Redefining Unconscious Narratives

Music. So the last time that we were together here, I launched season three with two episodes that dropped with the expectation to drop them weekly.

And unfortunately, I was diagnosed with pneumonia and had a ton of complications following that, including some asthma and some windedness from talking and some hoarse voice that follows the windedness. Luckily, with my therapy job, I don't talk, you know, ongoing. It's a back and forth conversation. And when I do recordings, it really is just me. And I'm quite a perfectionist. So the one episode you get is not all that's been recorded.

I usually go back and rerecord several times to get it just right. And unfortunately i'm just not able to do that right now even today my hope was to sit down and to do a full episode and i could tell already that i'm having some hoarseness so this will be fairly brief and i just wanted to say i'm sorry i don't like to be a flaky figure however datology is just a side project for me and not my main job or you know source of any kind of income.

So this is just has to be put on the back burner until I'm able to record again, which I really believe will happen. Datology is always near and dear to my heart. As you can tell that we've been recording, you know, sporadically on and off for eight years. However, something that I do want to do is an in-person event that will be Thursday, May 29th, again at the Dutch Goose at 7 p.m. And we will be located in the back patio this time.

I will put a link in the show notes to the Eventbrite page to go ahead and sign up for that. After our last event, which had over 30 people, I got some wonderful feedback from participants on things that they would love to see different. And so I'm going to be implementing those things like providing an actual physical drink ticket for ease of, yeah, getting what you need. I will have name tags as structured activity and also still lots of times for

open socializing with other people. So grab your gals and pals and come on down. I'm going to do my best to get an equal number of men and women. So please share with each other this event. It's always nice to see in all the events we've done so far, different people come every time. So hopefully it's new, fresh faces along with some friendly faces. So again, that will be in the event bright.

Please follow along on Instagram for updates, even things like this, when I'm not able to record, I will put something on Instagram. But right now, there's only like 15 people that follow. So I know most of you are not getting that information. So go ahead and support us by engaging and following along there.

And the idea that I have for today that I would love to talk more in length on, but we'll make this fairly brief, was around the stories that we tell ourselves, the stories that are not the most integrated or true that end up holding us back from feeling confident and from being able to find healthy partners or even engage well in dating. Here's what I'm talking about. Thoughts like, I'm not good enough. My shame defines me. My sin or behavior defines me. I'm not lovable.

I'm broken. I'm too much, not enough. There's so many aspects of our experiences that try to, in our own minds, disqualify us from love and intimacy and connection. And those just aren't the truest things about ourselves. As believers, we hold truth that God created us in his own image. And that means that there's inherent value and beauty inside our humanity that's hard for us to even understand within our own imagination.

So this is a call for everyone to just think about what are those things that I carry with me specifically in dating. Unfortunately, or fortunately rather, the wounds that we have with intimate relationships are not the same wounds that we carry in other areas of our life. So you might be very successful and confident in your career. You might have tons of friends. And these narratives might not be the same narratives holding you back in other places. That's how sometimes it can be sneaky.

I have clients that say, well, Candice, you know, I'm doing well in all these areas, or there's nothing really bothering me. And we forget that there are aspects of our hearts connected with our primary loves that only get triggered in romantic relationships.

And so when we come to dating, there's all sorts of ideas that get muddled, all sorts of hope around what a partner can bring, all sorts of projections of what we want from someone else or fears that we have from other individuals who've harmed us or disappointed us or rejected us in the past. So many hopes and anxieties or avoidances that come out uniquely in dating relationships. And so think about what those things are for yourself. And the hope here is that each of you lean into this work.

If you can identify some of those thought patterns, again, that uniquely come out, maybe they come in other areas or they're more general for you, but specifically in dating, when they come out when you're about to go on a date, that come out when you're about to text someone, that are the sneaky fears when someone hasn't called you back.

Identify what those are so that you can hold them in honesty. Be aware of them, and then start the work to challenge those thoughts and create a more holistic, healthy narrative about who you are. This is kind of the process that happens in therapy.

Not everyone needs therapy to go through that self-awareness deconstruction process however if your story does include some kind of trauma or a family experience or a thought that yeah you've tried to unravel it before you haven't been able to or it's very deep and hard for you to go to those places alone then this is a time to go ahead and reach out to a therapist to do some of that formation work because we carry with us when we come to these events and going to date,

all of these ideas about ourselves that are heavy and can be hard and can get in the way of your ability to show up in that sense of freedom to show up fun to show up as your best self and sometimes we accidentally show up to our dates as our really insecure hesitant part of ourselves.

And there's no need for that here. So much of dating, especially in the beginning, is strangers getting to know each other really casually to see if they like each other enough to keep seeing each other, hanging out another time, keep talking. It should really be that. Casual so that we don't trigger our, you know, is this the person I'm going to marry? It's not helpful to have those thoughts early on when we're getting to know people.

However, that might be one of the narratives that you have based on your childhood. I've shared this before on Dateology, but, you know, my mother would give me this narrative since I was little, this idea of like, Like, oh, could that be your future husband? I mean, it's just so ingrained in me from a child. All of my male friends had this, you know, language that she would attribute to them around partnership and marriage.

And it took away my ability for just pure fun and getting to know people and created this heavy expectation that was totally unconscious to me. Because she started this when I was super young and it was probably harmless to her.

But it formed me and it made me think that you know any any day any guy talking to me could be the one and that held so much hope and promise as a little human that it then distorted my ability just to hang out with people and get to know them without bringing too much of that expectancy into the relationship again that's such an unconscious pattern we feel it viscerally often and don't even realize we're doing it.

It's usually the people around us, like friends or siblings that can see us and call us out on it.

So if you need help figure out what your narrative is, it might be to reach out to a friend and ask them what they think that you struggle with. So I hope that is helpful for you all.

The goal of dateology forever has been to help you engage with different ideas about dating, about yourself, about concepts like boundaries and attachment so that you can be better informed have good awareness of yourself and good awareness of and realistic awareness of what to expect in other people and that can help free you to show to an event like one with dateology or a date somewhere independently with your best self,

knowing that any of those fears don't define you, that you are lovable, that you're not, and to learn how to gradually let someone. Show if they're the person to continue to date and for you to come from a place of fun and levity and authenticity, most importantly, to show someone else who you are so that we can all pick good partners. Hiding ourselves or pretending that we're someone that we're not never actually helps us determine good fit because it's just going to be a false,

advertising. And that works both ways. It's part of what makes marriage hard is that the ways that we show up in dating is not always the way that we show up in day-to-day life. And so if you can be more authentic and real and comfortable in your skin, then you are allowing people to choose you because that's a compatible person for them and vice versa, that you're choosing someone because they're coming off authentically, not just mirroring what they think you want.

That's really devastating when you're dating someone who is mirroring for you, you know, oh yeah, I like that too. Oh, I'll do that too. And then you get in a committed relationship and all of a sudden they finally feel this secure freedom to reveal that they don't like those same hobbies or don't hold those same value systems.

And that can create a ton of conflict. so do your work know yourself there's a tool that i should be releasing on the dateology.com i created a workbook it's like 20 pages it's not extensive and it's very affordable but it's to start this work with yourself to start identifying what are some of the things that have kept you from establishing good relationships what are some of the bad habits It's what are the themes that the people around you keep trying to tell you

about yourself and how to create new narratives and new habits for healthier dating. So you can go ahead and check that out. The website will also have the Eventbrite information on it. Thank you all for you who continue to listen. I'm always looking at the numbers and the analytics. because it's so fun to see people that are around the world that tune in. And thanks for hanging in with us. It's such a fun community.

And hopefully I will be back in the very near future with some of the guests that I had lined up for season three and some of the content. Music.