About Me
Back in 2005, I went through a breakup of a 13-year relationship. It was quite a shock to my system. One night, she told me she no longer loved me. The next day, she moved out. And shortly afterward, I fell into a depression.
It hit me pretty hard. I didn’t realize how much I took for granted being in a relationship. I didn’t see any of the warning signs. The first few months of my depression, I was just trying to stay afloat. I didn’t really have my own identity without her in my life. So, I wandered around aimlessly for a while.
It was dark and lonely inside my head and heart. After a few months of this, I started to realize something needed to change, or I’d be miserable forever. In my infinite wisdom, I believed that in order to be happy again, I should meet someone new and replace the person who left me.
After some time and effort, I did eventually meet someone. We hit it off right away. However, she lived 3000 miles away, so I had no clue how it was going to work out. After a few trips across the US and spending as much time together as possible, we both knew we wanted this relationship.
I moved across the country to be with her. I knew that being in a relationship would once again bring happiness into my life. After all, a good relationship cures depression, right?
I didn’t realize how wrong I was. I was still depressed. I found it hard to be happy and couldn’t even connect with her. After a couple of months, she told me that she couldn’t continue a relationship with me until I got some help. She said she was leaving.
The realization that my world would come crashing down on me again put me into a sort of shock. The moment she told me she was going to leave, I had what most would call a breakdown. I honestly believed happiness came from other people, so experiencing another breakup while still depressed put me over the edge.
I fell to my knees and cried out so many emotions. But these emotions weren’t just about what was happening in the moment. For some reason, my fear of being alone and unhappy again brought up decades of repressed hurt, anger, and even hatred about everything I’d repressed in my life. I had no idea I was holding on to so much hurt.
I never let anyone see me like this before. It was the first time I’d ever expressed emotional upset like that, especially this intense, to anyone. I didn’t realize I had all of that in me!
It turns out I had years of repressed childhood fear and anger from growing up in an alcoholic home. And it poured out of me that day. It was exhausting. The woman I had only known for two months witnessed me losing it, probably wondering what kind of person she got involved with.
However, she supported me. She was there to comfort me while I was going through my thing. And after I finished crying, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time: lighter. I felt like something had shifted inside me. For the first time, I realized what it felt like to be without hate or anger. And I didn’t even know I was carrying those things.
At that moment, I felt a tiny bit less depressed than I had been hours before. That small taste of “less depressed” was a vast improvement, considering how I’d been feeling. But the tears dried, and I started feeling quite peaceful.
My depression wasn’t over by any means, but I realized that allowing myself to be vulnerable and letting all of those years of repressed energy come up and out of me made a huge, positive impact on my emotional well-being.
That’s when my journey of personal growth and healing began. After that, I spent years diving inside myself while also studying everything I could about human behavior, how we communicate, and why we do the things we do. I eventually decided to become a certified life coach in brain sciences such as hypnosis and neuro-linguistics (NLP), and now, I help others as a behavior and relationship coach.
After my breakdown in the desert, shortly after my certification, I had what I consider to be a mystical experience that helped me let go of attachments and be present. Though I’ve minimized that event to a single sentence here, it was life-altering.
As I was healing myself from depression and learning to experience more presence in my life, I decided to communicate my life lessons along with everything I learned in my studies over the previous decade with others so that they could also transform, if that was the path they wanted to take.
Though I ended up marrying the woman I had a breakdown in front of, an incredibly understanding, loving, and caring person, our marriage did not survive my healing journey. I was toxic and emotionally abusive, having carried over many unhealthy coping mechanisms from childhood.
We learn survival skills in childhood that transform into coping mechanisms later on in life. Since I was trying to survive a highly dysfunctional environment in my upbringing, I brought my unhealed and unchecked beliefs into my adult relationships, “poisoning” all of them except the one I’m in today.
My emotional triggers and toxic behaviors disintegrated the love in my adult relationships. Toward the end of my marriage, I finally realized how destructive my behaviors were and took massive steps to change who I was and began another journey of growth and healing.
I started healing my emotionally abusive behaviors, realizing my selfishness and desire to control and change the people I claimed to love. If my wife at the time hadn’t taken steps to protect herself and separate from me, I might never have gotten the wake-up call I needed to heal and change.
The divorce was the wake-up call I needed to kick my butt into gear and accept that I was the common denominator for all of the relationship failures in my life. It was the first time I took full responsibility for my results and stopped blaming the people I loved for problems I needed to fix in myself.
I made profound changes during and after my divorce. And even though my wife could tell I was an entirely different person and appreciated what she saw in me, she said it was too late. She had sealed her heart shut and decided to move on. It was a painful time. But…
The end of my marriage was exactly what I needed to show me that I wasn’t supposed to rely on others as my source of happiness.
It sure seems that at the peak of any type of personal growth and development is a challenge that tests just how much we’ve actually “evolved.” My divorce was a hard lesson, but sometimes, the greatest lesson in life is when we lose something great. And I’ve lost some pretty great things in my life. But they have all shaped me into the person I’ve become today and continue to work on.
I’ve been humbled many times along my path of healing. And I still get humbled whenever something or someone reminds me just how much more there is to learn. Sure, being mindful and present has helped tremendously, but I don’t claim to be a master at anything. I’ve just learned a lot and know what works.
If what I know works for others, too, then I’ve accomplished something I can be proud of.
My journey has helped me uncover deep emotional wounds to process and release. I’ve processed and released a lot, but you never know what else is inside until you have an experience that reveals what’s there. As much as I look forward to those revelations, they’re usually scary as hell.
But every challenge is an opportunity to be more honest, especially with myself. I’ve been able to drop many of my old people-pleasing and other co-dependent behaviors, unafraid to speak up for myself and live as authentically as I can. But life has a way of throwing up obstacles for us to jump over (or get in our way), so I will never claim I have all the answers. But I can say I know more today than I did yesterday. And I look forward to learning more tomorrow.
My main teachings revolve around relationships and emotional intelligence. My purpose with The Overwhelmed Brain is to help empower you to make decisions that are right for you, navigating the difficulties of life with some tools that may actually help you feel better.
My resources:
- The Overwhelmed Brain Podcast: Navigate the difficulties of life
- The Love and Abuse Podcast: Navigate the difficult relationship
- The Healed Being Program: Heal from being the difficult one in the relationship
- Workbooks and Other Resources: Helpful tools
- The Blog: More tools for your well-being
If you’d like to connect with me for any reason, reach out! You can send me an email by clicking here.
You may also want to subscribe to the TOB Insights, the Emotional Intelligence Newsletter, for even more tools to help you get through the challenges of life.
I hope my work and teachings bring you just a bit closer to living the life you want. I’m glad to be able to connect with you. I appreciate you!
Paul
About The Overwhelmed Brain
The Overwhelmed Brain blog and podcast are for those who want to better their lives by questioning what doesn’t work and changing behavior that doesn’t serve them anymore.
If you have the desire for a more emotionally stable, happier life, the blog and podcast will help to empower you to forge the path to that destination.
We are bombarded with thoughts, emotions, and an unending series of unpredictable events. The Overwhelmed Brain was created to give you specific, purposeful steps to help you improve your life and empower you to make the right decisions.
You won’t find any rehashed, regurgitated self-help teachings or new-age mysticism here, just practical and sometimes radical steps that guide you to fulfillment.
As critical as that may sound toward other authors or speakers in the self-help field, I am not against anything that works. In other words:
- If psychics help you become fulfilled, then keep using psychics
- If energy healers help you cure your ailment,s then keep using energy healers
- If religion is your path to happiness, then stay religious
Do what works for you, not necessarily what you’re told to do.
But do it armed with knowledge.
That’s why I approach personal growth and development from a critical thinking perspective. Critical thinking is about learning, questioning, and being skeptical, even about your own beliefs.
When you question what you believe, you either reinforce what you know to be true or find out a different truth you weren’t aware of before, causing you to make better decisions for yourself.
Either way, you win!
And your life will improve regardless of old beliefs or subconscious programming.
When you combine critical thinking with personal growth, you not only learn and grow faster, but you also understand how to repeat the process and teach it to others.
Learning about your own and other people’s behavior is a fascinating, life-long process. But learning how to repeat successful behavior creates a more enriched life.
The Overwhelmed Brain is here to help you:
- Increase your emotional intelligence
- Strengthen your self-worth and self-esteem
- Learn how to show up in the world as your authentic self
- Get into alignment with what you value most
- Build the courage to honor your personal boundaries
- Create strong, authentic relationships
If this sounds like a good path for you, you’re in the right place.
Listen to the latest episode here.
If you are dealing with a difficult relationship, you will definitely find my other podcast, Love and Abuse, helpful as well.
