out later. Because the person that has the addiction, often they marry a codependent person, which doesn't want to see that rationalises minimises bypasses denies that that's an issue, because we don't want to think it is. And we do this in family systems. So it's number three, what's the third benefit? I could go on and on, but I boiled it down to four main ones. We, we foster a sense of security within yourself within the relationship. So if I want truth, which is one of my highest values is truth, transparency and truth. Same thing. To me in my mind, I then cultivate a relationship of truth and transparency. If I'm holding back and go, Look, I don't want to hurt you. Why don't you be mad at me? I don't want you to think differently. Me, I don't want to start a fight. I'm just going to play K pretend perfect perform. I'm just I'm just not gonna say much. Or maybe I'm fawning. So I'm trying to please you. And maybe I'm fighting, but I'm really defensive, which does not lead to transparency and truth. Fighting, like going for the what I call the jugular is not healthy vulnerability. That's not owning, and staying regularly regulated. It's projecting. And so we take projection out of the mix, when we have transparency and truth. Oftentimes, projection is more managed, because I'm recognising. Oh, I'm projecting my fear of you getting mad at me and upset with me and leaving, because that's what my mom used to do. Okay, I'm telling the truth, by my willingness to look at my own reactivity, activation and trigger. And I see this in couples. It's it's an epidemic, they do not tell each other the truth. And then I'll have somebody in my office individually, I get passionate about this, because I really see how painful it is not to be able to tell the truth, how painful that is. And I'll have an individual in my office and I'll say, Okay, well have you told them how you feel? And they look at me like Don't make me say any saying to their wife, to their partner to their husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, doesn't matter partner, however you want to frame it, the person they're in love with. I did not want to tell them. And I said you don't have to be mean nasty. Rude. What is the fear underneath blocking you? From you being able to tell your partner and guess what? It's a fear of them getting hurting them, them getting upset them getting mad, starting a fight? They're gonna leave them I mean, the list goes on and on. And you need to identify what are you afraid of, to show up and be yourself and 99% of the time it goes back to childhood.

This isn't to blame anybody. This is for you to break a pattern and to have insight on why transparency truth. You hold back. You don't share things. And shame and guilt. Shame really blocks us from living in truth with a shame stories. Guilt can propel us which is about our choices. Shame is about who we are. Guilt can kind of propel us into making different choices about Sleep can benefit us in some ways. It's when it becomes maladaptive, which is really the shame that takes over that says I'm a bad person. Number four, it lowers conflict. Honestly, I will tell you, the couples that can come in, be transparent, tell the truth take accountability, because again, those all go hand in hand. Those couples last, because they're got a growth mindset, they have a high value for truth and transparency. When you're dating somebody, and you are truthful and transparent. You again, are cultivating that you're bringing that in, start having truthful conversations about your childhood. Ask them about their childhood. What's the relationship with their mom and dad? Like, what were some of the hardships? What did they learn about relationships? What did they learned about telling the truth? And you'll find out there are secrets and family systems that prevent people from living truths out. And I will see generational traumas so if Mom, let's just take mom had an affair. Oftentimes I'll see daughter or son have an affair. It's it gets passed down because we have attachment issues. And that may be activating to here. That's a whole nother episode. But without looking at family history. And looking at transparency, I want you to take a look, what was truth in your family? Did you tell the truth about how you felt? Or did we tell them what we wanted to hear because we were afraid, afraid of getting in trouble being punished being discipline, not having connection with the parent. So we learn to say things to the parent. So the parent doesn't hate us, quote, unquote, the parent isn't mad at us. And then we take that into these relationships, and then we're miserable. Because we never tell the truth about how we really feel. And when we hide things, I have couples that will come in and I'll say, did you see this when you were dating? And they'll say yeah, but I thought you know, they would, we would work through it. And I'm like, this was a pattern early, open your eyes, to your own ways of hiding. Open your eyes, to pattern patterns that are there and don't rationalise or deny them, your own patterns and other people's patterns. Family Systems are powerful. They are that's why I'm so passionate about me doing my own work, man, I'm gonna pass things down. It's just going to be as even as awake as I try to be. I'm passing things down.

It just happens. I am awake enough when I get the feedback to own it to take responsibility and keep doing this work. Because there's more layers there. So we look at how do I create a life of more transparency? Number one, you have to have a willingness? Do you see the value in having a transparent marriage? It's the number one criteria in my mind doing this work for 20 years in couples in any healthy relationship. And people aren't doing it. They're not telling the truth about how they feel like I feel sad, I feel scared, I feel angry. The story I'm making up is you're gonna leave me because I'm not peppy enough. I'm not happy enough. I'm not meeting your needs. You have to check the stories. But transparency is not pretending that is not transparency. It's not placating. It's not fawning. fawning is a trauma response. When we try to please somebody else. So I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Or oh, try to tell the person all the great things about themselves. We have to tell each other truth. Make a commitment that you want transparency in your relationships by you being transparent. What are you hiding? What are you not wanting to face? What are you bearing? What are you numbing? What are you defending against, that you think someone's going to reject you for and you can't say the wrong thing to the right person. You can't say the wrong thing to the right person. They're going to love you no matter what. If someone's not meant for you, then they're gonna go away. If they you tell the truth and they don't like it. This is this is a this is a blessing in disguise. I tell people you're weeding people out then that are not going to be healthy for you. And that's okay.
How do we create more transparency? Have an intention to have honest communication with my friends who just had a conversation today beautiful love this one. One of my highest values is truth and friendships. And I said, I value truth and transparency in our relationship. And the person said, Me, too. And I said, so you can give me feedback, I want to hear it. I know it's hard to hear sometimes because it is sometimes it stings. Sometimes you have to discern if that someone's projection or that is really truth, and be willing to rumble through it. I tell people, This is what I like, I like truth. I don't like manipulation, I don't like to be talked about behind my back, I'd like you to tell me the truth. To my face. I like that, that helps my nervous system go, Oh, I feel safe with you. I can trust you. I want that truth was love and grace, I want that. Put it out there be intentional about it, you bring it say it out loud. Now, if someone's in an unhealthy spot, they're not going to be capable of this. And you're going to have information to know that this is probably not somebody you're going to marry. This is not somebody or maybe going to be in close relationship with and you're gonna have healthy boundaries, and share what's okay and what's not okay. Own your own shadow sides. Own your shadow side, what's a shadow side is those parts of ourselves that we don't like. And we want to split off from. That's the other thing I really wanted from my mom, I wanted her to own this part of her that felt so bad about herself. So she could heal it. If we don't own it, we can't heal it. And I tried and I tried and she just wasn't ready. And I had to accept that. And her shadow side of numbing her pain was shopping. She didn't, it was too hard. It was too much it was too painful. And I spent so much time trying to help her see the light and irony was she was a therapist, and an addiction therapist. But her shame took over was so powerful that she carried around it. And she's still getting packages. And she she's no longer here. That's how much pain she was in. And when you can own your own pain, you can own your shame, you can take responsibility for a new, face it, sit in the discomfort, learn how to nurture yourself. Learn how to create healthy relationships where you both value growth and truth. There's no better relationship when two people are willing to do that. And that's why Mark and I think my husband and I, he has a willingness now we all have our own stuff, believe me. It's not been sunshine and roses all the time. And he had a willingness from the beginning to grow and do the work. Because if you haven't heard two months into our relationship, I was like, How about premarital counselling? And when someone says yes to that, that's huge. That means they're willing to be transparent. And pull off the rose coloured glasses of everything's wonderful to look at our shadow sides, our patterns, our behaviour. What do you hide? What do you tweak? What do you twist? What don't you say? You don't say the whole truth you say some of it. Like maybe you say I only had one drink when you had four. Maybe you say you had one pill when you had five. Maybe you hide credit card statements. Maybe you hide food. And this isn't to create shame at all, because we all have shadow sides. The beauty is loving your shadow side, because the shadow side carries the pain which then blocks you from transparency. Because the shame of the pain and the behaviour takes you down the dark abyss and you don't want anyone to judge you or reject you or abandon you. So you're going to just cover that all up. In reality, the cover up keeps you stuck. When you just decide that's why I love the 12 step programme for people because they tell the truth. That's the whole protocol of the programme. It's not because you're your truth telling. That's it.

When you can have friendships and relationships where you can tell the truth about how you really feel and what's your shadow sides, which is your pain body. Eckhart Tolle coined the pain body, but it's your shadow. So it's the part that holds the pain that we don't want to feel we don't want to deal with it. We want it to go away. We want to feel better. So we're trying to get rid of it. We're trying to manage it. We're trying to take care of it and the way we know how. And what we weren't told is by telling the Truth. That's the path to healing. And I promise you, every client I have seen, do this has to go through the hard stuff to get to the freedom of the other side. And the middle part is where people want to quit. Because they're like a lot of losing relationships, or oh, I'm, I am now having to suffer the consequences of the domino effect of how this has impacted other people. And I say hold tight, own it, stay without our ship, don't own stuff, nuts, that's not yours. Stay with owning what is yours. And you will have a transparent, transparent, connected, authentic life, still will have emotions, but you'll know how to handle them because you're taking responsibility for him, you're facing them. Stop filtering out and withholding information with white lies, tweaking, manipulation, packaging things. Just say it with love and grace, a set of value to have this at the centre of all your relationships. If I could tell you that I can sniff out untruths, because my body will not let me connect with somebody a lot of times if there's an untruth now, not to say that I can sometimes not spot shadow sides, because they've done trauma has allowed them to manage it so well. That I can't spot it. But if someone's in there for marital therapy, and there is an infidelity, and we're working, it's already come out, they've shared about the infidelity. And they said they've cut it off with the other person, I can feel it, if they have not cut it off, I can feel it. You know why? Because there's a lack of accountability. There's a lack of accountability, there's a lack of acknowledgement of the pain that caused somebody else. So with transparency comes empathy. Let's say it again, with transparency comes empathy. It's the birthplace. Because you understand that transparency can breed pain sometimes because the shadow side carries the pain. And when someone starts being real and authentic, and sharing how they feel, sharing, maybe what's been going on their patterns of behaviour, they're more likely to have empathy, when you're hiding, you're going to lack empathy. And I'll still, the other partner, the betrayal partner will say I just don't feel like they're, they're really sorry, I don't really feel like they're remorseful because they're still hiding. They're still hiding, when you completely, really aren't hiding anymore. And your truth telling, you will have this whole different feeling to you. It's almost like the adult self is now online, versus the hiding is the inner child parts, because of the shame you're carrying and the pain. And when someone starts to integrate that truth, taking responsibility facing the pain, we start feeling like we're more adult to adult relationship versus adult to child relationship.

So transparency breeds adult to adult connection. That's the differentiator. Oftentimes, I'll have someone in my office that's parent child, one person feels like the parent, one person feels like the child trying to get the child to take responsibility on their stuff. Or I'll have two children in my office that really didn't get their needs met. And they want the other person to meet their needs. And it's not gonna happen. So they're almost like mean to each other. That's not transparency. That's pain. That's unprocessed pain projected onto the partner. So Ruth, is freedom. And you get to decide do you want to start facing your pain, to feel safe enough to tell truce with the people you love and you're in relationship with? It's not easy. I struggle with it sometimes to say how I really feel because people how are you and I want to say fine feelings inside not expressed. And really, I'm not fine. I'm sad. I'm having a hard day, I'm having a grief burst. And I've decided I'm going to name it if I can. Sometimes we don't have the words and share that. It snaps to the other person to make me feel better. I'm taking ownership of it. It's up to me to have truth and transparency in my relationships, because that's where intimacy and connection are able to come through.

That's my wish for you. And I'm so grateful for you for your willingness to stay with this podcast as long as you have and listen to the back episodes if you want more on inner child work, how to heal pain, and know that I'm with you on This journey we're walking alongside each other. Maybe you're walking right now and I'm going you go are proud of you keep going. There is possibility. When you're willing to tell the truth. I recommend journaling. Getting with a good therapist. If you aren't with one that's a trauma therapist. Start noticing your body sensations and where you feel it get the journal. That's a great first step, the breath connecting to your breath. And if you're uncomfortable with that, or feel like it doesn't work, it's going to be it's probably you're stretched, even with that, sitting in that discomfort of slowing things down and connecting to what lies within. And when you do that, you're on the path to healing. And I support Yeah. 110% and thank you for being who you are. And I can't wait to be with you next week. Have a good rest of your week.