Terror To Triumph

Continuing Episode 4 and Beginning Episode 5.

• Alphonso Pelt • Season 1 • Episode 5

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Due to the length of Technical difficulties of Episode 4, Episode 5 is divided into 2 parts: picking up where Episode 4 left off, and Episode 5 in it's entirety.

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SPEAKER_06:

Hello, hello, hello.

SPEAKER_03:

Welcome to Terror to Triumph. I'm Alfonso Pelt, and I'm thrilled to have someone special joining me tonight. This is Storm, and Storm is a survivor of childhood abuse, just like me. Storm, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_05:

Hello, thank you for inviting me.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, yes, yes. If you call recall, episode four, we had a lot of problems, technical difficulties that uh pushed our show back into a corner. We actually only were able to do half of the show. So tonight we're gonna finish up with episode four, and we're going to go into episode five, and that's uh going to be well, it's it's a whole new segment, segment five, but we're we have to finish segment four first to uh finish laying the ground rules and the the foundation of what we're talking about tonight. So finishing episode four, segments six through nine. Segment six starts with practices you can start today.

SPEAKER_05:

Yes.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, and we're gonna jump right into where we left off. The first practice is the body check-in. You take two minutes out of your day to set a timer for two minutes, you close your eyes, you scan your body from head to toe, and you ask yourself, where do I feel tension? Where do I feel at ease? You just notice there's no judgment, and this reconnects you to your body's wisdom, how you are feeling, and you do that if you can. You take two minutes out of your day to do that. Whenever you wake up or while you're on lunch break, or while you're at home relaxing, just take fine time, take two minutes out of your day to do this. Okay, practice number two, the feelings journal. We take five minutes daily. Okay, we write down three three feelings, just three, that we experienced that day and why. Don't don't try to overthink it. Just say, like, I felt anxious because, or I felt safe when, and you by doing this, validate your emotional experiences. Number three, one small promise. Pick one thing you'll do for yourself today. Write it down, do it, then check it off. This builds self-trust through consistency. Practice number four, the boundary experiment. You do this once a week, you set one boundary, it could be small. You could say, I'm not answering emails after 8 p.m. or I'm not engaging in this conversation. Notice how it feels to yourself. Practice five, the self-compassion pause. You could do this as needed. So one time a day, five times a day, several times during the week. It doesn't matter. Do it when you need it. When you mess up or you start to come down on yourself, stop. Take a pause. Put your hand on your heart, take three deep breaths, you could do it with me. Then you say, I'm learning.

SPEAKER_05:

I'm learning.

SPEAKER_03:

I deserve kindness.

SPEAKER_05:

I deserve kindness.

SPEAKER_03:

And this interrupts the shame cycle. And we all need that as we're trying to come out from underneath that veil of fear. Storm, which practice resonates with you the most?

SPEAKER_05:

The deep breath, you know, taking the time to pause and take a deep breath because of the channels of work that when you do within the government, you have to, you know, you need that pause when you're dealing with too many conflicts and too many channels. So it's good, yes. That was the practice for me.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, I can agree with that. When I go to work, things can get kind of stressful, whether it's dealing with my co-workers, supervisor, or the overall environment of what I do. So having this tool to take a moment and relax myself during something that might be stressful, or if I mess up, you know, or if I feel myself being harsh or critical on myself, I can stop and just say, hey, wait a minute, you know, I am learning and I deserve kindness. I don't deserve to be B-rated or anything like that, you know. So it's it breaks that cycle and it gives you a moment of empowerment, actually.

SPEAKER_05:

Yes.

SPEAKER_03:

Gives you a chance to put your feet up underneath yourself. So now we're gonna talk about what's coming in the next three segments of uh well, next three episodes, not segments. The next three episodes, we're gonna talk about how trust falters in episode five. That's later on this evening, part two of this episode, recognizing the cracks. Episode six, we're gonna be talking about steps to rebuilding trust, practical practices. Once you recognize the cracks, how do you rebuild? How do you know if someone deserves a second chance? What does gradual trust building even look like? And then we finish it off with episode seven, sustaining trust, long-term healing. And once trust is rebuilt, how do you maintain it? How do you protect yourself while staying open? This is about creating sustainable, healthy trust. And before we move into the next part of this episode, I want to remind you that you are not alone. Trust issues aren't a personal failure, they're a survival response. And here's how you can engage with us. Start one practice this week. It doesn't have to be all of the practices we discuss. Pick one of the five practices, do it, and notice what happens. You may want to write that down. Then you can share your experiences with us. What practices resonated with you? You can call us, comment, email, DM us, and tell us what's happening with you. Your story matters. And if you feel like it, you could be a guest on the show and you could talk about your experiences. We need that. We're trying to build this community where we can share what we are providing is a learning and growing experience. And if it's helping you, we want to know. We want to know what's working and what doesn't work. So come come and talk to us. Be a guest on our show. If you want to be anonymous, we can set it up that way. You could be an anonymous guest, but we would appreciate it either way. So reach out to us at terror the number two triumph at gmail.com and we'll get back to you and let you know how you can get on the show and give you all the details you need. After that, you can subscribe and follow. Hit the subscribe on every platform you're hearing this on. Follow us on TikTok, follow us on Buzz Sprout, follow us on Spotify, Apple Pods, and everything that you hear this podcast on. Subscribe and follow us. New episodes drop every week unless we put out something that says we're not going to do the show one weekend or so, then you will follow TikTok for that. We will give out the announcement there. And then engage and share. Like, comment, share this episode with someone who needs it, or everybody who might need it. I mean, share with somebody you think might not need it because they might know somebody who does. And lastly, if you feel like you need help, and what we're discussing tonight and previously is something that's picking at you and saying, Hey, I need to start the ball rolling. I want to be healed. I want to feel whole again. We urge you to seek professional support. A trauma-informed therapist can help you navigate these practices with a personalized guidance strategy. Storm, uh, do you have any final thoughts before we move in on into episodes five topic?

SPEAKER_05:

Oh no. Let's go ahead on and move on to episode. Let's go ahead and move on to five.

SPEAKER_03:

All right.

SPEAKER_05:

All right.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm ready to let's get it. Yes. All right. Okay. Now that we finished episode four, we quickly recap. We talked about building trust with yourself. Now let's talk about what happens when trust breaks down in your relationships with others. Because here's the thing: even if you rebuild trust with yourself, you still have to navigate trust with other people. And that's where things get a little complicated. Ready?

SPEAKER_05:

Ready. Let's go.

SPEAKER_03:

All right, that's what I'm talking about. Episode five, we finally got there. How trust falters, recognizing the cracks. Segment one, okay. Last week, of course, as you know, we just talk about rebuilding trust with yourself. But trust doesn't just exist internally, it exists in our relationships. And for survivors of childhood abuse, such as ourselves, trust in relationships is complicated. Here's the reality: trust can be built, but it can also falter. It can crack, and often we don't see it happening until the damage is already done. So tonight we're exploring the warning signs. We're talking about patterns that show up when trust is breaking down. We're giving you the tools to recognize the cracks before they become fractures. Segment two, we were talking about the anatomy of broken trust. Okay, so this is how trust breaks down. It's rarely one huge moment. You know, it can be a huge moment, but it's rarely just one thing, it's usually a series of small moments that accumulate. The first pattern is inconsistency. Someone says they'll do something and then they don't. Or they do it sometimes, but not always. Our nervous systems can't predict them. Incistency creates doubt, and doubt erodes trust. For survivors like us, this is especially triggering because inconsistency is what we experienced in childhood. Our abusers were unpredictable. So when we encounter inconsistency in adult relationships, it triggers that old fear. Two, broken confidentiality. This is what it really gets to be right here. Okay, you share something that's really very personal and makes you expose a vulnerable part of yourself, and you share that with someone. Or they throw it back up in your face and use it against you. Your secret becomes a weapon, and that trust shatters. I could expound on that. Uh there was a person I did share something very personal with. Oh, you doing this because of this. And I'm like, that has actually nothing to do with the this problem that we're going through right now. But what if and now you have to fight on two fronts? You know, you have to try to get them to understand that that's not an issue that's happening here, and at the same time, you have to address the problem at hand. So it it becomes an uphill battle real quick when you're dealing with stuff like that. Pattern three, dismissal of your feelings. You express how you feel instead of validating it, they minimize it. Oh, you're being too sensitive. That's not a big deal. You're overreacting. You're making too much out of it. When your feelings are repeatedly dismissed, you stop trusting your own perception, and you stop trusting them. Four broken promises. This is this is me fault here. I I'm guilty of this one. They promise to change, they promise to show up differently, but nothing changes. The patterns repeat, the hope dies, and with it, trust. The reason I said this resonates with me too, because I was the type of person that I was always promising to change. When I was with my significant other, I'd say, I'm sorry, you know, I'm trying, I'm trying my best to not do this anymore. But if you remember when we talked about self-sabotage, this was one of the patterns that was evident in my social situations that I would repeatedly self- or sabotage a relationship because I felt it was going too good. And so this would be one of the things. I messed something up, then I say, Oh, I'm sorry, I'm gonna fix it, I'll change. And it never really changes, it just would be a period of time before I did the same thing again, and I would find myself asking, Wow, why I keep doing it? But it was the self-sabotage, and I didn't know I was doing it, you know, to that degree. Pattern number five gaslighting. They deny things that happen, they make you question your own reality. That never happened. You're remembering it wrong. This is especially damaging for survivors because we already struggle with trusting our own perceptions. Pattern six boundary violations. You set a boundary and they cross it. You set it again, they cross it again. When someone repeatedly violates your boundaries, the message is clear. Your needs don't matter, and your trust erodes.

SPEAKER_05:

The pattern that I experienced was like crossing boundaries, and those were past affiliates that I don't even associate with no more, and it got quite, you know, ugly, you know. But now that you seek, you you know, you seek out to help yourself, then you know how to handle situations as such.

SPEAKER_03:

Agreed, agreed. It's like toxic people. And like we talked about in self-sabotage, we let toxic people back into our lives because sometimes we feel comfortable with that toxicity being around us because of our childhood and how we came up in with that abuse, and that toxicity seems normal to us. So sometimes when people break the boundaries, we kind of let it happen. We say, okay, well, we make excuses, but it's not really about that, it's about us recognizing what's happening and addressing it as such without without creating a new narrative or saying using our childhood survival responses to negotiate what's happening before us. We have to look at it with our adult eyes and say, okay, no, this isn't me and my feelings, this is something somebody's doing to us, and we have to cut that negativity out of our lives, it's not good for us. So I agree with you. We do have to remove people from our lives that are toxic. Okay, now we're going into segment three. How do you know when trust is starting to falter? What are the warning signs? Warning sign number one, you feel hyper-vigilant around them. You're always on alert. You're scanning for danger. You can't relax. Your nervous system doesn't feel safe. This is your body telling you something's off. Two, you make excuses for them. They do something hurtful, and you immediately rationalize it. They didn't mean it. That's just how they are. They were just having a bad day. It's not that bad. When you're making excuses, trust is already cracking. Three isolating. You stop telling them things, you keep part of yourself hidden. You're protecting yourself by not being fully present. This is a sign that trust has already been damaged. You set up situations to see if they'll betray you. You're looking for proof that they are untrustworthy. This is a trauma response. You're trying to control the outcome by confirming your fears. I want to stop for a second right there because something just came to mind. There has been a lot of videos, relationship videos, where couples test each other to see their reactions, what they would do. Is this something that they were trustworthy? That's not healthy behavior. So, because of social media, we've allowed it to be a normal thing. And it's not. Just as you heard it just when we spoke it. This is a trauma response. We are setting up situations to see if a person will betray us. We're looking for the proof that they're untrustworthy. So, in a way, we're already saying, I don't trust you. I just wanted, I just want the proof. Okay, so we have to be careful about watching social media and say, Oh, I want to try that with my boyfriend, I want to try that with my girlfriend. Well, do you really know that you're emulating something that's damaging in another person's psyche? And you're introducing that into your own relationship, causing damage to your relationship. It might not be evident right away, but you're definitely putting something in the back of your partner's mind. So you might want to be careful of that. Okay, moving on. Number five, you feel drained after spending time with them. A healthy relationship should energize you. Relationships where trust is broken, they drain you. You feel worse than when you arrived. Number six, you're having intrusive thoughts about them. You can't stop thinking about what they did. You replay conversations over and over in your mind. You try to look for hidden meanings in what they said. Your mind is trying to make sense of the broken trust. And in a way, your mind is fractured, already fractured with the trust, and you are furthering that by trying to find something that may not be there. You actually are formulating more fractures by trying to create behind what somebody might have said. Okay, number seven. Your gut says no, hell no. Right, storm. Talk to that. Your gut says no. Okay, that's the most important one. Your body knows something feels off, probably is. Trust your instincts. Which warning sign do you resonate with the most? Have you ignored? Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_05:

Oh no, just when your body says no, you know, because your body is always quick to tell you no, but some of us ignore it. And so that's how we end up in the situations we end up in. But when your body says no, no mean no. And you need to trust that this is not a good situation. If you feel antsy, get out.

SPEAKER_03:

True, true. If it doesn't feel right, it probably isn't. So make sure that you're safe first, and then you can look outside and analyze and do all the stuff at that point, but always make sure you're safe first. Okay, we're going into uh segment number four, and here's something important to understand. Excuse me. Survivors of childhood are particularly vulnerable to trust breaking down in relationships, and there are specific reasons why. One, we don't know what healthy looks like. We need to pause on that one because if we've grown up in abusive families, dysfunctional families, and we suffered all this trauma as child as children, where was the healthy we were supposed to emulate? We've never really seen anybody emulate a healthy relationship, or we might not have had a chance to be aware of somebody who is living in a healthy relationship, so we don't know what it looks like. We grew up in dysfunction, so we don't have a template, we might not recognize red flags because the red flags are normal to us. We're drawn to familiar dysfunction, familiar dysfunction on a subconscious level. We seek out our relationships that mirror our childhood. So we end up with people who repeat the patterns of our abusers. Okay, did I lose Storm just then? Storm, are you still there?

SPEAKER_04:

I think I may have lost my co-host. No, that's not good. Okay. I'm gonna try to bring her back. I don't know how we can do that.

SPEAKER_03:

My co host is gone. You all can bear with me. I'm trying to get my co host back on to the show. I feel bad.

SPEAKER_06:

Like Michael A issue is pretty good.

SPEAKER_03:

Um we just had a moment of pause there. I don't know what was happening. My audio even sounds different, so I'm hoping that we can continue without too many problems. Yeah. So we're gonna try to continue. Two, we are drawn to healthy, I mean familiar dysfunction on a subconscious level. We seek out relationships that mirror our childhood because familiar feels safe, even if it's harmful. So we end up with people who repeat the patterns of our abusers. Hello, welcome back, Storm.

SPEAKER_05:

Welcome back. Thank you. No, I was gonna, my phone was gonna QD.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, it's okay. It's okay.

SPEAKER_05:

Yes.

SPEAKER_03:

Anyway, yeah, I was just telling the people, I was like, I really like my co-host. I hope I hope she can I can get her back. But um thank you for coming back again. We're on reason number three now. We have a high tolerance for mistreatment. We've been hurt before, so we can tolerate a lot of hurt. We minimize, we rationalize, we stay longer than we should. I think I could say that's probably true. Because I will say I endure more than most people would in a relationship because I know I can I can take it and I try to deal with it because I know I'm not perfect, and for my faults, I stay in a relationship because I feel like I don't want the other person to leave because I might not be able to find another relationship with a person who can accept me and my faults. So I struggle with that. That is something I struggle with, and that's actually leading into the next reason. The next reason is we struggle with self-worth. Deep down, we don't believe we deserve better. So when someone treats us poorly, parts of us think this is what I deserve. We don't trust that we're worthy of better treatment. Number five, we're hyper-vigilant to abandonment, we're terrified of being left. I had to raise my hand on that one. That's me. You two, you have to take a sigh on that one too. See, it's not just me. We're not alone in this. That's the whole point of this whole show. I try to tell people all the time the way you feel, you might think you're the only one going through it, but you are absolutely not. And we're here to tell you that. You know, then me and Storm right here just connected on the same thing, struggling with self-worth. And especially hyper-vigilant to abandonment. We're terrified of being left. So we look or overlook red flags, we make excuses, we do whatever it takes to keep us and the relationship intact, even if it means staying in the situation where trust is broken. I was gonna ask you, Storm, which one of these resonate with you the most? But I think we already know we got a top winner already, number five. Yes, yeah, that I told I told my significant other so many times, I don't want her to leave me. I don't want her to leave me. I feel like she's gonna leave me. I feel like, and eventually it happened. But that was a part of me, you know, being a hyper-vigilant to an abandonment, you know. I wasn't looking for any red flags, I was just concerned about them leaving me, even with my own red flags. Excuse me. Okay, so what do you do once you recognize the cracks? Okay, the trust is starting to break down. What do you do? First, you acknowledge it, you don't minimize it, you don't make excuses, you need to say it out loud. Hey, trust is breaking down in this relationship. Acknowledgement is the first step. Then you gotta start communicating. Be specific about what's broken your trust. When you told my secret, it broke my trust. When you said you changed and didn't, it broke my trust. Give them a chance to respond and listen. Because conversations always go two ways. So part of part of it is you talking and them listening, the other side is them talking and responding, and you listening and understanding. So after communicating, based on their response, decide what boundary you need to set. I need you not to share my personal information, I need you to follow through on your promises, be clear, and be firm, and don't be afraid. These are your boundaries, and people should respect what you feel, and if they're not respecting what you feel, and they don't respect your boundaries, it's time to look for a new partner. Okay, and I I say that because in my situation, if it happens to me now, and I start realizing the person's not respecting my boundaries or they're not showing me that they really care about what I feel or what I feel is important to me, I have to let them go. Because it's a journey for me to have good mental health and good stability in my relationships. I'm not trying to work for you in a relationship. We should be two people working together for each other. So a healthy relationship does thrive on communication, understanding, and readjusting. And if people aren't really trying to readjust and do the things necessary to keep that relationship viable, you do need to question it. And you will be right to question it and have that conversation. Do find out, are they really trying to respect you or are they just really using you? And you gotta make a decision. Well, I'm sorry, I skipped one. Once you set a boundary, you have to observe.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I was ready to make a decision. I'm like, chop, yeah, we go chop chop off the block.

SPEAKER_03:

But first, you got you gotta observe. Once you set the boundary, you have to see if they're respecting the boundary. Okay, well, okay, you just can't just can't cut a person off like that, you know. Okay, I set a boundary, now you're done. You know that no, that's not that's not fair to them. You give them a chance first, you give them a chance, and you observe to see if they change, or did they continue with the same behavior? And if trust is rebuilt through consistent action over time, not through words. So a person can say, Oh, I did this, I did that, I did this, and that doesn't mean anything if you actually have not changed. So, did the person really change? You can observe this, you can watch and see. You know, don't do what we talked about earlier and try to make up some fictional type thing to challenge somebody to test them, but just live life like you normally would and see if they're going to cross your boundaries and do it repeatedly in the same fashion. Or maybe they fixed one part and there's another part that needs to be fixed. It's a learning and growing thing, a relationship is. So you have to make way for the communication observation. And then after the observation, based upon what you observe, decide can trust be rebuilt with this person? Do you want to invest the energy or is it time to step back or end the relationship? This is hard, this is painful, but it's necessary because staying in a relationship where trust is broken keeps you stuck in a trauma cycle. Storm, have you had to make this decision before?

SPEAKER_05:

Many a times it's hard each time, you know, in the past relationships when the trust is broken, and you have to, if they crossing boundaries are not doing what they need to do, you have talked to them, you have told them this is what you need to do, and they still doing what they need to do. And it's hard to say, okay, this is it. And that has been the most disturbing thing to me, each time to have to say, Oh, okay, I'm done. But you can heal, you can heal.

SPEAKER_03:

Amen. I believe that too. Healing is possible for us, survivors of childhood trauma and abuse. So you may think that there is no way out, but there is always a way out. And in my spirituality, I believe that our Father in Heaven has always provided us a way of escape. So you just have to look for it. It's there, but you just have to seek it, and it might come up differently than it came up for me, or it might come up differently than you might hear in one of the stories. But you have to be vigilant and look for that means of escape for yourself. We're going on into section six, and I want you to know trust faltering is painful, but it's also information, it's your nervous system telling you something is wrong, and that is quite valuable for us. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to identify one crack in one of your relationships. Is there a crack in trust? What's causing it? It doesn't have to be a significant other relationship. It could be a co-worker relationship, it could be a family member, it could be somebody you go to church with, it could be anybody. So just choose one of your relationships and see if there's a crack in the trust and try to identify what's causing that. Recognize the pattern. Which of the six patterns we talked about is showing up in that trust, which warning signs are present? Then take action, have a conversation with a person. Once you have the conversation, set a boundary. Once you set that boundary, observe, watch and see what they'll do. Will they repeat the mistakes or will they really change and make a decision based upon your observations? And once you've done that, come back to us. Share your experience. Is it working for you? How are you navigating trust breaks in your relationships? Comment, email us, DM us, then subscribe, like, follow, share. We need everybody to share this show because it's so important the information we're giving out to people who have suffered childhood abuse and trauma. We want people to grow into the people they were meant to be before they were violated, and things were removed from them. Parts of them were shut down, and they became different people than the God people they were supposed to be, that God created them to be to be. So I want everyone to subscribe, follow, like, share with everyone that you know, all your friends, your family, people who you go to work with, people in church, I want you to share this with everybody because the person you share with may not have an issue like this, but they may know someone who does. And if you're in a relationship where trust is severely broken, talk to a therapist. You don't have to figure this out alone, and that's one of my biggest things. You are not alone. There's always somebody out there willing to help, willing to share, open up and give you a chance to open up and share your story, and to help you, to help you identify with that not only are you a survivor, but identify the things that are causing you to dwell in that darkness of fear, shame, guilt, and isolation so that you are able to be empowered to escape it and become the person God meant you to be. Tonight we explored about how trust falters. We talked about patterns, warning signs, and what to do when you recognize the cracks. Next week in episode six, we're going to be talking about steps to rebuilding trust, practical practices. We're going to talk about how to actually rebuild trust with someone. How do you know if they're trustworthy? How do you gradually let them back in? What does the process look like? Storm, you got any final thoughts?

SPEAKER_05:

No, no final doubts, but for y'all to, you know, look at the screen and if y'all need any help, you know, these are numbers, you know, that y'all can reach out to. Those different numbers that are running across the screen, because we're here to help you. This is a safe place, and we want everybody to feel like you are all welcome in. There's no shame or nothing, and nothing that you do. This is a safe place for everybody to come in and just feel at home.

SPEAKER_03:

Correct, correct. People say or feel is taboo to talk about such things that we're discussing on this show. But the truth is, if the matter isn't discussed, if the matter never comes to light, if the matter stays hidden always, then there's never a way for a person to acknowledge what's happening, for anyone to seek help to be shown that there's a way to receive the help. I think about when I was going through my darkness, how many times I could have used a helping hand or someone who had been through my experience to show me a way out without suicide or without spasm out or having breakdowns or whatever, or just trying to deal with it, growing on into my adulthood with all these survival instincts that I've had since childhood, and still employing them in my adult life where they don't work anymore. So this platform gives all of us survivors a place to talk, judgment free. We're here to help one another, lift each other up, and get us on the path to wholeness. Until then, trust is precious, protect it, honor it, and when it breaks, don't ignore it, address it, because you deserve relationships built on trust, safety, and genuine care. I'm Afonso Pell. This is Storm and this is Terror to Triumph. We thank you for listening, and we thank you for your courage.

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Storm

Co-host