From Silence to Strength: Healing After Trauma | with Kristin Duncombe

Michael Unbroken: We live in a time where I think for the first time maybe ever, we're starting to really bring attention to the impact of our past.

The way that sometimes we utilize those experiences and coping mechanisms for survival, sometimes the way that we hide and run or attach. And far too often, even in doing this work, we can still succumb to it. And one of the things that I've discovered over the years is that there are just levels to this game.

There is depth to healing, and for some of us, we've had these unbelievably traumatic experiences that are almost unspeakable. But when we speak about them, we can heal them because you can only heal what you reveal. And I'm so excited for today's guest. Kristin Ducombe because the conversation that we are about to have is not only gonna be a hard conversation, 'cause I think it's important, but an enlightening conversation about the possibility to actually transform your life after some of the most horrific abuse that one could imagine.

So with that said, my friend, thank you for being here and welcome to the show.

Kristin Ducombe: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here

Michael Unbroken: When I think about our past, I think about the impact of our present. And I would love for you to start with your story. Tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got here.

Kristin Ducombe: Well that's always such an interesting question because I guess we could assume that every journey has various starting points. But I think what I'll start with then is telling you about my journey in and then out of trauma. So when I was a child, I grew up in West Africa. My dad was in the foreign service, and the reason I'm mentioning that is because my trauma story actually has two layers to it.

While I was a kid between the ages of 10 and 12, I was sexually abused on a regular basis by one of my father's colleagues, who was also a US diplomat at the American Embassy in the Ivory Coast. Um, that's obviously traumatic for any child. That creates a sort of developmental wounding that we refer to as developmental trauma or complex trauma. But my trauma was compounded by the fact that when the abuse was revealed, and I wasn't the only victim at that time, there were seven of us young girls who were victims to chronic abuse at the hands of this middle aged man. What happened is that the abuse was acknowledged by the State Department who whisked this guy back to Washington, DC and then covered up the crime and told all of our parents who were there advocating for us and trying to get this guy prosecuted.

We were all told to just shut up and move on. In more polite terms at first, but then after our parents insisted and insisted, and you know, this was in the early eighties, so it was before the internet. It was before affordable long distance calling. It was all happening by cable, telegram, cables, going back and forth from the State Department to the embassy where we all lived in West Africa.

What was said was, this pedophile has civil liberties that we need to protect. He has diplomatic immunity, and your role as diplomatic families is to keep up a positive impression as Americans living abroad. So, case closed, we're done talking about this. And I'm mentioning that because for me, when people ask me like, what's the main, like epicenter of my trauma, less than the actual sexual abuse itself, which also created a whole series of self image problems for me as a, as a preteen, it's the feeling that I was left with, of being extremely unimportant.

I moved into adolescence with that on my back. The state department, the US government has said, shut up. What happened to you? Doesn't matter. And I'm not blaming my parents because I think my parents were also victims. I feel empathy for them. But the fact that my parents ultimately accepted that along with all the other parents, just compounded this feeling of what happens to me doesn't matter.

And that became my identity. And I moved into adolescence and then adulthood with that deeply ingrained belief system about myself. So that, that is what you asked about, you know, the starting point of my journey. And I would say the starting point of my journey is a deep rooted belief that I'm not important.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. That's crippling, right? Yeah. And the reason why I wanted to start there, 'cause I have a very similar experience growing up in the Mormon church. Yes. And this is in the nineties and, you know, not a big gap of time there. And in a timeline when the same thing kind of happened. Hey, we don't talk about this. This didn't happen. We're not going to interrupt the services of the church and all the things that we get and all the protocols and the status quos and I had that, but I also just had a tremendous amount of anger, right? And that started to come out in violence in self harm in drugs at a super young age, because I didn't feel like I mattered or was worthy of anything. You know, and then that, that played a huge role in relationships, friendships, career, business, self-care, all of these things. Yeah. You know, when you're that young, you don't really have any understanding of what it means and the implications.

When I think about it, it's such a hard journey because so many people have experienced it. Today, obviously we live in a very different time. Like it's something I don't know how to phrase it better than this, but it's something people just are not getting away with in the way that they used to.

Kristin Ducombe: Indeed. You're absolutely right.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. But I know that the average person listening to the show is 30 plus probably married, has a family or figuring out how to live their life and they are burdened by this. Mm-hmm. And so we're gonna explore that a little bit deeper here, here later. But I wanna stay in this space for a little bit.

When you're that young, talk me through the experience that you are having, right? And, and what I mean by that is in these moments that you're like, Hey, I'm trying to confide in you. I need help. And then you're having all of this, this outer influence comes into play.What was the thing that you anchored on where you're like, okay, I'm not worthy. I see this thing as me not not being important. Because I think often we can find the anchor point that gives us a place to move forward. Yeah. And I don't know if people have the best idea of how to get there.

Kristin Ducombe: And it's a great question and it's so complicated. So I'm gonna try to answer as best I can, but there's multiple parts to it.

So the first thing is that when the abuse started, you know, I was 10 years old and I just, to me, it's important to clarify this because when I see pictures now of myself as a 10-year-old kid, I was such a kid. There was nothing, you know, people develop physically at different rates. I was a 10-year-old that was not in puberty.

I was a veritable kid, and a mini trauma scale. I'm from a family of three girls. I'm the middle child and I spent my early childhood being, um, mistaken for being my sister's brother because my mom kept my hair really short 'cause I guess I always had lice and, you know, I played sports and it was easier for me to have short hair.

So I spent my early childhood being told, oh, are you Leslie's little brother? Are you step's Big brother? And I would feel so ashamed that I was, that people thought that I was a boy, that I often would just say yes. So the point is there I was this girl who looked like a boy. And then this man, this middle aged man started, and I'll just say it in graphic terms. I mean, he literally started putting his hand in my bathing suit, putting his hand down my pants. He had frequent access to me because the other detail is he was my father's colleague at the US Embassy, but his daughter was my best friend. We went to the same international school, so I was frequently with this family.

So he had frequent access to me, and he, and this is a very complicated part of the story, he made me feel good about myself. He teased me, he joked, he made me feel important. He made me feel like I wasn't just this dorky boy. He made me feel like I was one of his daughters. And that I mattered. So I actually loved him in a paternal way.

I'm not talking about some sort of like, I didn't have a crush. It was nothing like that. I wanted his approval and I got his approval. So when he started molesting me, I didn't even have language for it. I didn't understand what he was doing. I understood that it was embarrassing to have someone touch that part of my body.

I understood that that was a part of my body that, you know, save for peeing and pooing. I had never even talked about that part of my body. That was, it was just, you know, when you're a kid, you don't. Or at least in those days and age before, you know, people there was online porn and all of that. Because I think now kids get exposed to the concept of sex much younger.

But for me, the late seventies, early eighties, I was completely disconnected from anything about my genitals. So when he started touching me there, I was confused and because I wanted his approval, I just kind of became compliant. I would sort of zone out and let him do what he wanted to do so that I could remain in good standing with him to get all the benefits of being in good standing included on the, their family outings, the invitations he was, you know, the quintessential pedophile buying presents for me.

Ice creams, you know, get reaping the benefits of the attention of this benevolent person. And the way that as I got older, you know, like I said, it started when I was 10, but then I became 11 and then I became 12 and other things were happening around me. I was starting to develop physically, me and my friends were starting to, you know, go to Girl boy parties and you know, having first crushes and stuff like that.

And what got conflated for me is the abuse that this man was inflicting upon me in this very sort of quiet regular way I started. Marrying it with the attention I was getting from boys. So I started to believe that when boys told me I was pretty, or you know, I was no longer looked at as a boy. I had grown my hair out.

I had started to wear makeup, I'd started doing girly things, and I started to believe that my worth came in being physically appealing to boys and to men. And I had the ultimate proof of that. And that was, that this man, this gross, middle aged man was constantly molesting me. I mean, it's a very immature analysis, but I was immature.

I mean, I was a kid. I was 11 years old, I was 12 years old. And so I started to believe that what mattered about me was my physical appeal. And then when the abuse was revealed, and as I said, the State Department covered it up and I was told that, you know, his civil liberties are more important than yours.

I just internalized that, that, okay, what matters about me is. Making a good impression on men. And what matters about me is being pleasing to men. If men are attracted to me, I'm doing well. If they're not attracted to me, I'm not doing well. And the reason I mention that, and it's something about your podcast that, and things that you've spoken about in your podcast that have, that really resonated with me when I started listening to it, you talked about, you've, you've spoken a lot about being, at one point in your life, extremely overweight, and how you used food to deal with, with your pain.

I was doing the same thing, but I was so terrified of not being physically appealing to men. I developed bulimia so I would overeat and overeat and overeat to quell all the sadness and rage I felt. And then I would make myself throw up because of the idea of putting on weight. It was terrifying. You know, before we started talking today, you said take up space.

And that's still something for me that like every day I have to remind myself. Yeah, you're allowed to take up space, literally, or figuratively. You're allowed to have a voice and to be present on the screen.

Michael Unbroken: I think it's important and I think that walking that path and that level of depth is, is something that unfortunately to say is familiar for a lot of people where they hear this story and they go, yeah, I resonate with that.  Because my thought on the appeal was, if I can get these people to like me no matter what right, playing a chameleon, then I have value and I have worth. And a lot of that when I was young was, all the girls, I could have all the, um, accompaniments of that, lots of money, lots of clothes and cars and all these things.

And then that's internal struggle, this lack of identity, it wasn't even codependency because I felt almost sociopathic about relationships. and what I mean by that is like, I just didn't really care that much almost to the point where I was like, am I even human? and the thing that brought me the most joy was like the sexual gratification of being like, Hey, I slept with another person.

I'm important, right? And that's one of those things where. And then it turned into food, and then it turned into drugs, and then it turned into all these things. Yeah. And all of it was seeking solace, right? Yeah. All of it was seeking affirmation, because growing up in my home, you know, I remember once my stepdad was vicious about my grandmother hugging me too long.

And he was like, oh, look how weak he is. He needs to be hugged and this and that. And those things get ingrained in you. And so when I'm like, well, I can get all these women to hug me, so I must be important. Yeah. Right. And so all we're doing in these experiences is we're, we're tracking with and in accordance to what has happened to us. Because if you think about it, everything that we go through in our life is a learned experience. The timeline is this happened, plus this happened, plus this happened. So that's gotta be the outcome. Yeah. And what I find to be especially fascinating is that. I, I could pinpoint someone's journey based on the most fucked up thing that happened to them as a kid, almost always. And I mean, of course there's outliers and there's, there's people who, that doesn't hold true. It's very rare. I find that to be a minority. Most of the time. We see people walk down this path of self-destruction. And so I'm curious, so as you're aging and you're coming through this, you're having.

Somewhat awareness of, Hey, this is how people perceive me. Were there self-destructive patterns that started to be introduced at a young age? And the reason I'm asking this question is 'cause one of the things I coach people on probably more frequently than anything, is, A: they're self-destructive patterns, and B: they're limiting beliefs that they have been operating within for 30 years.

And so I'm wondering if you made notice of those, if you did, I'd love to explore that if you didn't. When you did start to notice what was kind of transpiring, what were the ways that the trauma experience was showing up in your life as you got into your teens and twenties?

Kristin Ducombe: Oh my God. Well, it's a very good question. And honestly, we could talk for hours because there's so many things, but I'm just gonna give you the quick bullet list and then I wanna go back to something that you said that will really illustrate what we're talking about here. So, I developed an eating disorder. I started smoking cigarettes at, and I don't mean like having one here and there to be cool. By the time I was 16 years old, I was smoking two packs a day. And of course people did think it was cool to be there puffing away, but I mean, talk about self-destruction. I was a heavy smoker for 10 years. I quit when I was 25. binge drinking didn't really get into drugs, although for a while, pot was a problem.

But the main things for me were, and I'm gonna say this quote, unquote boy craziness, I wanna go back to that in a moment. Smoking, bulimia, binge eating, and binge drinking. And those were regular, all consuming. It was a lifestyle I was in that I was deeply unhealthy. And so speaking about the boy's craziness and what I wanna go back to, you said a moment ago that like for yourself, the way your trauma was manifesting, I think you used the word sociopathic.

You said you were almost sociopathic about the way you were navigating relationships. I would say that I was the inverse of that. I had this magical skill of finding, quote unquote sociopathic men to use and abuse me. And then I would suffer. I would find every guy who was not gonna be nice to me, who would use me physically and then dump me and not call me, and all that stuff.

That can be so painful. And then I would grovel for them and I would do everything in my power to try to get them back. And this was the main, conundrum that if you ask like, how did you know there was so something wrong with you, quote unquote, it's around that because I could not figure out, I could not understand for many, many, many years why, when I knew how bad someone made me feel when I knew that they weren't being nice to me.

Because it wasn't like, oh, I thought that was nice behavior and I just didn't understand. I know this person makes me feel terrible about myself. Why am I so attached to him? It's like I could not figure out why I wanted to keep. People that were awful to me in my life. Now at the first level, it was because I didn't believe I could be with someone that would be nice to me.

I remember I used to like to ride the bus or I'd know people that had good relationships and I'd like to study them and think, how do they do that? Because I can only have relationships with people that are not kind to me. And I mean, I lived like that for many, many years. I married someone who has. I'm always careful when I talk about my marriage, which I'm no longer married to that person, but he is the father of my children.

And we do have a good relationship now. We are friends. Don't ever wanna talk about him as though, you know, he's just like some kind of creep. He's not. But there were some problems in our relationship that had I been a healthier person at the time, we would never have gotten married. And I'll just tell you what that thing is because I think it sort of encapsulates how off my own self-image and my own self-esteem were at that time.

So I'm from the United States. You can probably tell from my accent and I am not, you know, here to go U-S-A, U-S-A. I also have many quarrels with the way things are run in the United States. However, I am from the United States, I can't help that. You know, we're from where we're from. No, no place is all bad.

And the reason I'm saying all of this is because when I was 26 years old and had just started graduate school, because I was having some inklings that maybe what I wanted to do with my life was become a therapist and help other trauma victims, even though my own trauma was completely unresolved, I met a man from Argentina who was rabidly anti-American.

He hated the United States. He hated American culture. He had nothing good to say about Americans. For him, the USA is the devil but he was madly in love with me and he chased me and chased me and chased me. And you see, there's a problem there. And that's why I said like, I'm not U-S-A, U-S-A, but the thing is, how did that happen that I got involved with someone who spent a considerable amount of time tearing down my culture and where I'm from?

And more so than that, telling me that if you want to be with me, we are le 'cause we did meet in the United States, so there was some hypocrisy there as well. If you wanna be with me, we are leaving the United States and never coming back. And I agreed to it because I thought, well, I mean, I can't lose him even though this, these conditions are making me extremely unhappy, even though it makes me feel terrible about myself.

I have to go along with what he says. And so off we went. And you know, I think that's one of my capacities that maybe also comes from my background. As someone who's dealt with a lot of trauma, I always land on my feet. I'm resilient. I can make things happen and work, and I'm proud of that. So I made it work with my ex-husband, we moved off to Kenya, then Uganda, then we made a life in Europe together. had two kids. My kids are the joy of my life. And like I said, I'm no longer with my husband and we, we have a relationship that I'm proud of. I think we've, we separated well, but as someone that's now in her mid fifties who has done the work now in a very deep way of recovering from that thing that I got into of always trying to accommodate the person who was not being kind to me.

I just know now like, wow, that was crazy. That young 26-year-old me agreed to marry someone that forced me to erase part of myself, a big part of myself, my culture, you know, culture's huge to be with him meant I had to deny that part of myself. And then once we were married and living abroad, it was, you know, coming back to the states with my kids on my own because he didn't wanna participate in anything American.

Michael Unbroken: It's funny as you say that, 'cause that, you know, the way that we experience love is the way that we chase it in relationships in adulthood. And so, even though we might not quote unquote love someone romantically, kind of what you, you mentioned earlier, love it as a, a, a person, as a father or a mother figure, we end up going and chasing that kind of relationship when we are still in the space of being unhealed.

And it made me think of my relationship with my ex when I was in my early twenties, this was the most. Emotionally, psychologically and verbally violent relationships anyone could ever have. I mean, and there's a two way swing, by the way, so I'm not like pointing fingers. And what I'll say is like while we were never physically abusive to each other, she did smack me once 'cause I said something that honestly deserved being smacked. Like I would've smacked me too. I get it right. But you look, you look at that and you go, okay, wait a second. What is happening here? How is this dynamic taking shape again? Why am I in this situation? And then it was followed by another one and another one.

Kristin Ducombe: Yeah.

Michael Unbroken: And then just emotional breakdown on top of emotional breakdown. And then you start to realize like, wait a second, this is a me problem. And I think that's one of the things that people have a hard time dealing with because the difficulty in this process and in this journey is that there is a level of responsibility that you have to take for your actions, even though the foundation and the programming.

It wasn't your choice. I think that that's one of the hardest things that we have to reconcile because when you start to take personal responsibility in your life, that means you have to become self-aware. And if you become self-aware, then that means that you're starting to make a choice about the way that you're engaging with other people.

And if you're making a choice, then that means it's on your shoulders. And that's a lot of weight for people to carry because there's so much shame and guilt and judgment and blame and those things that take place and yet we're in this pursuit. Right. So you, I look at your background and your history, educated couples, therapists, amazing therapists, help trauma through, you've done all these things.

And yet it was like, that was still my path. My path was still being engaged in this relationship that was, and I just use words here 'cause it is what comes up, that belittling and untrue and unkind and all these things about a part of me that's real. 'cause I hear that. And I, for me, it'd be easy to go and interject the color of my skin being a problem with the person I'm with.

And then going through that, and that's a reality for some people, by the way. Yeah. And, and it's like, well, people are so afraid to leave. They're so afraid of the unknown. Yeah. And. And I think the most powerful thing that you can do is become an advocate for yourself. Even though like there's a painful transition, you can be the most educated person in the world, and your life can suck until you make a decision, and again, here it is, I get we're walking this path where it's a direct intersection of all the experience, of the path of the past, directly impacting your present. And then on the backside of that, that directly impacts your future. And the thing that I've been sitting on a lot recently is that every decision we make today is a direct line to the future, everything.

Kristin Ducombe: Yeah.

Michael Unbroken: The things you eat, the things you drink, what you consume, who you have sex with, who you date, who you marry, who you have kids with. The business you have, the career, you have the, the, whether you work out or all of the things are directly impacted, but now you're in this place where it's choice based.

When you start to touch self-awareness, in the beginning, self-awareness feels impossible. you don't know how to be self-aware, because chances are, and this is the vast majority of people who have high ACE scores, something we talk about on the show a lot. Yeah. This is the probability that most people have a lot of trauma in their background.

Kristin Ducombe: Yeah.

Michael Unbroken: You can't be self-aware because self-awareness in childhood is something that's taken away from you. Mm-hmm. You never actually get the space to become you because in the attempt to become yourself in childhood, when you're in a traumatic environment, the thing that actually takes place is you learn how to not become you as survival, and now you're space.

Kristin Ducombe: You identify with the abuser because it's the only way to, to stay safe.

Michael Unbroken: Right. Okay. So we're in agreement with this. So people are listening, they're like, okay, this lady has a crazy story. All this marries, this guy becomes a therapist, blah, blah, blah. Somewhere in here there's a breaking point and I want to know what that is because I think that everyone has to have one. You can call rock bottom, if you will, but you have to have that moment where you're like, okay, wait a second. What is actually taking place here? And so I'd love to explore that with you. Yeah. 'cause I think that that can open the gate for people to understand that like is not just you.

Kristin Ducombe: Absolutely. And so let's go back then to the family that I created. So I married this guy, like I said, nothing is all bad. I just had to erase part of myself in order for us to have our life together. We went on to have two children. Our first child was a girl and our second child was a boy.

Six years difference in between the two of them. And the reason I'm mentioning this is that I'm super close to both of my kids. Always have been. So we were, the kids were growing up in an international bi-cultural environment. The kids were raised in France, Argentinian father, American mother. And I'm mentioning that because in that type of environment.

Identity becomes compartmentalized. So the kids had an American mother, which means with their mom, unlike in the rest of the parts of their life, they spoke in English, we read English books, we watched English movies. Their American culture was developing in them through me. Like I said, I would take them to the United States once a year to see their grandparents and their aunts and uncles.

We would go alone because my husband didn't wanna have anything to do with it. You know what? We'd all troop off to Argentina together 'cause I didn't reject his culture. So the reason I'm telling you this, because you asked about the breaking point is as my children got older. And became more and more identified with their mom.

They also had a relationship with their dad, but it was different. He traveled a lot with his work. He was not the primary caregiver. It was really, you know, the kids and mom and then dad would kind of float in and out as the kids got older and they started wanting more contact with their maternal culture.

And I mean that literally and figuratively, you know, we were living in, in France, we were living in Switzerland at various moments, but they were bringing things into the house. Music, movies, literature, fashion, YouTube, friends. That were based in American culture. And then there was also their desire to spend more time in the states.

And the breaking point came when with the kids. We started talking about how fun it would be to do the Great American road trip because the America that they knew was Washington DC where my family lives. Like we would fly to the States once a year, usually around Halloween time, spend two weeks with my family in Washington DC and that was what they knew of America in my daughter's French social studies class.

They were talking about America, the American dream. And so imagine this international kid that is part American and starts wanting to see something of the USA, you know, the, the iconic images of, and then I started trying to plan that trip. I tried to plan it as a family trip, and I begged my husband, please come with us. Please participate. This will be so fun. It's so meaningful to the kids, and he just would have nothing to do with it. He refused to come on a family vacation to the United States, and by then we had been together 20 years. I had been erasing that part of myself for 20 years, and for whatever reason, I just snapped and I, and for the first time ever, it was not premeditated.

Like if you had asked me the day before, do you think you'll ever leave your husband? The answer would've been, no. I would never have dared rock the boat that way, but for whatever reason, as he stood there lecturing at me about how horrible the USA was, and he would never go there ever again, the words just slipped out of my mouth.

I said, I'm sorry, I can't live like this any longer. I wanna separate. And he said to me at that time, what, you've known how I am for 20 years, you've known how I am. What's the problem now? I haven't changed. And I said, you're right. But I have, and it was a moment of clarity. It was like, I have changed. I can't live like this any longer.

And I took this huge flying leap out of the relationship. And after that, I took the kids on the Great American Road trip, and it was a wonderful transformative summer inside. I was terrified. I was terrified, like the end of this story isn't, then I left him and then we all lived happily ever after. I was terrified that I had broken that contract that I had, that I had injected into the relationship, which was, I will never stand up to you. And that's why I, I'm careful to say now, like we had our quarrels and I think this was a real problem, but I don't hate him or think he's a jerk and, well, I guess maybe I do, sometimes I think he's a jerk.

But the thing is like, I don't think he should have married someone and pursued someone that he just hates their culture. But I wish that I had had the emotional maturity when I was young. To say, I'm sorry. You know, this arrangement you're proposing is never gonna work for me. I do not accept, I don't accept to be involved with someone who's constantly criticizing my culture and where I'm from.

But I didn't do that. I allowed myself to be a face and we built a life together on that premise. And so, I mean, I feel compassion for him also. I think it was a major shock to his system that I suddenly changed and pulled the rug out from under his feet and said, I refuse to live like this any longer.

And then it took another eight years after telling him I wanted to end the marriage for me to really get solid about not repeating that pattern because the minute I started dating, you know, post-marriage, I started making the same mistakes. Not at the same level, like I wasn't meeting anti-American men, things like that. But I was meeting men who were not the right match for me, and then I would turn myself into a pretzel to accommodate them until I finally stopped doing that.

Michael Unbroken: You know, what's so fascinating about it as the timeline's different for everyone. Yeah. And, and I think that that's such an important thing to sit in, even though that can feel like it sucks, right?

Because you're like, man, 20 years, it's a long time. And I'm like, yeah. Yes. But also it's not. Oh, yeah. And I think one of the things that we have to take into consideration is like. Who there is that internal wound that guides us. Like it really just truly does. And it's, and it's so hard 'cause you kind of know it's there and you're like, all right, well I'll turn this part of myself off.

If I can get the thing that I need, I will turn this part of myself off and tell that part of me as like, okay, you have to be you. And that's, that's part of the discovery and that's part of healing. And when you, when you come to that moment. and this has been my case time and time again, it's really about trying to get as deeply into alignment as you can think that alignment is, is such an important factor in the healing journey because it's the differentiator between however you want to claim it to be, but success. And failure because when you're in alignment and you're making decisions based on your truth, and it's not that there aren't concessions, especially in relationships.

I mean, for the love of God, the things that we have to do to be with another human being. Yeah. Right. But generally speaking, on the day-to-day, it's like, okay, if you can get to this place where even though all this trauma has existed, all of these behavioral patterns and coping mechanisms exist and all of these things, and then still choose to push to alignment, like that's where the victories come.

But that only starts in this process that we talk about a lot. You as a therapist and coach me as a coach and speaker and podcaster and it's about this conversation of this healing journey. And, and that's where the change happens. But I, I think people, and perhaps even, you know, nine years, 900 episodes in whatever, however long we've been doing this, I don't even know if that I've done an effective job of explaining the journey as a whole 'cause I think about healing and it being the precursor to the life that you want, but I don't think people really understand how to galvanize around healing and what that means and what it looks like, why it's important and how they do it. Yeah. So, as somebody who's literally a professional at this, I'd like to break this down a little bit, right?

And some from your perspective as a person who's done the work, but then also from your professional perspective and what that looks like. Mm-hmm. Because I think that. Societally today we seem to be in this really fucking weird place. Where it's like healing is walking away. The first time there's a disagreement; healing is sitting in the bathtub with a glass of wine.

'cause you're mad at the world, healing is doing what you want, blah, blah, blah. Right? Mm-hmm. And, and I've, I've come to find that a lot of it is actually about doing what is required, sticking to a plan, becoming emotionally aware. like letting go of shame and guilt and all those things. And ultimately all of this I will wrap up into a bow, is be honest all the time.

Kristin Ducombe: Yeah.

Michael Unbroken: And so I'm curious again, like healing from your perspective and your experience. What is that, what does that look like? And then what does it mean for people listening? They're like, I get this, I had sexual abuse, I went down this bad road, horrible relationships, time and time again, end up dating the same person, all of these things. Like what is that journey like to actually begin to heal?

Kristin Ducombe: Yes. Okay. So I mean, it's interesting because of course it's always gonna be case by case and it's, it's not as, you know, formulaic. But I will tell you what for me was the critical starting point. And I find that I talk about this with a lot of, um, people that have complex trauma.

I found that the critical important thing that needed to happen, that I needed to learn, that has, that sets the, the stage for all other positive things that follow relationally, whether in romance, whether with friends, whether with family, but it's in any given situation to stay in my own skin as I'm interacting with someone.

And instead of getting caught up in the question of how am I doing, what do they think of me? Am I being pleasing enough to them to rather stay in my own skin and ask myself, how are they doing? How do I feel talking to this person, interacting with this person? Exchanging with this person. And if the answer to that question is, I don't feel good, I don't like the way I feel in this person's company, then clock that and stop trying to hold on to a relationship that isn't feeling good.

It doesn't have to be dramatic, like that's it. I'm never speaking to you again. It can be about having a different type of boundary. Like, hi, nice to see you. How are you? No, I'm not available to get together. Um, I'll get back to you and, and, and, and to not always give yourself away. Um, just to please the other person, which, when I hear myself saying that, I always think, God, it must sound so obvious to people that don't have problems setting boundaries, but if you are someone that ever had problems setting boundaries, it's not obvious at all.

And I think that the starting point for transformation with boundaries is to figure out how do I stay in my skin and ask myself, how does this person make me feel versus, you know, what do they think of me? Am I, am I being pleasing enough? D do, does that resonate? Do you follow what I'm saying?

Michael Unbroken: Totally. I mean, and from my perspective, growing up, boundaries literally did not exist. Yeah. There, that, that just was not a thing. And then obviously if you tack in people like us who had sexual abuse, like now they're definitely out the fucking window. Yeah. And so getting to this place is, the way that I always kind of relay it to the people I work with is that you have to stand up for yourself.

Yeah. Now, look, there's le, there's levels, right? Because there's like the, the stand up for yourself IE in terms of, Hey, I'm not gonna let anyone take advantage of me, belittle me, abuse me, whatever that may be. And then the other side of it where it's like, I dare you to just say no. Mm-hmm. Say no because it's true.

Say yes because it's true. Yeah. Like I, I've, I've defined healing for probably the last. Um, call it seven, eight years of this idea of doing what you want because you want to do it and not doing what you don't want to do because you don't want to do it. Yeah. And that's about self-identifying, snd that's about self authoring and that's about understanding and allowing yourself who you are. But that road can be so rocky, especially in the beginning. Oh. So

Kristin Ducombe: It's hard. It's not an instant lesson. It's something,

Michael Unbroken: This road is so rocky because it's unknown. It's the paths left travel, it's Robert Frost. It's, you're on this journey trying to figure out who you are. You have no precedent for who it is, especially around boundaries, alignment, healing, yes and no. Yeah. I don't know if this was true for you, but in the beginning I felt super fraudulent. Like constantly. Like all the time. Yeah. Yeah. And so I know that's a thing that exists for a lot of people. How do you navigate that element of it? Because I don't think that's talked about enough

Kristin Ducombe: Well, it's interesting because, are you talking about feeling like an imposter sort of thing? Exactly.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah.

Kristin Ducombe: Yeah. I mean, I think that any of us, you know, trauma survivors or not can have imposter syndrome from time to time. And I think, you know, from a cognitive perspective, we could say, well, that's not all bad.

We could say that you know, being worried that you come off as authentic is a way to keep a certain measure of humility in check. That said, if you're someone that is constantly feeling like, oh my God, I've just pulled the wall over everyone's eyes and I'm a fake, that can be debilitating.

The anxiety that it can create. And I think fortunately for me, that is not something that I've struggled with a lot. I don't feel like I have struggled so much with feeling fraudulent, but when I feel insecure, what I have found is that the best thing to do to navigate that is to just say it out loud and to, so for example, let's use fraudulence if you're feeling fraudulent.

I think you could say to someone, you know, this is, this conversation is hard. 'cause sometimes when I talk about these things, I worry that I'll come off as fraudulent. Like to just admit it, to name it, to diffuse it. Does that make sense? Because I often think about what happens to people, you know, whether with fraudulence or with any other vulnerability, people think that they have to hide it.

And what I work on a lot with people in therapy is, well, why hide it? Why not just say it out loud? Because once you admit it, it takes a lot of the power out of it. You know, if you say something out loud, what you're effectively saying is, I'm not ashamed of who I am. I do happen to feel this way, and I can admit it because, you know, by admitting it, it's kind of like saying, well, I know it must not be true and that's why I'm gonna say it out loud.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. 'cause I think a lot of people are okay, so here, let's walk this path. 'cause actually the, I think this would be really important where we're at in this phrase of the conversation. Not being afraid to tell the truth in childhood can make sense. 'cause you're scared of getting in trouble, right?

Kristin Ducombe: Oh yeah.

Michael Unbroken: But when you tell the truth and you're in a place where you need help, and that help is denied. IE your case, what you experienced, what I experienced, you learn to stop telling the truth because it feels like no one gives a fuck. No one's gonna help you, no one's going to protect you. Yeah. No one's going to see you.

How do you start to bridge that gap? Like when you're, you're like you've experienced. Hey, when I tell the truth, nobody wants to help me. Nobody cares. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But it's also the very thing that's gonna change your life, that's gonna set you free, that's gonna give you the ability to, to be in the seat of your soul.

How do you do that? Having that experience that has supporting evidence that your truth doesn't matter to this place of like, my truth is actually the only thing that matters.

Kristin Ducombe: You know what, I'm gonna answer that by backtracking a little bit because I just said to you that, you know, I haven't struggled so much with fraudulence, but you know what?

That's actually inaccurate what I said. I think I just have a lot of distance from it now because all those years sure. I get that. When I was a teenager and I was bulimic, there's a situation of great fraudulence. I was. Terrified that people would find out that I was making myself throw up.

That was a huge secret. You know, because sometimes, sometimes people would say, why were you in the bathroom for so long? Or, how do you manage to eat so much and stay thin? Even though bulimia is not a strategy for weight loss. I had a huge secret that I was keeping under wraps all the time, and that created a fraudulent persona.

And so the reason I'm going back to that and, and saying it now to, to answer your question is, is that the way to. To get to that place where you can be candid and honest, I think, well, it's always gonna be personal and case by case, and it's not formulaic, but I think it comes from healing. I feel that I can sit here now on a public podcast and talk about having been bulimic because as I just said, it's so far, I'm so far from that now that I feel like I've healed from the shame and the anguish and the embarrassment and so now I can talk about it, but.

Time and recovery and rec. By recovery, what I mean is stopping the behavior, finding alternative coping strategies, making peace with all the stuff that was brewing inside that was leading me into those behaviors. That took time and getting a lot of support, and I think for most people, you know, dealing with whatever type of fraudulence they, they may be struggling with, I think time and support in a variety of forms is probably always going to be necessary because I, I don't think any of us can just suddenly feel better.

Like we might, we might have a philosophical shift, but to actually live. Differently. I think it takes time. I mean, I don't know. Do you agree with that? Do you think that time is necessary for healing?

Michael Unbroken: I think if you're leveraging time appropriately. But I don't think that a lot of people do. And what I mean by that is like, I look at the beginning of my journey, you know, we're talking 15 years ago. And I would sit in my therapist's office and pay this dude hundreds of dollars a week and just lie. Right. Okay. Because it's like this space where I still, I didn't feel the safety of being myself, right? And then it wears on you. And wears on you and wears on you. And then one day, again, this breaking point, right? 'cause there's, there's different breaking points in life. 'cause you'll have the rock bottom about needing to change everything. Then you'll have the mm-hmm. The moment of like, okay, I need to work on this or that, or whatever it is.

Right? But the thing that I think is so fascinating that I have come to find, it's like in those spaces of time, it's like, are you actually pursuing, like reinforcing the reality that it's okay to be you? That's the thing that I think people often overlook. 'cause they're like, yeah, I go to therapy once a week and I tell that guy the truth. But then I don't do it anywhere else in my life.

Kristin Ducombe: Yeah.

Michael Unbroken: And so I think it's about this continuation of on a daily basis, like, show up and be yourself. Because what you have to do is you're, you're changing this evidence-based narrative. This is how I look at it, right? So you have this evidence based narrative that, my truth doesn't matter, nobody's gonna help me.

And then slowly through witnessing it, because you do, and look, it's not always gonna be that, right? Because sometimes you'll still tell your truth and it won't work. Relationships will end, friendships will end, businesses will crumble. You'll mess your life up for a period of time. 'cause you're human.

That's gonna happen. But if you have more victories than you have failures around this, then you start to have this positive reinforcement, it's exposure therapy effectively. Right? And you're like, okay. I'm learning through doing the thing that it's okay and safe to do the thing.

Kristin Ducombe: Yeah.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. And I think that's the key. I think most people will come into therapy, they'll come into coaching programs, they'll come to retreats. And in these spaces it's just, they'll bear their soul. They'll tell the fucking truth. And it's almost like a get outta jail free card in a way. And then they go back to reality, they're back into the game. They're back into the matrix of life, and they don't bring that with them.

Kristin Ducombe: Oh, I know. Well, it's so hilarious actually, because, I mean, I feel like I talk about that all the time with my clients because so many people, as you're saying, you know, they come to see a therapist and will talk intensively about something.

We'll work on something, a problem. We'll think of strategies, we'll think of more authentic and healthy ways to deal with a situation, and then they leave the session, go back into their life, and then come back a week later and they're like, nothing's changed. It's all the same. And I'll ask, well, did you do it? What we talked about. Did you try to show up differently? Did you try to talk to that person differently? Did you try to be more gentle with yourself? Did you do this, did you that? And the answer is like, I didn't dare. And it's like, well, that's the thing. Until you dare try, you are probably not gonna see progress.

And it's really, really interesting. Tell me what you think about this, because I found a therapist, and this is what I like about coaching, which I think differs from therapy. I feel that in a lot of therapy modalities, it's a little bit different now, but at least in traditional, I. Therapy, the therapist is not supposed to be directive or to suggest or to even ask the client to try to do things differently.

That's somehow considered like an antithesis to, to, you know, the, the client's quote unquote spontaneous healing. And I've never agreed with that because I think that if people are not encouraged to try and also given the message that trying to do things differently is often how change is going to come. Then their change isn't gonna come. Trying is the starting point. It's taking a risk to be different.

Michael Unbroken: I used to have, calling it a catchphrase feels weird, but I used to have this thing I said all the time, which is mindset is everything. and for years that was kind of my leverage point because I think like that's the beginning of all of this. It's the way you think. And then I came to realize the actual answer to transformation is action is everything.

And so I think that you're spot on and in the pyramid scheme of therapy, while I love therapy, I still have, I have the same therapist I've had for years 'cause he's f*cking awesome.

He helps me. But the thing he does. Helps me solve problems. Yeah. Most, most therapists are just like, okay, have a great day. I'll see you next week. Same time, same bat channel, and, and where I'm at now, I look at that and I go, I don't know how beneficial that is for people. But that said, that's, that's a whole other conversation for another day.

When I look at journeys of people like you, the one thing that I always feel is a bit inspired because it's like you can really, really have bad things happen to you. Walk a horrible path and still pull yourself out of it. If you're courageous enough, if you're resilient enough, if you're willing enough, you can't do it on your own.

You certainly can't do it by just thinking about it. And you definitely won't do it if you don't take the first step. And so. I wanna encourage people to take a first step with you to learn more about you, especially because you're so specialized in helping people recover from things like we've talked about today. So before I ask you my last question, can you tell everyone where they can find you and where they can learn more about you?

Kristin Ducombe: Yes. Thank you for asking. So I think the easiest way to find me is obviously online, and I would just go to my website. And so my website is www.kristinduncombe.com. And there you can find everything about my therapy work, my books, my background, and it's kind of like my online calling card.

Michael Unbroken: Amazing. And guys, remember if you go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com, you can find that and more in the show notes. My last question for you, my friend. What does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Kristin Ducombe: To me, being unbroken means more than one thing. But if I was gonna name one thing that maybe encapsulates everything else that I would wanna add to that, it's about being the subject of your own life. It's about creating a life and living a life in which you are in service to your values and the things that matter to you and that you are not spending time shape shifting to accommodate other people. And I just always like to be careful because I am not suggesting don't give a fuck what other people, what the impact of your actions on other people. I think it's extremely important to be kind and gracious, but you can do that without giving yourself away. So for me, being unbroken means living in service to your own values.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah, I could not agree more. That's one of the things that as you walk this path and you discover that is a secret weapon, my friend. Thank you so much for being here, unbroken Nation. Thank you, my friends. Thank you guys all for listening because today's episode brought any value to your life. Share it with someone else that you think it'll bring value to their life. Take care of yourself, take care of each other.

And Until Next Time.

Be Unbroken.

I'll See You Guys.