SHE Asked Podcast

Ep 10: The Call to Freedom | How to Change the Story You're Telling Yourself

• Anna McBride

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The Call to Freedom | She Asked Podcast with Anna McBride

Today, I break down how to break free from limiting beliefs, inherited narratives, and lifelong patterns shaped by addiction, trauma, and self-doubt.

💬 “We are creating our future selves with the choices we make today.” — Mark Hyman

🔍 Topics We Cover:

How childhood experiences shape adult identity

Recovery as a path to personal freedom

Releasing the belief: “I’m unlovable”

Redefining womanhood beyond inherited roles

The power of choice in creating a new future

✨ Whether you're navigating a life pivot, healing from heartache, or simply seeking clarity, this episode offers tools to begin rewriting your own story.

🛎️ Subscribe for more episodes every week to support your healing, growth, and transformation.

🎧 Follow the She Asked Podcast

#RecoveryJourney #HealingAfterDivorce #RewriteYourStory #SheAskedPodcast #AnnaMcBride #TraumaRecovery #CodependencyHealing #LifeAfterAddiction #ChangeYourNarrative

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to. She Asked Tools for Practical Hope. I'm Anna, your friend and host, and I'm so glad you're here. In the last episode, I shared what it meant to walk the open-hearted path of recovery. Today, I want to talk about what comes next. How do we rebuild after the wreckage of chaos, addiction or trauma? How do we move from survival into sovereignty? I call this the architecture of safety, the inner home we build brick by brick as we unlearn fear and relearn trust. Let me take you into a moment from my own life.

Speaker 1:

I like to start with a story, and this just happened recently. It was a month or so ago after I began working the SLAA program this is the Sex and Love Addictions Anonymous program, 12-step program and I remember sitting down in my room in my home and I noticed that I didn't feel anxious. I wasn't scanning my phone, I wasn't looking up on X's, I wasn't scrolling through social media or trying to fix something. I realized I felt safe, not just externally but internally. Getting there wasn't a straight line. I can assure you that I had to meet three of my biggest character defects to get there Perfectionism, people-pleasing and control. These traits once protected me. Perfectionism made me feel worthy. People-pleasing kept me feeling loved, and control gave me the illusion of safety, but in recovery they become barriers to connection and healing. What I was learning in recovery was also echoed in the research, and that validation mattered. It helped me realize that I wasn't alone and I wasn't crazy. Dr Brene Brown, whose work on shame and vulnerability has helped millions, describes perfectionism not as a striving for excellence but as a shield against the pain of being seen as flawed. And Pete Walker, in his work on complex PTSD, which was published back in 2013,. On Complex PTSD, which was published back in 2013, explains that people-pleasing is often a trauma response known as spawning, an unconscious survival strategy that says if I stay agreeable, I'll stay safe. And Dr Richard C Schwartz, with his breakthrough work on internal family systems theory, says that the impulse to control is understood as a protective part, one trying to manage an inner world that feels chaotic. So, as it turns out, I wasn't broken, I was surviving, and now I could choose to heal. So let's talk about what rebuilding looks like.

Speaker 1:

In my own healing, I came to see three anchors that made all the difference. I call them the pillars of safety, but I want you to think about it. It's like a structure, a scaffolding that I used to lean on. I literally wrapped my life around recovery, not the other way around. I didn't make recovery fit into my life, I made my life fit into recovery, not the other way around. I didn't make recovery fit into my life, I made my life fit into recovery. That's how much I needed it, and I knew this because my nervous system needed help. So the first pillar I call nervous system literacy.

Speaker 1:

This is learning what calm feels like. It's recognizing when you're in fight, flight, freeze or fawn to breathe, to pause and to slow down. I remember the day when I was first starting my work in Al-Anon, and it was months into working the steps with my sponsor that I woke up in the morning and I literally felt my shoulders relax For the first time, like ever. It's as if my nervous system finally was ready to let go, like I had it, like I was being supported. It no longer had to be rigid anymore. And in recovery there's this term. It's a slogan and it goes like this one day at a time when I stay in today, my body softens. I don't have to solve my whole life, I just have to breathe through this hour, this moment, this, whatever it is right in front of me.

Speaker 1:

So many of us live our life either in the past, through ruminating, or in the future, and that's called worrying. And when we take our bodies, our minds, out of today, we automatically send our nervous system into panic, into challenge, into trying to brace for something. But knowing what safety feels like isn't enough. We also need ways to protect it. That brings me to the next pillar. I call it boundaries. That bless. So boundaries aren't walls. They're not meant to be rigid. They're meant to invite deeper trust within ourselves. I had to learn to say no without guilt and to stop saying yes when I meant no. Just please love me anyway.

Speaker 1:

And boundaries have really grown to be sacred for me, because I used to think like boundaries are about the other person, like what am I going to do so that they don't hurt me? And the truth is, I've learned through recovery that all these situations where I was harmed, at least as an adult, I was participating in them. I was putting myself in harm's way, in other words, when I didn't need to. Now, it's one thing as a child when we're powerless to adults. It's another thing as an adult to give over your sovereignty to somebody else because of things like people pleasing. So for me, boundaries have grown to be something more sacred. They're about me and what am I willing to do and what am I no longer willing to do, either in relationship to someone else or in relationship to myself, and this can cover lots of areas. For me, self-care has boundaries. For me, my work life has boundaries. For me also, relationships with other people big boundaries, and it's really just about me. What am I no longer going to do? Because I'm the one who has to wake up each day with myself and I want to feel good about that.

Speaker 1:

So my principle from recovery that I apply here is called radical honesty, without shame. That means I need to be clear. What is my part in a situation? If I'm struggling with someone or struggling in my own life, I want to get clarity around what that is. That is the honesty, and I don't want to feel shame around it. There's nothing wrong with struggle. There's nothing wrong with struggling to take care of yourself or relating to other people. The thing that's the problem is not being willing to see it or not being willing to ask for help. So honesty doesn't mean confessing your flaws, it just means telling the truth to yourself, to others, with kindness, clarity and with self-respect. Kindness, clarity and with self-respect. And finally, safety needs rhythm a container, a practice, a way to root our healing into our daily life. That's what brings us to the third pillar, which I call the sacred structure.

Speaker 1:

My healing accelerated when I made rhythm my ritual. That included my morning practices. So I wake up every morning and the first thing I do after I go to the bathroom I meditate and pray. I've done this now. I've meditated for about 20 years now, but I started prayer when I began my recovery process. So this is about seven years ago. I invited in prayer. Seven years ago I invited in prayer, and so what it does is it creates a dialogue between me myself and my spirit and my higher power. It sets the trajectory for my day. I start thinking of myself and my life and my body as something sacred, and it's the first thing I do and it really grounds me in myself.

Speaker 1:

Then I get up and I journal. I've got tons of journals for years now, but the ones lately have been more structured around recovery perspectives. Like I have a different perspective, and they are 12, 12-step related, on every day of the week, and so I choose a different step and I journal on it first thing in the morning. I have some daily readers and I read them ahead of journaling and again, it just informs me, opens me up, grounds me more. And then I begin my day after that by attending a phone meeting related to one or two depending on my timing for the day of the recovery programs that I'm working. And so this is the beginning of my day.

Speaker 1:

This is my morning ritual. It's a part of my self-care. I don't even think about it, I just do it now because it's my routine, my ritual. I start my day in that ease and then I continue it throughout the day by checking in on my feelings, checking in through prayer. I keep the conversation going with myself, with my feelings, and I use that as a part of my daily reflection, and it's truly a structure that helps me. Whether I'm heading into a meeting, I pray and connect before that, or if I'm coming out of a meeting, I digest and reflect on that. That may sound like a lot, but it's the structure that became my sanctuary.

Speaker 1:

It really saved my life, and so the recovery principle that I incorporate into that is surrendering what you cannot control, what I cannot control, we learn through recovery years. What I cannot control, we learn through recovery years. Other people places, situations, so anything that's outside of me I can't control. I've been taught that I can't even control my first thought. Yet through practice of meditation, prayer, journaling and recovery, I can redirect every thought after that. And, believe me, as somebody who's been a chronic overthinker, that was a lot of restructuring and I needed that sacred structure of these daily practices to help me unlearn and relearn how to train my mind. There is no power in saying this is not mine to hold, I don't need to have my hand in everything. Recovery has taught me that surrender isn't weakness, it's wisdom, and all of my relationships, all of my work has really been benefited by my willingness to let go.

Speaker 1:

So I want to invite you to reflect on something when in your life are you still trying to earn your safety through over-efforting control or performance, and then ask yourself what would it feel like to lay that down and begin building something new from the inside out? If you can be open to considering what is that you're trying to control, or what has control over you, and try to incorporate some of these practices of self-reflection, self-study, self-recovery. I think it may be an opening to something more for you. I know it was for me. So let's close with a breath and a blessing.

Speaker 1:

So, together, let's take a long blessing. So, together, let's take a long, slow, deep breath in and exhale. Let it go. And I want you to say in repeating after me I am safe to rest, I am safe to rebuild, I am safe to belong to myself. So thank you for joining with me today as we talked about the architecture of safety, rebuilding after chaos. Until next time, it's your friend and host, anna McBride, and this is she Asked, where healing meets practical hope. So until soon, be well.