In this episode of The Messy Middle, I’m diving into the question I get asked with equal parts fear, dread, and heartbreak: Will this always happen to me?

If you’ve ever whispered that to yourself after surviving narcissistic or high-control dynamics, you’re not alone. And no, you’re not cursed, broken, or doomed to attract the same person in a different body for the rest of your life. What you are is a human being who learned survival in a world that normalizes manipulation, misogyny, and emotional labor piled onto your shoulders.

In this episode, I break down what’s really happening underneath that fear.

I talk about how manipulative people actually operate, the early “tests” they run to see how much they can get away with, and how your body can confuse familiarity with safety. I unpack why chemistry isn’t destiny, why repetition isn’t sabotage, and how your nervous system is simply trying to finish an unfinished story.

We get into everything from:

• Why you’re not a narcissist magnet
• How conditioning sets you up to tolerate too muc
• The modern rebrand of misogyny and why it matters
• Why early red flags feel comforting if chaos was once your normal
• How healing shifts your entire signal
• Dating as a social experiment

Most importantly, I walk you through how to rebuild self-trust so deeply that coercive people can’t hook into you anymore.

When your safety lives inside you, you get to choose differently, walk away sooner, and stand steadier in your feet than you ever have before.

This isn’t about avoiding life. It’s about building a life your nervous system can actually thrive in. A life that feels like coming home to yourself.

And no… this won’t always happen to you.

Let’s talk about why.

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