Have you ever wondered just how much our behavior screams the words we're too reluctant to say? Our latest Mindful Love episode takes you on a journey through the unspoken dialogue of actions, those involuntary twitches, and tender touches that tell a tale of their own. We reflect on improvs and my two-decade career as a body worker to decode how physical cues often spill the secrets of our innermost feelings. When it comes to love languages, we unpack the challenges of catering to a partner's unique emotional dialect, even when it's not our native tongue, revealing the multifaceted nature of connection and understanding.
Then, we navigate the choppy waters of toxic relationships, shining a light on the often-missed signs of manipulation and gaslighting. Drawing from raw and personal narratives, we discuss how our bodies alert us to the 'yuck' in misaligned partnerships and the power of parts integration work in charting a course toward deserving healthy love. As we share these stories, you're invited to reflect on how past behaviors—ours and those of others—shape our journey to a future that echoes our sincerest definitions of love. Join us for this candid conversation, and let's explore what it truly means to communicate with intention and live in love that's both mindful and fulfilling.
About Tabitha Tabitha MacDonald is an intuitive transformation coach dedicated to helping people overcome their pain as fast as possible so that they can have the love, freedom and purpose they truly desire.
Have you ever wondered just how much our behavior screams the words we're too reluctant to say? Our latest Mindful Love episode takes you on a journey through the unspoken dialogue of actions, those involuntary twitches, and tender touches that tell a tale of their own. We reflect on improvs and my two-decade career as a body worker to decode how physical cues often spill the secrets of our innermost feelings. When it comes to love languages, we unpack the challenges of catering to a partner's unique emotional dialect, even when it's not our native tongue, revealing the multifaceted nature of connection and understanding.
Then, we navigate the choppy waters of toxic relationships, shining a light on the often-missed signs of manipulation and gaslighting. Drawing from raw and personal narratives, we discuss how our bodies alert us to the 'yuck' in misaligned partnerships and the power of parts integration work in charting a course toward deserving healthy love. As we share these stories, you're invited to reflect on how past behaviors—ours and those of others—shape our journey to a future that echoes our sincerest definitions of love. Join us for this candid conversation, and let's explore what it truly means to communicate with intention and live in love that's both mindful and fulfilling.
About Tabitha Tabitha MacDonald is an intuitive transformation coach dedicated to helping people overcome their pain as fast as possible so that they can have the love, freedom and purpose they truly desire.
Today I really want to talk about behavior as the highest form of communication. I started taking an improv class in January and last week we did all of our improv through our behavior and our actions. I realized that since I've been a body worker for the last 20 years, I usually watch people's physical behavior to assess how they're really feeling, because they might come in and say I have pain in my low back, but I noticed that they're limping on their right foot. I'm always watching people's physical behavior to assess what's really going on for them. I think that's a tool that I've always used and definitely strengthened in my line of work. Sometimes it's exhausting because I can't ever turn it off.
Speaker 1:
In improv class we needed to do behavior communication. It was really fascinating to go through the experience through the lens of improv and notice the myriad of ways that we communicate with our body outside of the words coming out of our mouth. That could be slying, eye rolling. All you moms out there, dads out there of a teenager will know what that looks like arms crossed or open. The way that your face looks Is it welcoming and inviting, or are you saying why don't you ever talk to me? Then you say oh, I did ask if you wanted to talk but your face was closed and scrunched and unfriendly and not warm. Or if somebody says, wow, I really love you and I want to spend all this time with you, but then they ghost you or they don't return your phone calls. They ignore your text messages.
Speaker 1:
When I'm thinking about behavior being the highest form of communication, I think it's really important that we look at the behavior of the people in our lives, especially when we're looking at relationships and dating. If you're dating somebody and they say over and over again that they love you and that you're so special to them and that they want to be with you, but then they ignore you Like I said earlier, they ignore you or they disrespect you to their friends or they try to control and manipulate you you need to look at their behavior, not their words. That's going to tell you everything you need to know about what they're really saying to you. I've done this so many times in relationships where somebody actually showed me who they were, but I wanted to believe that they were the vision I had in my head instead of really looking at who they were showing me themselves to be. An example would be I dated somebody for a couple months, very clear with me, not interested in commitment. Their behavior completely supported that and don't want anything long term. I thought that I felt the same way, but my behavior was not. My behavior was much more in alignment with someone who was in a relationship and falling for someone.
Speaker 1:
It's interesting because when that relationship ended is Exactly as it you know now, looking back was destined to end. I felt very heartbroken and angry and bitter and hurt. The truth is, the person's behavior told me all along exactly what their truth was. My behavior ignored it, right Like. I chose not to see all of the red flags and I'm not saying that like in a way that's shaming towards me. I'm saying that as wow, when I look back and I'm really an integrity with myself and that means being honest about my role in that relationship.
Speaker 1:
Why did I choose to ignore all of the red flags? Why did I choose to ignore the behavior which is clearly the highest form of communication? Why did I choose to ignore even the truth coming out of their mouth, like? Why did I choose to ignore that? That's because my behavior towards myself at the time was not very kind when it came to relationships. I was so desperate to be loved that I overlooked all of the red flags. I chose not to because I felt like I was never, ever going to be loved and I thought, well, I'll just take whatever scraps I can get and settle, because that's what I had trained myself to do through most of my life was to just take scraps and settle. That was mostly in romantic relationships. So as I went through the healing journey, I started realizing that what I really had was this intense fear of rejection and I basically picked someone I knew would reject me, and so I could continue to play out my dysfunctional pattern of needing to be rejected. This is one of the things that we do in coaching, as we look at your life like a couple of failures that you have, and we look at the common thread throughout them to help you figure out where your failure pattern is, or your dysfunctional pattern is, and that helps give you insight into your behavior that led to the results in your life. So we need to examine not only other people's behavior as the highest form of communication, but our own behavior. I often say I want a strong, lean, healthy body, but I do the exact opposite of creating it. I don't exercise consistently, my food choices tend to be more sugar and fat laden. Nothing that's an alignment with health and vitality. So, even though I say it out loud and I choose it all of the time, my behavior is not in alignment.
Speaker 1:
When we're looking at heartbreak, I really want you to think about the person you're ruminating over. Or if you're in a relationship and something's not working and the words are not aligning with how you're feeling, look at the behavior, not only your partner's behavior, but your behavior. Are you really open, loving, being honest and having quality communication and looking at what the other person needs? Or are you thinking only about how your own needs are not being met? And with your partner, especially if you think that they're abusive, emotionally abusive or unavailable? Look at their behavior. What does it tell you? And if you really get to know them and their love language and how they show love or how they withhold love, look at how they're behaving.
Speaker 1:
So my love language is quality time. It's number one. If I'm with someone whose love language is gifts, it never occurs to me to buy them a present because I'm thinking more about my love language of quality time and prioritizing that over their love language, which is gifts. That's a challenge for me because I think everybody's love language is quality time, and I'm pretty sure most of us think that way because we're thinking about it in terms of how we see the world and a lot of us make assumptions that other people see the world through the same lens that we do. And this is really where the enneagram shines. And if you do my course, I include a lot of education around the enneagram and how to understand how you see the world and how other people see the world. But when we use the enneagram with behavior, we understand common behavioral traits of each type.
Speaker 1:
So when a type 9 starts acting very passively, aggressively, then you know that they're unhappy, even though the words out of their mouth might say, oh no, I'm fine, everything's amazing. But if their behavior says otherwise, then you can look at their behavior to go something's not right. I'm going to need to start asking better questions. Type 7's when they're the most dysfunctional, they look the happiest. Their behavior becomes very kind of wild and spontaneous. And what is it the? Very indulgent and avoiding feeling any kind of pain. They look happier and more free than ever. And so now when I'm like really very spontaneous or I'm running, then I'm like, oh, something's going on, I'm ignoring that. That needs to be addressed.
Speaker 1:
Type 2's might become overly concerned with helping somebody else, so their behavior might be demonstrated in a way where they're becoming overly helpful, but they feel more depleted than ever. Type 1's tend to have an uprise in their perfectionism, so they'll start over critiquing everything, and so their behavior will look very stressed, very worried, almost chaotic. In trying to make things perfect enough. Aids are definitely action takers, so when they're feeling threatened or some of their love is threatened, they'll move into action and they start yelling or creating arguments. They're very action oriented, so their behavior will always let you know how they're feeling.
Speaker 1:
Type 6's might start ruminating over the safety in the world and they might start looking at more conspiracy theory websites. So you'll just notice their behavior trying to create more safety for themselves when they're in a time of stress. And a type 5 is going to start consuming knowledge at a rapid pace, so they'll very much go into hermit mode and just start researching, and that's because they think if they can get enough knowledge that they'll be safer. Type 4's are going to start becoming more and more melancholy and allowing themselves to just fully indulge in the state of melancholy and get lost in the experience of their own emotions, neglecting the emotions of everyone around them. And type 3's tend to start just performing, like if I achieve enough, if I perform enough, if I hit enough goals, I'll feel better.
Speaker 1:
So this is where you can use the Enneagram to help you explore your behavior, other people's behavior and understand what the behavior is telling you. Why is this really really important when you're dating? Because if you're dating somebody who says I would really love to spend time with you or just like somebody I really value, but they don't ever think about you, they don't try to get to know you, they're blocking you, they say they're one place and they're really someplace else, I want you to start looking at their behavior, not their words. I noticed this a lot with myself and online dating. When I did online dating, where I would read the messages that the person would send and I would get all excited because I would read it with the emotion I have, which is integrity and openness and authenticity and vulnerability, and so I would read it with my emotional state, and then the person's behavior would not match what was coming through on any of the messages and I would be very confused and then, looking back, I would change the emotion that I was reading the text message in and go oh, my emotional state matters, because when I'm reading it I put my own emotion into it, and so being able to watch someone's behavior and follow it and understand it and look at it with curiosity is going to help you understand the best form of communication. Because if they're saying I want to have a healthy, loving relationship with you, and then you have a conversation around values and boundaries, and then they bust through and break your boundaries, or they don't honor your values or they don't align with them, their behavior doesn't align with your values then that's all the information you need to move on. And when I say move on, I mean move on.
Speaker 1:
Sometimes it's hard to end a relationship because we're afraid of the pain. Trust me, I know I'm a seven. Everything about me is to avoid pain. Well, it used to be, and so I want to encourage you to really take an honest look at the relationship and go is the behavior in this relationship my own included in alignment with the values and the vision that I have for my relationship, or is the behavior of the relationship toxic? Is it controlling, is it mean, is it ignoring, is it manipulative, or is it betrayal and lies? And if you're having a hard time, connect in with your feelings my daughter calls it the yuck Like I love it. She goes, ooh, that gives me the yuck. I'm like, ooh, I love that term. What does that mean? And it's just this kind of gross feeling inside of your body. And that's your body letting you know something's not right, because sometimes our wounded parts might think that that definition is what love is. And so when somebody is manipulating you or lying to you or gaslighting you, your parts might go oh yeah, that's what love is. But you can tell in your body, because your body might respond with the yuck like disgust, despair, chaos.
Speaker 1:
If you're ruminating all the time, always wondering what you're doing wrong, why there's you know what's wrong with you, then that's when you really have to look at the other person's behavior and go what am I not seeing that I need to see, which we need to be open to, what do I need to pay attention to? And then really sit with it and wait and just notice, because what we tend to do is we lock in on the behaviors that prove our story true. So we want to prove that somebody is really our perfect match, or our soulmate or twin flame, whatever you want to call it. You're going to only focus on a few of the behaviors that support your story, but when you start looking at all of the behavior, you'll get a much more well rounded vision of what that relationship and that person really is.
Speaker 1:
It's really important that you do this, because my mind rewrites people's bad behavior on the fly. It's a trauma response from being raised by someone who was manipulative and who lied, and I grew up in a home with addiction, and so I had to rewrite really horrible behavior really quickly in order to make myself feel safe, because these are the adults that take care of you, and so you have to justify the love that you're seeking, and then you turn it around and say, okay, well, that behavior must mean that's love, because I need to be loved. And so when we're adults, then the behavior that we rewrote as love when we were little like maybe shaming or blaming becomes our definition of love, and so when someone starts shaming you, your little parts go. Hey, I remember this. This is love. That's what we really want to work with Mindful love and in Heartbreak 9-1-1, we do a lot of parts, integration work, doing so much right as well when we take a look at those parts and go, okay, let's integrate you into the main personality and create a new choice and new definitions around love so that you're all in alignment with a healthy, loving relationship.
Speaker 1:
And you can do this if you're in a relationship. You can do this if you're single. If you're single and you're looking for a relationship and you feel like you haven't had any luck, I highly recommend starting to do your inner work so that you can align with the person that you want to be with, and part of that looks like becoming the one, like becoming the version of you that feels worthy of that kind of relationship. That's when we really get to do our inner work and go, ooh, you know what the last relationship I had didn't end well. I really want to explore it so I can learn from it.
Speaker 1:
And when we're in the victim mindset of this happened to me instead of for me. All we can see are the ways that this person hurt us and that that just perpetuates the self-abuse. And what we really want to do is take a look at it and grow from it and say, okay, what was my behavior that contributed to the failure of this relationship and what was their behavior that I missed? What was the behavior that I focused on and what was the behavior that I hid from myself, the red flags, the things they should have noticed and really take some time with that and pay attention to what comes up for you, because this is the secret sauce, that's where the golden egg is. That's what's going to help you finally connect with and meet the person that you really want to be with, and it's also going to improve the quality of your existing relationships if you're already in a partnership.
Speaker 1:
So I want to just close up by saying and reminding you that communication has many, many, many different ways that we can connect with it, but behavior is the highest form of communication and it's really important that we witness and are honest about our behavior and other people's behavior. I just want to thank you for taking the time to listen today to the Mindful Love podcast. If you're interested in taking this work a step further, please consider joining me and go to mindfullovelove for more information. I hope you have an amazing day today. Thank you so much for your time.