Episode 41: Setbacks

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Well, hey, everybody, welcome to the 41st episode of Don’t lose your balance. My name is Mallory Durrick. Thanks for joining me today, I had a lot of different things I was going to talk about. And one of my topics was about triggers and setbacks. I’m gonna save that for another day. Because I think it’s more important to talk about something that I think we all do as individuals and how we receive this is the most important thing. So what am I talking about? I’m talking about projections, not forecasts for the future projections of our feelings and our emotions, and what we put on to other people to more or less change how we’re going to feel ourselves, I hope I’m using the word correctly. Because I know that if I, let’s say as an example, don’t want to feel badly about myself, I might project whatever emotion and feelings I’m having onto somebody else. So maybe that’ll make them feel badly or make them own how I am feeling. And that is how I’m rephrasing or phrasing the word projection in the context of this conversation. So why do I think this is so important? And why right now? Do I feel like it’s more important than the conversation of triggers and setbacks? Well, I think I hate to say it, but I think a lot of this is all intertwined with one another. So here’s a few things that have been going on. For me, I have created this podcast in order to help change the narrative of how I feel, and me and me alone. I’m not, I’m not here to apologize to anybody. Although I might do that privately. I am not here to drag anybody’s truths through the mud, I’m dragging my own truth through the mud. And out from this muddy clay will be this beautiful bowl that I’m creating, that I can put all kinds of new things into it rather than all of the old things that I have been creating for myself, because there’s something that I truly believe we can do as human beings. And that is to change the narrative. And I say this over and over and over again. And I think this is kind of like a popular phrase that people use. So what does it mean for me to change the narrative? Well, I think that people think that things that we do in life define us and that they dictate who we become. And I’m here to tell you that that is not the way I want to live my life. If I am a great painter, yes. Does that mean I paint and maybe I want to be a great painter, and maybe I can call myself a painter. But what if I’m a terrible painter? Does that mean I should never paint? No. So in looking back at my life, and I look at all of the things that I went through, and I am not a victim, I took the drugs, I drank the wine, I had the affair, I did all of those things. If I was a shitty mother, I own it. If I was a shitty wife, I own it, too. I was mostly a shitty human being an I don’t want to be that shitty human being anymore. Despite all of these wonderful things that I do for myself. It may or may not change how other people perceive me. They may still say, Yeah, drug addict, they may still say yeah, alcoholic, they may still say lying, cheating woman, look what she did to her husband. I’m not projecting anything onto anybody else. I am only trying to say I cannot live one more day, owning every single thing that I did as being something that defines who I am. And this is so important, I hope that I can look at look at my life and say, Well, I’m now somebody who stopped taking drugs. I don’t know if 15 years ago, 20 years ago, and by 2024 it will be 20 years since I last through a Vikon in my mouth out of addiction. So I had four years of addiction 20 years of recovery, and certainly I’m you know going to be 59 So I had 30 years or whatever, of never having that addiction. So I don’t think the drugs defined me as an addict. I don’t think anything that I’ve done defines me as anything. And I’m certainly not going to take all of this and project this onto somebody else and say, Well, I am this way, because of you, I am this way, because of what I’ve done. I don’t want to project my pain and my anguish onto somebody else and make them feel badly, that they weren’t maybe good enough, I hope that I can convey this as strongly as I can. And maybe it’s not about projection. And maybe I’ll need to change the title of the all of this, I

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don’t know, I want to stop the dance, the dance that I have with my kids and the the dance that I have with my friends and this dance that I have with my sister, you know, if the person who might be listening to this, the day that this airs, or another day that this airs, if you feel like you have some unfinished business with me, please, before you reach out to me and throw a whole bunch of positives at me, along with this one little thing of a negative, understand, I cannot own whatever that was in the past. I’m trying to change the narrative. I want to apologize to anybody that I may have hurt, but I can’t tell if I’ve hurt you or not. If you tell me that you’ve been hurt, I want to say I am sorry to you. But I also can’t continue to own stuff that I did during a time when I was extraordinarily sick. And I’m not making excuses for it. But I can’t speak to that person, because I was in such a bad state of mind. So maybe ultimately, I was going to talk about projections, I you know, what I am going to retitle this episode, this is about setbacks and triggers. And it also may be about projections, not projections for the future, but projecting your emotional issues onto somebody else. If I contact you, and I say, Listen, I need to make peace with you. Did I hurt you? Yes, you can answer that openly and honestly. But I recently received a note an email from somebody and I care about this person I do. I just didn’t appreciate feeling like I had to apologize for something that happened 20 years ago, and I’m sorry that you were hurt if you’re listening. But the truth of the matter is, it was not within my control. And I know that that may sound hard to hear. But it was 20 years ago, it wasn’t fatal. And it wasn’t so awful. And I say this, because I think people do this, they carry this stuff around with them. And what has happened for me is not a setback, but a trigger. And this trigger for me is here we go again, another relationship that goes unresolved that I need to go fix, and I hadn’t even been thinking about it. And I don’t want anybody to have to go through what I’m feeling without being equipped with the coping skills. And what are those coping skills look like? Well, for me, that’s understanding that it’s very easy for me to slip into this guilty feeling and emotion and think I’m 100% responsible for how a dynamic played out and you know what I wasn’t, you know, how I talk about my ex husband. And I say that I did a lot of really bad things. But it takes two people to make a marriage work and it takes two people to fuck it up. Well, it’s the same thing in your friendships. It’s the same thing in your friendships with other people. And it takes two people to do that dance. And you can say, well, listen, I wanted to give you space. And I’m gonna say, No, you didn’t you were living your life. And I recognize that, but I was losing mine. And I couldn’t be a good friend to anybody. And if I’m losing my life, and I can’t drink from an empty cup,

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I certainly can’t offer you mine. But I never once came to you and said, Gee, I was really hurt. And I’ll speak to all of my friends who might be listening to this right now. I don’t hold one of you responsible or accountable for not being there. When I was at my effing worst. I don’t I don’t hold any of you responsible. But do me a favor. And if you were hurt by me, for whatever reason, keep it to yourself. I really don’t want to hear it. And I’m only saying that because this is a trigger and a setback that I don’t have the bandwidth for if this bothers anybody for listening to this or how I’m maybe saying this understand. This is about self preservation, and nothing more. I ask nothing from any person that I had in my head. In my past history. I asked the as for nothing. I don’t ask for an apology. See, I don’t, I don’t need to tell you how you made me feel when you weren’t there. I’m just living my life and moving forward. So while I wanted this to be about projection, then I guess a little bit is about that. The truth is, it’s about setbacks. It’s about triggers. And it’s about changing this narrative that we all have in our own mindset that because we always had this familiar pattern of the way we lived our lives that we have to continue to do it exactly like that. That’s a dance. And we’re practicing that dance. And we do it over and over and over again. But you want to know something, I don’t like that dance, I want to new dance I want to have the life that I feel empowers me now the one that I feel super grateful for on clubhouse every morning when I’m surrounded by these wonderful people who listen, and also get Hurd who shared the same but different types of gratitude on a daily basis for 303 straight days in a row, the one where I can feel super empowered and well equipped to go into an environment that makes me colossally uncomfortable under normal circumstances, and yet still managed to go forward and keep going. Because I am strong and capable. I’m a perfectly capable human being I can do that. You know, I think we think as we get older that you know, I don’t know, 59 years old, maybe I should have all my stuff together. The truth is, I have a lot more stuff together than I ever have. And I speak about it so openly. And honestly, because it keeps me moving forward, I don’t want to go back into old patterns, I’m not referring to let me go back into alcohol or let me go into drug addiction or any of those things or even the affairs, I’m not going to go back into that the truth of the matter is, I want to be the healthy, happy person I always knew that I could be. But for some reason, I didn’t believe in myself. And so when we have conversations with other people, we need to look at what our roles and responsibilities are. In perhaps not. I know that we don’t mean to do this, but what is our role and responsibility in causing somebody to have a trigger? Or an upset? And are they are they willing and able to receive whatever the information might be? And do we really need to get it off our chests by telling somebody the way we feel, you know, I’m coming to this conclusion on my own, that sometimes the only person who needs to hear how you feel is you because I don’t know, if I were to share with somebody about how I feel, I don’t know how what I say is going to trigger them. I do remember something in rehab was part of the 12 step program. And they talked about and I didn’t really understand the 12 steps. So I speak about it very, you know, high level, but I understood it because I was told to understand it, but I didn’t truly embrace it. But the one thing I really did embrace was the one and I can’t remember which step it was I’m going to I’m thinking it might have been five, but I could be wrong. And it said, if you have hurt someone, you should apologize to that person, unless hurting them could cause them more harm. And I never forgot that even though I made it forgotten what step that was I didn’t forget what that meant, because it was never within my drive or my mental capacity to ever hurt anybody. You know, I heard a lot of people but I didn’t do it with intention. That doesn’t mean I get a pass.

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I don’t get a pass. I recognize that. But it’s not like I was deliberate in anything that I did. It was inappropriate, of course. But I didn’t, you know, have so much disdain for somebody and say I am I hate this person so much. So let me go do this. I didn’t do any of those things. I don’t think 90% of the population of people do have the stuff that they do to hurt somebody else. I think they do it to think that they’re gonna they’re gonna feel a need of their own. Okay, but if I have to apologize to somebody, and that apology could cause more harm, I’m not going to do it. I may go through the action of apologizing in my head, I might create a ritual of apology and then let it go. Well, I would say the same should go for the people who have something to say to me. If I’ve done something and you’re not happy with it, please unless I asked just don’t share it with me. I appreciate your honesty. I do. But I was cool. Before that. I was fine with the way things were. And what has happened for me is I feel like I’m having this setback. Not a trigger to the point of addiction but a setback of wrong doing. I don’t want to feel like I’ve done something wrong. 20 years after I’ve done it While I appreciate that you need to get something off your chest, did it ever occur to you that maybe I didn’t really want to hear it, because I’m making all this great progress. For me. Remember, I never went to anybody else ever, and said, I am a mess, I am suffering, I am in pain, and I am addicted to Vicodin. And I probably should have died as a result of it. But I did. And here I am having this great podcast that I love, because I feel better. And I’m recording this. And I’m sure you can hear all kinds of crazy emotions, and I’m all over the place. And I don’t care, I don’t care, because I’m getting out how I feel, because I keep saying it. And remember, I’m not saying this to anybody, I’m saying this to myself, but I’m actually saying it into a microphone out loud, so that I can feel better, I’m just gonna put it on the internet. And I’m not doing it with anybody’s names. And I’m not doing it to hurt you. But if you’re listening, and you know who you are, understand that I could not have loved you more. And I still care a lot about you. But I just don’t have the bandwidth, to be able to go back into a past experience that is just making me not comfortable because it’s reminding me of a horrible, horrible time in my life. And I don’t want to feel that. So while I would love to be able to move forward from that, I can never have another conversation with another person about something I did or didn’t do 20 years ago, because it’s triggering, and it’s a setback. Okay, so I just looked it up on Google. And the fifth step is admitted to God to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. So I guess it fell in little bit in line with that, but it was actually eight step eight, not five,

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if you can go back to that, from the beginning of what I was talking about, make a list of all the persons we have harmed and became willing to make amends to all however, some people that I may have heard, I can’t make amends to them, because me trying to make amends with them could hurt them more. And I really took to heart what that meant. And I haven’t really had to apologize to too many people, because I just haven’t I know who I’ve hurt. And I have made my amends with the people that have really stuck by me and cared about me, I have had encounters with my friends that I’ve run into them. And I’ve had to kind of come clean with what really went on for me, and why I pulled back from the friendship. And I talked about this in friendship episodes where a lot of times I pulled back just to spare these people of my chaos. And when I talk about chaos, please understand that my chaos was not some kind of tornado that walked into in and out of every room. Keep in mind, most people did not know what kind of suffering I was actually going through. I seem to have went through my life thinking that everybody around me just had their shit together. I never once came to the conclusion that maybe other people were suffering as equally as I was because it was just something I didn’t talk about with anybody. I didn’t have a friend that I could turn to and say I am in pain, please, what can you do to help me I never asked for help. And that’s part of I think what many people who have addictive behaviors are somewhat alike. And so, you know, I expect nothing more than a little bit of peace in my older years. And the ability to articulate my message every week inside of this podcast to heal myself. And if I help anybody else, as a result of it all the better. And that’s really why I’m doing this for me. And for anybody else who wants to listen, I do not get wrapped up in the monetization and the sponsorships and the dynamics of any of that. If it happened, great. I’d be more than happy to to have that be a part of what I’m doing here. But it’s so not happening. And it’s so not a part of my consciousness. The truth of the matter is I just want peace. I want sobriety. I want happiness and joy. And I want to keep those lows at a minimum. And most of all, I want balance. And I don’t think that anybody else who might be listening doesn’t want the same thing. I think we all want the same thing. I think we all want balance. And I hope that anybody who might be listening to this gets it and gets this message loud and clear. You don’t have to feel like you have to project any of your stuff on to anybody else. And if somebody is doing that with you, change the dance, change the dynamic change the narrative, so that you don’t go through a trigger that could unfortunately cause you to have a setback and by me talking about it which is Something I never would have done in my past. I am preventing the setback because I’m changing the dance. Okay, that’s all I’ve got. Well, if you’d like this or any other episode of Don’t lose your balance, you can share it, you can download it, you can even write me a review, I would really appreciate that and that might be helpful to somebody else. You can also visit me on Instagram, I have two accounts. One is Don’t lose your balance, MSE and the other is Mallory underscore Duric. I also have a website which is Don’t lose your balance.com I hope today tomorrow and always you don’t lose your balance and I look forward to hearing how you didn’t lose your balance along your life’s journey. And I’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Hi, I am Mallory Durrick. I am a creative. A Marketing Strategist and Web Designer with a small and modest boutique Marketing Agency living in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I am the creator and narrator of this podcast, Don’t Lose Your Balance. This is a culmination of decades of self-help books, countless doctors, numerous hospitals, including rehabs. Once a wife, now divorced, a mother, a grandmother and an addict in recovery. These are things that I am and have experienced.

I’m sharing it all. Baring it all. Hoping to help others; not lose their balance.