Episode 76 - How I Honored Myself
Theresa Ommert
Theresa Ommert is a soon-to-be published author with 25+ years of addiction recovery who helps women to love themselves, drop their baggage and move forward to freedom. She lives in the Greater Toronto Area and loves her family, the outdoors, kettlebells and books.
Social media and contact information:
Podcast transcript:
[00:00:00] Damaged Parents: Welcome to the Relatively Damaged Podcast by Damaged Parents where codependent addicted unhealthy people come to learn maybe just, maybe we're all a little bit damaged. Someone wants told me it's safe to assume. 50% of the people I meet are struggling and feel wounded in some way. I would venture to say it's closer to 100%.
Every one of us is either currently struggling or has struggled with something that made us feel less than. Like we aren't good enough. We aren't capable. We are relatively damaged. And that's what we're here to talk about. In my ongoing investigation of the damaged self, I want to better understand how others view their own challenges.
Maybe it's not so much about the damage. Maybe it's about our perception and how we deal with it. There is a deep commitment to becoming who we are meant to be. How do you do that? How do you find balance after a damaging experience? My hero is a damaged person. The one who faces seemingly insurmountable odds to come out on the other side hole.
Those who stare directly into the face of adversity with unyielding persistence to discover their purpose. These are the people who inspire me to be more fully me. Not in spite of my trials, but because of them. Let's hear from another hero.
Today's topic includes sensitive material, which may not be appropriate for children. This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as advice. The opinions expressed here were strictly those of the person who gave them. Today, we're going to talk with Theresa Ommert. She has many roles in her life, mother, daughter, sibling, aunt sister-in-law mother-in-law author, coach, and more.
We'll talk about how her biggest struggle was the struggle for self-compassion and self-love and how she found health and healing. Let's talk
Welcome back to Relatively Damaged by Damaged Parents. Today, we've got Theresa Ommert with us and she has got her Instagram page honoring your body. She's also a soon to be published author with 25 years of addiction recovery. I'm so glad you are here. Thank you for being on the show.
[00:02:17] Theresa Ommert: Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.
[00:02:20] Damaged Parents: It really is. And right before we started the formal recording, we were talking about honoring your body. And you had said you had a reason for naming your Instagram page, that and your soon to be book. And I really think that the listeners would benefit well, me too. Cause I haven't heard the full, full story yet.
So I would love to understand that journey.
[00:02:46] Theresa Ommert: Sure. I named the book Honoring Your Body because for many years I dishonored my body and the way that I dishonored my body was I neglected it. I didn't look after myself. For example, I would never deny my children, healthy food proper sleep, fresh air, sunlight, exercise, but I always denied myself of these things and I always made myself my last priority.
Everybody else came ahead of me. So I went through I went through addiction in my life. As you mentioned, I struggled with depression and anxiety and mental health challenges. And I've done a lot of healing in my life, in the area of emotional healing and spiritual healing, but I still felt like something was missing out of my life and I still didn't feel whole and complete.
And I realized that because I was still in neglecting my body. And not caring for it the way it was designed to be cared about this was the missing piece in my life. And I felt very disconnected from my body. I felt distant bodied, and I just viewed my body as a bus for my brain, basically a container for my soul.
And I didn't view it as anything of consequence. I didn't value it. I never grew up really valuing it. And I went through a trauma in life, which also disconnected me from my body as well. And since becoming aware of my body and since learning how to look after it, my life has changed so much and in being more connected with my body and more connected with myself, and I'm also more connected with other people as a result.
Because when I'm disconnected from myself, it's not easy for me to connect with other people just because there's a whole emotional dimension missing. And once I learned to be compassionate with myself, I could extend that to other people. So it really made a radical difference in my life. And it really made a radical difference in my relationships with other people.
And also with my sense of connectedness with the rest of the world. I grew up just feeling split off from the rest of the world and feeling different from everybody. And like I never fit in and I just felt like everybody else deserves so much more than I did. And thankfully, that has changed and it is all because I learned to look after myself and make myself a priority.
And I've learned that it's not selfish. To make yourself a priority because if my cup is empty, I can't pour into somebody else's cup. So for me, that was rocket science. I used to hear people talk about that. And all of a sudden, one day it was clicked and I'm like, wow, this is rocket science. I finally know what other people are talking about.
[00:05:37] Damaged Parents: So you've really didn't understand what it meant, you know, put the what's that, say it on the airplane.
Put the mask on you.
[00:05:45] Theresa Ommert: first. Yeah,
[00:05:46] Damaged Parents: Yeah.
[00:05:47] Theresa Ommert: I was putting it on everybody else. And then wondering why I couldn't breathe.
[00:05:51] Damaged Parents: Oh man. And you'd heard it so many times and still, it just was not clicking.
[00:05:59] Theresa Ommert: No. No. And it's, it's funny because you do hear it so many times and I would hear that and I go, Yeah.
yeah. But I didn't really know what it meant. I thought I did intellectually, but when it came to putting it into practice, I wasn't doing that. And once I started doing that and not feeling guilty about it, my life changed Yeah, my life changed.
That's the simplest way that I can put it on so many different levels. As I mentioned before,
[00:06:29] Damaged Parents: Yeah.
[00:06:30] Theresa Ommert: And how I related to other people?
[00:06:32] Damaged Parents: Now you said once I learned to put it on and not feel guilty about it. So was there shame and guilt or just guilt in taking care of yourself before.
[00:06:43] Theresa Ommert: There was a lot of guilt I had a lot of trouble saying no for many years I was a people pleaser and I really struggled with setting boundaries with people and at the root of it all was, I just felt that I didn't deserve boundaries. When you have your boundaries violated earlier in life, it's very hard to set boundaries because you don't really know what they are.
And when you say no to when I said no to people, I felt. I would still say no, but I would just feel this really gross feeling inside. Like I had done something wrong
[00:07:17] Damaged Parents: So almost like the, having a boundary wouldn't be safe.
[00:07:21] Theresa Ommert: Yeah. That's a good way of putting it.
[00:07:23] Damaged Parents: I never thought of it that way until something, you said. I thought, oh,
because if ultimately you want love and affection, the boundary, even though it's necessary, I could see where that message would get confused with trauma, because then you feel like you absolutely can't have a boundary or you won't be loved and appreciated.
[00:07:46] Theresa Ommert: Yes. Or if you find. And assaulted, for example, you say no, and then you you're attacked and you're assaulted anyway. Then you subconsciously learned that saying, no, will lead to problems or lead to confrontation or will lead to other people's anger. So I really had to work through that in order to be able to say no and be okay with it.
And then another thing that taught me was I just reached a point where I had enough. you know, when you reach that point where like, , you've had enough, but then you reach a point where you've had enough. And that was the point I reached in life. And I, finally thought, you know what? I don't care what people think I've had enough.
And I need to say no, because if I don't say no, then something drastic is going to happen with me. And so that was the pushing point for me. With me a lot of times in life, I've had to reach a breaking point in order to be willing to change or in order to be willing to take a risk in order to move forward in life.
Because the part of me that wants safety and security, it's so easy to stay in one place and be unhappy because I used to think, well, at least it's safe. At least I know what to expect, even though I was miserable. But then I would reach a point where life would push me to a point where I had to move.
And because of that, I've learned that risk-taking is not that bad. And the things that I fear didn't happen.
[00:09:16] Damaged Parents: Yeah. when you said at least I know what to expect when you're staying in that bad situation, what popped into my mind in that moment was yep. Those are those famous last words.
[00:09:27] Theresa Ommert: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:09:29] Damaged Parents: Before misery, well, this is horrible and I know what to expect. Therefore, I'm going to stay and then change doesn't happen. So I'm betting that when you, started saying no and you kind of started talking about this a little bit, it was hard.
[00:09:46] Theresa Ommert: it was very hard.
[00:09:47] Damaged Parents: And you had to get comfortable with people being angry about no.
Do you have an example of maybe a situation that you remember when you first said no. When those feelings came up inside of you and you retained your boundary?
[00:10:04] Theresa Ommert: There was a situation at a job that I was in for several years. And. I was the person everybody would go to for help, like other departments. Oh, well ask Theresa she'll do it. She's a gamer. And I was constantly saying yes, and I was getting very stressed out. And when there was one woman that was particularly aggressive and the first time I said no to her, she, was in shock.
She could not believe that. I said no to her. And she said, I beg your pardon. I said, no, I said no. And she was just dumbfounded because I had never said no to her before. And I was very quiet and I didn't want to make waves. And she got quite angry. I had reached the breaking point where I just said enough is enough.
And it felt very strange to me. It felt very uncomfortable. I called my AA sponsor and she said, well, good for you. She said, you survived, nobody died. And I thought, Yeah.
I did survive. And she said, next time you do it, it'll be easier because the first time is always the scariest. And then we kind of took a look at my past and I realized I had been in abusive relationships.
And whenever I said no to this individual or these individuals, violence would always ensue so I had that hardwired into my brain. And once I could realize that, Okay.
if I say no to this lady at work, she's not going to hit me, or she's not going to try to run me down in the parking lot or all these scenarios that I subconsciously expected.
And once I could see the source of my anxiety, I could realize no, that situation is not going to replay itself. The likelihood of this lady. Coming after me or whatever I was afraid was going to happen was not going to happen. So once I got a basic understanding of where a lot of my fear came from, I was able to then see things in a much more, present day perspective.
[00:12:04] Damaged Parents: Now I'm thinking that that didn't happen shortly after you were sober or shortly after doing the steps. It may have been years later just in how you told the story. Am I on the right thought process there?
[00:12:18] Theresa Ommert: Yes. It took several years to reach that point
[00:12:21] Damaged Parents: So that's really interesting. Cause on the fourth step, right? Don't you do an inventory
[00:12:26] Theresa Ommert: yeah.
[00:12:27] Damaged Parents: and it seems to me that, because this was years later that you may have done that inventory and yet you still needed to go back and look at some things and that you probably periodically do that throughout life.
[00:12:39] Theresa Ommert: Yes. It's definitely something that I feel need to go back to. I don't know if you've heard the expression, like peeling, the layers of an onion.
But there's things that I missed the first time, because I just wasn't capable of seeing them at that time. And then as I went on in life and I started deciding what for me was acceptable or unacceptable, then I was able to go back and I was able to look at situations or look at my life and see other things that I had missed before.
And I find this like both through life, my ideas of what's acceptable and unacceptable changes.
[00:13:13] Damaged Parents: Right.
[00:13:14] Theresa Ommert: The things that I used to put up with, I would never tolerate today,
but at the time I tolerated them because I didn't know any different or I didn't know that there was anything not healthy about what I was doing. You end up going through life and talking to people and observing people. Or being part of groups, talking about things, it took going through all of that for me to see what's healthy and what's not healthy. So until I learned what healthy looked like, I couldn't look at myself and see unhealthy. If that makes sense.
[00:13:47] Damaged Parents: It really does. And I think it speaks to, as humans we're ever changing and. Like you said one thing that worked before, maybe isn't okay now and that's okay. It's just different, which is really interesting. And I think maybe that's why you were able to look back and go, oh, I understand where this behavior is coming from.
But it was on such a deep level before that you didn't even realize it was there or that it was a habit because it was something you did implicitly, not explicitly,
[00:14:23] Theresa Ommert: Yeah,
[00:14:23] Damaged Parents: Like
[00:14:24] Theresa Ommert: exactly.
[00:14:25] Damaged Parents: that subconscious or unconscious behavior.
[00:14:29] Theresa Ommert: And I would find myself in similar situations over and over again. And part of me would say, why does this keep happening in my life? And then the other part of me would say, well, I guess that's just the way life is. And I guess I just have to put up with it. So I always had this conflict going, and. I find it difficult to work through things on my own.
I find it so helpful to have somebody to talk to.
I find a lot of the coping mechanisms. I used to use uh stop serving me at some point, and that's when they became painful. When I had to make a change.
[00:15:02] Damaged Parents: Okay. So first something becomes painful and then it's like all of a sudden you recognize it. Okay. You said you kept creating the same things over and over again. And it sounded like there was this blame on not blame, but almost like a blame of these other people are creating this.
And it sounds like you got to a point where you looked at it and thought, okay, what am I doing to attract this into my life? Or to bring this type of people into my life?
[00:15:30] Theresa Ommert: Yeah. And I would think, okay, why am I tolerating this? Because I had to realize at the end of the day, I'm tolerating this behavior. And As long as I tolerate it, it's going to happen.
[00:15:42] Damaged Parents: yeah.
[00:15:43] Theresa Ommert: it was hard to look at, like it made me cringe to look at it, but I knew I had to, because it was the only way I was going to make progress.
[00:15:51] Damaged Parents: You gave us an example of saying no, but what's like one of the behaviors you would tolerate So from a different perspective, right? what someone else is doing that you would tolerate that now you would no longer besides saying no, somebody coming to you for work and things like that.
Yeah.
[00:16:07] Theresa Ommert: for example, one thing I would tolerate was people lying.
If somebody lied to me. I would either just avoid dealing with it and I would just ignore it and continue on. Or I would question them and they would turn it around on me and say, what are you talking about? I didn't lie. You're imagining things.
And I would think, oh, maybe he's Right.
Maybe I am imagining this. Maybe I shouldn't be questioning him. Maybe I'm too suspicious or maybe I'm this, or maybe I'm that. And , uh, the bottom line was this person lied,
[00:16:39] Damaged Parents: Right.
[00:16:39] Theresa Ommert: I wouldn't take a look at that. It would be. There's something wrong with me,
[00:16:43] Damaged Parents: Okay. So how did that shift.
[00:16:46] Theresa Ommert: how that shifted was. I educated myself for one thing. I did a lot of learning about what healthy relationships look like, what healthy boundaries are. And I also learned how not to be in a relationship and enjoy not being in a relationship. Because I often ended up with somebody because I didn't want to be alone, or I think what's wrong with me.
How come I'm alone? And everybody else's with somebody. It was always, there was something wrong with me. And if I was with somebody that it kind of made me okay. And I reached a point where I just thought, you know what, I'm okay being on my own. I actually liked being on my own and I enjoy my own company.
So that took a lot of the need away, the need to be in a relationship. And once I didn't have that all consuming need, it was easier for me to assert myself and easier for me to look at the matter at hand, which was this person lied to me.
I didn't think to look at what's wrong with me and oh I'm going to be single again and you know, I'm going to be lonely and maybe I should just ignore it because it wasn't a big lie.
It was only a little lie. Meanwhile, like the lies get bigger and bigger and because I tolerated them, they just kept growing and then you would end up in a situation and I would be thinking, why do I always end up with liars?
And I had to really, again, take a look at myself without ignoring the lie.
If you know what I mean, I had to take a look at what was going on with me. Not a case like, oh, I shouldn't be confronting this person on the lie. You know, What's wrong with me? I had to look at and say, okay, why am I not confronting this person? What's going on with me? That is making.
This relationship So important to me that I'm willing to throw away my value system or that I'm willing to throw away my, boundaries or whatever's important to me. Why am I putting this person ahead of myself? And what's important to me? So there was a lot going on that I really had to take a look at and everything dovetailed, like one thing, dovetailed with another, which dovetailed with another.
I can't say it wasn't one single thing. It was kind of a collection of things that were all connected.
[00:19:00] Damaged Parents: Yeah. And it's, it sounds like in some ways, to me, You've had to find that wholeness inside of you.
[00:19:07] Theresa Ommert: Yes, exactly.
[00:19:09] Damaged Parents: And it doesn't sound like it was an easy journey.
[00:19:12] Theresa Ommert: No, no. It was not an easy journey. I found that I really had to fight for it. It wasn't something that like where I read a book and I said, okay, I'm going to do this now. I really had to fight to reach to that place in life. And then once I reached that place things seem to get clearer.
And I reached a point where early on in their relationship, if there was a red flag, I could pay attention. Whereas in the beginning I would ignore red flags because I was so used to invalidating myself. And I was so used to, I mean, I grew up without a lot of validation, so I didn't even, I didn't trust myself.
I didn't know how to trust myself. I didn't know how to listen to my gut. So if I saw a red flag, I just ignored it.
[00:19:58] Damaged Parents: Mm.
[00:19:59] Theresa Ommert: My gut would be shouting at me, but I would just ignore it because I didn't really know what a red flag was, because I didn't know what healthy was. So it was a process that took years.
I'm talking about it. Like it took a couple of weeks, but it took years and I'm very thankful to be on the other side of it now.
[00:20:17] Damaged Parents: Yeah, it sounds like it's a process well, a scary process because what does it feel like to be whole? If you haven't felt whole before. And I would think that would feel foreign at which point it might be almost like recoiling from a hot stove because that's a new feeling.
[00:20:40] Theresa Ommert: Yes. Yes. An absolutely new feeling. It was something that I had never experienced. It's almost, when something good comes into your life, you're like, oh, this is uncomfortable. Do I like this? Do I not like this? Like, what is it. but it was freeing. It was something I had wanted my whole life.
And when I finally got it, it was like a gift, a huge gift wrapped in shiny paper. And I was just so very thankful. Then I could read stuff about healthy relationships and say, okay, I get it now
that I could say, okay, I get it now whereas before I would read stuff and I, um,, it was like a foreign language.
It didn't make much sense to me.
[00:21:16] Damaged Parents: really.
[00:21:17] Theresa Ommert: Yeah. I read a ton of self-help books and parts of them were helpful, but there were other parts that I just couldn't wrap my head around. Like, I, couldn't imagine being in a relationship where I was respected.
[00:21:29] Damaged Parents: So did you kind of just throw out that part of the book and be like, oh, that doesn't apply? Or what would you do?
[00:21:36] Theresa Ommert: I would read it and it just wouldn't register.
[00:21:39] Damaged Parents: Okay.
[00:21:40] Theresa Ommert: And I read it and I think, oh, okay. But it didn't register with me. I didn't really know what they meant and, or I would think, well, that would be amazing to be that way, but I didn't know how to be that way.
[00:21:53] Damaged Parents: Okay. So it's like you got it on a intellectual level, but not on a emotional level
[00:22:01] Theresa Ommert: Yeah. On a spirit level.
[00:22:03] Damaged Parents: Yeah, you couldn't translate it into what that behavior might look like in your life.
[00:22:09] Theresa Ommert: Yeah, exactly,
exactly. And I often didn't listen to my body either because like our gut talks to us. And tells us stuff. Like I mentioned earlier, situation where I had a gross feeling inside and I was just so used to discounting my body and not paying attention to it that I couldn't read what my body was trying to tell me.
[00:22:30] Damaged Parents: Right. And that gross feeling maybe felt kind of normal.
[00:22:35] Theresa Ommert: Yeah. Yeah. And when I look back on it now, I felt violated.
[00:22:39] Damaged Parents: Wow.
[00:22:40] Theresa Ommert: When I dealt with this woman who was aggressive with me and not taking no for an answer, but I didn't know that that's what it was. It's only years later that I can look back and say, yeah, that gross feeling. It felt like some kind of violation.
[00:22:54] Damaged Parents: So it sounds like throughout this process, you started to recognize what things felt like in your body. Did you stop after experiences or wait a minute to try and figure out what your body was telling you or how did you do that? How did you get there?
[00:23:09] Theresa Ommert: Well, how I got there was it's kind of a long story, but I needed to exercise and workout because I was overweight. I was uncomfortable. I was highly stressed and heart attacks run in my family. So my doctor kept telling me you have to lose weight. You have to lose weight and I'd be like, psh yeah whatever.
That's what they all say for every problem. Right.
But he said, no, you need to lose weight. And he said, listen, , if something happens to you, your kids are going to be orphans. And that really woke me up. And that really made me think, okay, I better do something and do something big. So, I started doing CrossFit.
I don't know if you've heard of that, but it's very intense. And I had done like no gym work in my life. so I decided to do CrossFit, like go big or go home. But I started doing CrossFit and my friend was doing it and she really encouraged me. And I really feel that I owe it to her because without her, I wouldn't have gone back.
But when I started doing this, I started becoming aware of like muscles I didn't have before, or I felt pain in places I didn't know existed. And that was my first stage to being aware of my body. So I kept going and I got healthier and I got stronger and I started thinking, wow, I didn't know I could ever do any of this stuff.
It made me want to do more because all of a sudden my balance improved because some of the things we were doing in class, I was more agile and I had more spatial awareness. Prior to that. I used to like bump into stuff a lot and I just really struggled in that way. And as these things started happening, these good things, all of a sudden I became aware of my body and how it felt and what it was telling me.
And that was the first step was , when I just started moving and using it and doing different things with it that I hadn't done since I was a kid. And it made me very aware of how I felt. Prior to that I just ignored my body. It was just kind of there and I needed it to go from A to B and I just ignored it, but now I didn't ignore it anymore.
And I started being aware of breathing. How to breathe and mindset instead of being afraid of lifting the bar, telling myself that I could do it, or instead of approaching a class with dread telling myself, yeah, I'm going to do this. I'm going to feel amazing after and what a difference it made.
So that was the beginning step for me. And then as time went on, I just, found, I like to moving. Even if it was stretching, like I love stretching. I think stretching is awesome. Things like that. Whereas before I just had no relationship with my body, it was just,
[00:25:58] Damaged Parents: So it sounds like you started building this relationship back with your body by working out and doing the CrossFit. And I'm thinking along the way you started noticing, because you were more aware.
[00:26:11] Theresa Ommert: yeah.
[00:26:12] Damaged Parents: And you could tell me if I get this wrong, but that, that, because you were more aware, you started recognizing where the emotion sat in your body, like you were talking about the gut feeling.
Now you can look back and go, that's what that meant.
[00:26:25] Theresa Ommert: Yes.
[00:26:26] Damaged Parents: And did you kind of start doing that with other emotions also thinking back and going, okay. what does that, or did you just notice them on the way or what happened?
[00:26:36] Theresa Ommert: What happened was I was struggling with anxiety, but I didn't know I had anxiety because I'd had it my whole life. So I just thought everybody feels that way. And I have a chronic illness called trigeminal neuralgia and it affects the trigeminal nerve in my head and it can be very painful.
So that made me aware of pain and. I learned to breathe so that I could breathe my way through the pain. And then as I was learning to breathe and I realized I'm very stressed, I need to learn how to relax so that I don't have as much pain. Then all of a sudden I became aware that my shoulders are always tight and they're always up.
And I thought, wow, this is creating a lot of tension in my neck. So I would lower my shoulders and two seconds later they'd be up again. And then I realized, have I been doing this my whole life? Like, no wonder I'm having pains in my head, no wonder I have neck pain. And I started seeing a chiropractor and he made me aware of a number of things as well.
Like my posture, how I was sitting things like things that I had never considered before. So that really made me aware, but I also became aware that I suffered from anxiety. The way that I found that out was my teenage daughter was struggling with severe anxiety. So in my effort to try to get help for her, I started doing a lot of research and started attending a lot of workshops.
And one day I thought. Oh, my gosh, they're talking about me. I have anxiety. I had no idea because I felt that way ever since I can remember even being a little kid in kindergarten, I remember feeling that way, but throughout my whole life, I had no idea that I had anxiety. And when I was drinking and using drugs, it took the anxiety away temporarily. It was something that. I discovered along the way. And once I realized I had anxiety, then I could learn about mindfulness and I could learn about other practices to help me with my anxiety.
[00:28:40] Damaged Parents: Yeah.
[00:28:41] Theresa Ommert: it's been a long journey.
[00:28:43] Damaged Parents: Yeah. And I love that you've learned it through a child.
[00:28:47] Theresa Ommert: Yeah. Isn't it amazing what we learned through our kids.
[00:28:51] Damaged Parents: Yeah. Right. I 100% agree. So. I am certain that you see things you've passed on to them. I mean, unbeknownst to you, you had no clue you were doing it. With you on this journey also, it sounds like you guys could kind of share with each other, oh, this is what worked for me, or that's what worked for you.
How has that blossomed, I guess is the best question. How has your relationship with your daughter blossomed from the perspective of we're on this journey together to learn and grow?
[00:29:24] Theresa Ommert: It's blossomed because we're more likely to listen to one another. She's 18 now, but she went through a period in high school where everything mom said was BS and mom does know what she's talking about. Even when I would say, Hey, guess what I've learned about anxiety. It was just like, no, talk to the hand, you know?
[00:29:41] Damaged Parents: I'm sorry. I'm laughing over here. I totally relate to that.
[00:29:45] Theresa Ommert: I can laugh now because I'm on the other side of it.
[00:29:48] Damaged Parents: Yeah. Yeah. Right.
[00:29:49] Theresa Ommert: It was frustrating for me. Cause I wanted to pass on my life experience. And she didn't want to hear it, but now that she's 18 and she has gone through a lot of her stuff. She got into some substance abuse as well. And , now that she's gone through a lot of the stuff she went through in high school and she can see that I'm actually on her side, I'm not against her.
She's more willing to listen to me. And I'm more willing to listen to her because. I actually heard you on a podcast and you were talking about how with your situation, it gave you room for your kids to say, no. Uh you said something like that, as opposed to you telling them, well, this is how it is, and this is how it's going to be.
And I found the same thing with me and I found with her substance abuse and her anxiety challenges. She also attempted suicide, which was just devastating. It forced me to change the way I communicated with her because what I was doing, wasn't working and she wasn't listening. And I realized that I had to listen too instead of being the authority and telling her I had to sit and listen to her.
When she acted out, I had to acknowledge that she was struggling as opposed to just looking at her behavior, which is what I was raised to do. You look at the person's behavior and you try to correct the behavior. And I realized she's doing this for a reason and I need to understand why she's doing it.
And it totally flipped our relationship upside down. And my daughter was able to trust me again to know that mom really is on her side. Mom's not trying to be an authority and say, do this, do that. Or I'm going to take your phone and all that stuff that some of us are told works. it works for some kids, but it didn't work for my daughter.
And and I'm thankful for the journey we went through because it really deepened our relationship. And it made me a better listener, not just with her, but with people in general. And when I see somebody now who's dysregulated or who's angry and acting out, I can understand that there's a reason they're doing that.
And I may not know what it is. But it's not like they decided to cross my path one day and just yell at me for no reason, because I was there kind of thing. You know what I mean? I don't understand everybody, but I can understand when somebody is angry, there's something they're struggling with and I cannot take it so personally or not be as judgmental. When I look back now, I think I used to be judgmental and I cringe. I didn't know that I didn't know. And since going through this with my daughter And my own mental health challenges, it's.
a lot easier for me to extend compassion to somebody and not judge their trauma. Like I find sometimes as human beings, we judge other people's trauma.
And and think, well, that's not that bad compared to what I've gone through or what so-and-so's gone through. And I realized I have no business doing that because everybody's trauma is real to them and everybody's in a different circumstance. And who am I to tell somebody that something wasn't traumatic for them?
[00:33:03] Damaged Parents: That's beautiful. And one of the other things that I heard you say was like, or the underlying message that I was getting from what you were saying about other people in their anger or their frustration and their behavior was that you could empathize and that it was theirs. You didn't have to fix it.
That's just where that person is. And you can decide if that's going to happen in your space or not,
[00:33:32] Theresa Ommert: Yes.
[00:33:33] Damaged Parents: But you don't have to fix it.
[00:33:35] Theresa Ommert: Yeah.
And I know it's nothing that I caused sometimes based on the wrong place at the wrong time, we get it from somebody.
So, but Isn't that a relief to know that at one time, I didn't know that I used to take on everybody's stuff and I used to take responsibility for stuff that had nothing to do with me.
[00:33:54] Damaged Parents: And try to fix it.
[00:33:56] Theresa Ommert: Yeah.
Or just feel guilty when I didn't even cause whatever situation happened,
[00:34:00] Damaged Parents: Okay. So you would feel guilty for their anger or frustration or sadness thinking there's some way you should be able to fix it, maybe.
[00:34:09] Theresa Ommert: Yeah, I would think I should be able to fix It or maybe I did something wrong that they're not telling me. Like I would make up all these scenarios in my head and really they had nothing to do with me.
[00:34:20] Damaged Parents: It sounds like you have gone on this journey to like freedom,
[00:34:25] Theresa Ommert: Big time. Yeah. freedom,
with a capital F in all caps.
[00:34:31] Damaged Parents: right?
[00:34:31] Theresa Ommert: That's what it feels like. And I just, want to tell people, because I want other people to have that freedom too. There's so many people that haven't learned this yet. And if people hadn't shared with me, I wouldn't have learned. So I'm very thankful for the people, the hundreds of people I've met over the years that have told me their stories or share their experience.
[00:34:53] Damaged Parents: Yeah. Most definitely. Okay. We are about at that time in the podcast where I asked for three tips or tools that pop into your mind may or may not have already talked about them.
It could be anything for the listeners that they could maybe think about and implement into their daily lives.
[00:35:12] Theresa Ommert: Okay. One thing that I find very helpful is to, for example, if I'm getting caught up in the comparison game, one thing that's very helpful is for me to remind myself that I'm not seeing all of the pictures. For example, social media, I'm an adult I should know better. Right. But if I spend a lot of time on social media and intellectually, I know what's the highlight reel, nobody posts pictures of themselves crying.
Right. But if I spend too much time scrolling and looking at people's highlight reels, I can start thinking, wow, they have pretty exciting lives.
Well, my life's not that exciting. What's wrong with me. I have to stop and remind myself, I'm not seeing the whole picture. I'm only seeing a photograph and I'm making up a story around that photograph that may or may not be true.
And it probably isn't true because I'm painting everything in a very rosy picture. The way I want my life to be projecting my desires onto this person's picture. So I would, always recommend that we just look at the facts, oh, here's a picture of my friend and she's paddling a canoe. That's it.
It's not this big scenario that I'm making up in my head about her perfect life and her perfect, this and her perfect that, and look at my life and blah, blah, blah. I have to remind myself, oh, it's a picture of my friend and a canoe. That's all. It is. more, nothing less.
[00:36:40] Damaged Parents: That's beautiful. I liked number one. That's awesome. That just reminded me of, oh my gosh. I totally do that too.
[00:36:47] Theresa Ommert: Yeah. Yeah. And we don't even realize it. We're doing it. That's what kills me about some of my behavior.
Yeah.
[00:36:55] Damaged Parents: Okay. That was number one. I just had to let you know that I just got called out.
[00:37:02] Theresa Ommert: Okay. number two. , I would say again with the boundaries and saying, no, if you look at your past and try to figure out why you're afraid, what consequences you were afraid to have happen, if you say no. Like I use the example of abusive relationships. And I had to take a look at the situation with a woman at work and think, is she going to hit me?
Is she going to run me down with her car? Like, what is she going to do? She might yell at me, but that's not going to physically hurt me. It's not going, I'm not going to die if she yells at me . It's something I still practice because there are times when I'm in subconscious mode or I'm kind of on autopilot and I have a knee jerk reaction and I may feel fear for some reason.
And I have to get back into my body when I'm on autopilot. I'm disembodied. So. I have to get back to my body and take a deep breath. And ground myself. And then I have to ask myself, what's really going on here. What am I afraid of? And like, again, with the picture of my friend in the canoe, if I just look at exactly what I see in front of me and not what I'm afraid will happen or what's happened in the past, then that can help me set boundaries as well.
I don't have to be afraid of saying no.
[00:38:23] Damaged Parents: So it sounds like really bringing yourself into the present and not worrying about the future, not worrying about the past, but just that moment.
[00:38:31] Theresa Ommert: Yes. being mindful of that present moment. And the third thing I would say is I keep coming back to my relationship with my daughter because this had such a profound effect on me. Sometimes I count more than 10, but I try to be quiet and listen to what the person is actually saying.
There's times my daughter is speaking to me, but she's yelling so right away, I get a knee-jerk reaction and I get defensive and I make who she talked to me that way, blah, blah, blah. But I'm not hearing what she's saying. She could be telling me that she's had a bad day and she was distressed or she's anxious or whatever.
She could be telling me she can't find her phone charger. So I need to really listen to what the person is actually saying and try to like separate it from the way they're saying it or their tone of voice or the loudness of their voice. And I do that at work too. I really have to do that a lot at work.
I have to just focus on what is actually being said and not the yelling and not the dysregulation. And as long as I do that, I can stay calm enough to help the person. But if I'm focused on the way they're speaking to me, then I get dysregulated and I get defensive and things just escalate into a mushroom cloud
so I, I guess with all three of these things, I'm saying, try to just look at the facts,
[00:40:00] Damaged Parents: Yeah.
[00:40:01] Theresa Ommert: what exactly what I see or hear in front of me, because it's easy for me to go on a mental or emotional tangent and start imagining what I think they're saying or what they really mean by that. And once I go there, it's very difficult for me to come back down again.
So I tried to not go there in the first place. And like you said, the mindfulness and just being present in the moment. That has been such a game changer for me on so many levels. And in so many situations,
[00:40:32] Damaged Parents: Yeah.
[00:40:33] Theresa Ommert: And that's part of honoring your body as well is just being able to be present in it.
And for many years I couldn't tolerate being present in my body. So I left.
[00:40:42] Damaged Parents: Theresa. I am so grateful that I got to have you on the show today. Your wisdom is amazing and I'm so glad you got to share it with me.
[00:40:53] Theresa Ommert: Well, thank you for having me.
[00:40:54] Damaged Parents: It's been awesome.
[00:40:55] Theresa Ommert: Thank you. You're such a gracious hostess.
[00:40:58] Damaged Parents: Thank you.
Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Relatively Damaged by Damaged Parents. We really enjoyed talking to Theresa about how she learned to love and be compassionate with herself. We especially liked when she told us her story of saying no to a coworker. To unite with other damaged people connect with us on Instagram look for damaged parents We'll be here next week still relatively damaged see you then
