125. I Just Want to Know It’s Not All My Fault
Meet the Host
Five years ago, after achieving my degrees and teaching as a professor, I was feeling proud that I had checked everything off my life list. But, I wasn’t satisfied in my marriage.
Today, I’m a relationship coach on a mission to resurrect the side of you that got lost in your marriage. Millions of people around the world soak up my content for advice on how to have a more satisfying relationship.
You might blame yourself when betrayal happens, or something shifts in your relationship. When you turn the betrayal inward, you ask yourself questions like ‘how could I have been so dumb?’ or ‘how could I have not seen the signs?’
The problem with this is that it will destroy your self-trust, which will affect so many areas of your life.
If this is your current situation, and you just want to know it’s not all your fault, I share three things you can do to start to heal. This exercise will help you stop second guessing yourself and reclaim your confidence.
Click the link to listen, and let me know what you think - I’d love to hear from you!
If this episode hits home and you’re ready to work with me, book a call so we can chat. On the call, you’ll share what’s going on, what you’ve tried, and I’ll share how I can help. Can’t wait to connect!
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Episode Transcript:
Karina: Amigos como estan? Welcome back to the relationship reset with me, your host, Karina F. Daves, relationship expert, speaker, and podcast host of this dope podcast. As promised all my episodes are short and to the point because you have places to go but issues to resolve and I'm gonna help you resolve it. Okay, so this episode is called I just want to know it's not all my fault. Plenty of times when betrayal or something shifts in the relationship we tend to self blame and how this happens is you've turned the ⁓ You've turned a betrayal inward, right? Where you say, how could I, things like, how could I have been so dumb? How could I have not seen the signs? How could I have let this go on for so long? And what this in turn ends up doing is it ends up eating away at your self-trust, your self-trust for this relationship if you decide to stay, or your self-trust in other areas in your career, in your next relationship with your family, like it will destroy your self-trust.
And again, what this looks like is three things. One, you start blaming yourself for missing the signs or the red flags. And what that means is like, you start looking back and saying, how did I miss it? How did I miss the fact that they were out all night or how did I miss the fact that they didn't call me for a whole week or how did I miss the fact that every time I share something emotional, they weren't a safe place for me? Like you start self blaming yourself of how did I miss it, right?
The second thing you do is you become extremely obsessive about the timeline of the relationship. And so you go back and you're like Carmen San Diego or inspector gadget, and you're just like, obsessively going through every week or every month or every year and saying, yeah, this month we did this. Then it was that Friday. And yeah, I remember they said they were going to go hang out with their friends. But then this happened. How could I have missed that? You start obsessively assigning a lot of the red flags to this timeline that you become obsessed about.
And then the last characteristic that you do when you're destroying your self-trust and really telling yourself that it's all your fault, is you're starting to believe that you're just bad at making decisions. You're bad at making life decisions. You're telling yourself that you're bad at picking the right partner, that you're just unsure anymore, that you're just a fool.
And what I want you to understand is that if you're in this position right now, the main thing that it's creating, not only is it eating away at your self-trust, but it's also making you extremely hyper-vigilant, extremely paranoid, right? About a lot of things in your surrounding, not just your relationship, but your entire life.
The second thing that it's doing is it's allowing you to just doubt everything. You start not believing the good, even the good. You start not believing anything around you and it causes you to have friction and also freeze, right? This is the stage where I call a lot of my clients are stuck in freezing or stuck in friction and they become addicted to that.
The last thing that happens or that can happen is actually this one will happen. If all of this is going on in your life and you are diminishing your self trust, it will not allow you to heal at all. Which is the very thing that you want to do, right? You want to heal, but it won't allow you to heal.
And so instead, I want you to do these three things. Numero uno. I want you and listen to me clearly. I want you to separate the decision that your partner made to step out, to lie, to cause an argument, whatever it was. I want you to separate the decision from your worth because the main reason why you are self blaming yourself is because you have decided that what they did was mainly because of what you are worth. And that's not true. Separate their decision from your worth. And if you ask me who you are and your worth, I'm automatically going to tell you because I love Jesus that you are a child of God, daughter or son.
Number two, we're going to need to revisit our gut instincts. So I want you to grab a pen and paper and I want you to write down the things that you are good at seeing. Right. Like, for example, I'm really good at picking a good mango. I have really good instincts about food. Actually, I'll just say food. I'm a really good ⁓ chef and it doesn't I don't do measurements. So I have really good instincts. I'm the person that like cooks with their heart. I put my foot in it. Like I have good instincts about cooking. I want you to make a list about the things that you have good instincts about.
OK, the last thing I want you to do is keep that journal. I need for you to write. The entire story with the truth. The truth does not necessarily come with a lot of the self doubt. So for example, I'm going to give you something personal. I'm digging here in my mind of of a in the library catalog of a million things that Karina has done in moments where I felt like it was my fault and I had to rewrite the story. ⁓ I actually have a big one. So. I had about 12 surgeries in a span of two years. I was very sick. ⁓ I had a lost hearing. I had broken my foot. had a peril, para anal abscess. It was horrible in which that alone I had five surgeries for. And I remember going to therapy afterwards and I had a lot of blame around how I took care of myself and my therapist, Haley, who's amazing. Her handle is your anxious therapist. She's amazing. And she walked me through eye movement therapy where you get to rewrite your story. And she, through her work, she allowed me to rewrite this crazy two years of my life. More so that it happened and that I healed and I got out as opposed to the way that I kept imagining this story was that I did that to myself. And so in essence, I deserved it, right?
That's what I want you to do. The story of betrayal, it's true. Your partner did betray you. But what doesn't have to be true is that it's all of your fault. You understand me? If this is something that you are struggling with and you are ready to stop second guessing yourself, then we need to work together.
Okay, go to link my bio on Instagram or TikTok at my handle, Karina F. Daves or my website, karinafdaves.com and book a call so we can talk about everything that's happened so far, what you tried and how I can help. Okay. All Let me pray for you.
Father God, I thank you so much for this day. I thank you that you have allowed us ⁓ to even have a story, father God. And you know, there's a verse in a song that says, ⁓ I went through the fire, but I don't smell like smoke.
And I think that speaks so much to, think ⁓ Reverend Marvin Sapp had said that in his song. And that spoke a lot to me because I remember thinking to myself that the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy. And so while you may have gotten through something, if the enemy was successful in stealing your joy through it, then what happened there? Then what's the point of that blessing, right? And so I asked Father God that you remind many of us of our tribulations and how our story isn't done being written. then at any moment, you have the power and willingness to turn everything that has happened to us into good. And that is your promise. And so may we lean on that. I know I do for the most part. Anytime someone has to me, Lord, I'm like, please turn this into good. Please turn this into good. And so I thank you so much, God, for loving us. In your name we pray, amen.
Okay, if you enjoyed this episode, Make sure that you share a review on Apple iTunes, on YouTube, wherever it may be, on Spotify. Send me a DM on Instagram or TikTok. I would love to talk to you about this episode or any questions you may have. I love you so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you a million times. My name is Karina F. Daves. I am a relationship expert speaker and podcast host of this dope podcast, The Relationship Reset. All right, I love you so much. Ciao.
