Relationship Renovator: Transforming Your Love Life from the Ground Up

By E.B. Johnson

Do you want to improve the way you connect with others? Want to find the ideal partners? Or to address the patterns that lead you back into the arms of toxic partners?

The debut guide from top Medium.com writer and certified NLP-MP, 'Relationship Renovator' is your ultimate love and partn

• Language: English
• Publisher: E.B. Johnson
• Release date: Mar 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087905211

E.B. Johnson

E.B. Johnson is a certified coach and Master Practitioner NLP who helps her clients address the toxic patterns that are holding them back in life and in love. The survivor of a narcissistic parent, E.B. Johnson overcame a lifetime of adversity to become one of Medium.com's top writers and coaches.

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Contents

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Dan.

I hope to return all those lemons someday.

Foreword

When I started this book, I had no idea what it would be. I knew that I wanted to give my readers and my clients something tangible. I wanted to give them a physical guide that they could turn to whenever things got challenging in their relationships, and I wanted it to be a source of comfort and help for them. After all, not all of us can afford a relationship coach - but most of us need one. How could I put that into a book that would matter to the people who needed it most?

As I sat down to create this relationship handbook it turned into something else. I knew it wasn't enough to give my readers what I had always given them. Tips and advice were great, but how would they knew it was truly applicable? Words spun across the page and my own truth began to tumble out with them. This book became more than just a self-help guide for the determined, it became a mechanism for my own healing and my own truth.

So that's what this handbook is.

It's a piece of my soul and an unraveling of my past. It's an exposure of sorts, as every topic I cover here in the book is one that I have had to personally overcome in my own life, healing journey, and my relationships. There's freedom in these pages, but there's fear too. As you uncover pieces of your past, you're going to uncover pieces of mine too. As you're healing, I'll be healing with you.

And that's really what I wanted this to be.

This isn't just an ego-inflating e-book that you get with one of my courses, or a shallow attempt to sell myself as your relationship, self-help guru. It's the truth, carefully researched and meticulously combed over until it was palatable and effective enough to hand down to you - my readers and the reason for my work.

I want you to pull this book out whenever you have doubts, and I want you to reach for it when the hard moments come. I want it to be a source of comfort when you're too ashamed to open up to your girlfriends, or too confused to sit your partner down and explain how you feel.

In these pages, you'll find information on everything from improving your sex life to improving the way you communicate with your partner. We'll start right in the roots of your childhood trauma, and work all the way through to the present moment and the tough intimacy challenges that are facing you.

This book holds your truth.

It holds the answers you've been looking for, and the improvements you've been struggling to make. It holds the secret to building better relationships, and the secret to healing your core pain as well.

At the end of the day, we are the ones responsible for our lives. Like an investment property handed down to us through our families, we're responsible the upkeep and the renovation our our lives and our happiness.

Are you tired of rotating through the same terrible, uninspired relationships? Are you ready to find your true love? Better yet, are you ready to fall in love with yourself - exactly as you are? Our partners can only reflect the love we give to ourselves. If you're ready for the perfect relationship (for you) then this is the starting place.

We deserve to be happy, in whatever self-defined terms that requires. If better relationships are a part of that happiness for you, then join me as we heal together and get to the root of our truth.

How to Use This Book

How to Use This Book

The chapters in this book are both interconnected and independent. While it's recommended to make a full first pass sequentially from beginning to end, it's primary function is as a reference tool that you can return to as needed. Start at the beginning and get a full grasp of what it means to heal and resolve your relationship trauma. Then, you can come back to address individual issues and complete any exercises or questions (which will give you a much deeper understanding of your issues and what makes you tick).

If you're currently in a relationship, then you may find that you gravitate more toward Part III and Part IV which focuses on intimacy and fixing specific issues within a current relationship. If you're in the market for the perfect partner, you may find Part I and Part II to be the most helpful parts of this book as it points to ideas on online dating and getting healthy in love again.

Use it in whatever way works best for you.

Dog ear the pages, coat it in highlighter and pen marks - do whatever you have to do to make the lessons stick. I give you full permission to abuse this book like you never got to use your over-priced college textbooks. It's okay. I promise. Make your mark. Take your notes. This book is your gateway to the next chapter and you should use it accordingly.

One last thing before you go, though. A word of advice to keep in mind as you seek to build better relationships:

Until you know how to love yourself fully - you won't be able to see that love in others.

Forming Our Ideas

Our understanding of relationships is a delicate bloom, the seed of which is planted the day we come wailing into our parents’ lives. Childhood plays a major role in our adult relationships, and all the drama and all the trauma that we see plays out into patterns that follow us for life.

Building better partnerships can’t start until we form the ability to look back objectively at all the lessons and experiences that came together to make us who we are. It’s a ground up way of looking at things; a starting place from which we can launch an entirely alternative approach to romance, connection, and intimacy.

Are you someone who came from a dysfunctional family? Did you watch one or both caretakers struggle to figure out who they were or what they wanted from the world around them? These problems stem from disjointed moments in childhood, which teach us confusing lessons on what it means to love and be loved. As children, we see and hear everything our parents do. Our child’s brain does what it can to make sense of what it sees, and without the steady guidance of an emotionally aware adult, it can internalize toxic lessons that don’t quite add up to a happy adulthood.

If you’re tired of running into walls with love, then you need to stop where you’re at and go back to the beginning. What lessons are leading you down the wrong path in relationships? What beliefs are you holding on to that are preventing you from connecting and opening up? When we have these answers, we can plan a path to healing and better partnerships, but that can’t start until we look inward and start being honest about who we are and the relationship inheritance we hold.

The Relationship Inheritance

Our parents and our caretakers leave us far more than money, debt, or family heirlooms. As we grow and move on through the years, we are also gifted with their mental and emotional inheritance (something which is - most times - gifted to them by their own parents). This inheritance we’re given from our parents and our caretakers is, arguably, the largest one which we receive. It dictates the beliefs we form about the world and about ourselves within a partnership. It affects the way we relate to the world and how we can connect with others.

Relationship inheritance is a part of this great enormous package the ones who create us leave us with. You learn how to view love and romance foremost from your caretakers and the members of your immediate family. It’s all a part of our natural development.

We learn by watching our parents or caretakers and copying what they do. That’s how we learn to speak, to read, and even to walk, or play instruments. Coming from a home in which these caretakers treat love like a commodity or something to work for, we can come to see it as a challenge or something that we have to receive external validation in order to receive. If you grew up in a home in which romance was casual or missing altogether, you can internalize toxic relational mechanisms like avoidance or even clingy, obsessive love (Green and Goldwyn, 2002).

Breaking down this inheritance is an essential part of healing and an essential part of building more fulfilling and fair partnerships. What events occurred in your childhood, and how did your child’s brain quietly internalize these lessons for later use? This is the starting point at which we can unwind where our warped relationship beliefs come from. Work out your relationship inheritance and things will begin to make sense.

Trauma and the Developmental Consequences

While we have this idealized picture of childhood that we like to hold on to, the actual reality of the childhood experience is complex and emotional. Some experiences and connections we form during this period of our lives are great, and they provide us with a deeper sense of self and understanding of the world. Other experiences can be heartbreaking, though, and leave us feeling scared and insecure - especially with intimate relationships and being open with someone else.

Are you someone with a history of childhood trauma? Trauma occurs any time we are confronted with emotionally intense situations which create a feeling of fear or uncertainty.

As children, many of us undergo an array of trauma. Some of us grow up in abusive homes where physical threats and harm are the norm. Others grow up in environments in which this instability comes from on-the-edge caretakers or complex family dynamics that are too hard for the child to process. Maybe a caretaker violated the trust you put in them. Maybe you watched as your mother and father beat one another to a pulp, physically or emotionally.

When we grow up and develop in the middle of a lot of traumas or dysfunction, it leads to a lot of dysfunction and hardship later on down the road in our adult relationships. As a part of our relationship inheritance, we have to sort through this trauma and remove the tangles and upsets it has caused in our adult relationships. This happens only with honesty and by arming ourselves in the understanding and the knowledge of self and the place we’re at in the moment, both mentally and emotionally.

How Childhood Trauma Affects Our Adult Relationships

There’s no doubt that trauma and hardship in childhood plays a direct role in our adult relationships. Not only is our sense of self delayed by the mistakes our parents make. We’re not just scarred by the natural setbacks and adversity that we face alongside our families. It also shapes the way we connect with others in these moments. We watch as our parents attempt to navigate these challenges while staying connected to their partners and loved ones. We hear everything and form judgements and beliefs as they struggle to relate to us or relate to our siblings, or their own parents, and friends.

Childhood trauma takes a direct toll on us - not just in childhood, but in our adult lives too. When we get hurt and adolescents, we come to see others as threats and we can come to see them as islands of salvation as well. Neither of these views serve us when it comes to falling in love and building a family. We have to pick apart our trauma and understand how the events of our past undermine our happiness in the present. This will empower us to know love on an even deeper and more complete level.

How has your childhood trauma affected your relationships? What toxic lessons and upsets are you carrying into your current place of unhappiness or unease? Once you’ve identified the core impacts, you’ll be able to move forward in smart, focused action toward your goals and your true happiness.

Loss of Childhood

The occurrence of trauma in childhood goes a long way in disrupting that childhood and the natural sequence of mental and emotional development. We need this time as children to gently lean into the world and lean into our sense of self. Trauma prevents this, and it prevents us from figuring out who we are in an open and natural manner. It’s a loss of childhood and one that has big consequences for our adulthood.

Losing out on childhood can cause you to lose out in love later on down the road. As children, we learn how to trust the people we love through trust-filled bonds between our parents and our siblings. When we feel safe as children, we learn that it’s safe to be open with the people we love in adulthood. Losing out on this type of childhood can create paranoid, insecure, distrustful, and even distant lovers in your adult relationships.

Loss of Self

We don’t just lose our innocence and our childlike sense of wonder to the pain and trauma of our past. Across the board, trauma causes a loss and separation from self, which is toxic and incredibly undermining. In order to survive, it often forces victims of turbulent or traumatic homes to separate from important parts of who they are emotionally and mentally. As they grow, the walls between this authentic self and the projected self become taller, thicker, and harder to scale and overcome.

Reconnecting with self is how we get ourselves and our relationships back on track. Authenticity is everything in building partnerships that are reliable and worthwhile. To be yourself, tear down those walls that you built in order to survive the turbulent upbringing that left you scarred and untrusting.

Open the door on this true self, and you will uncover a plethora of strength and self-worth that you didn’t know existed. You don’t have to hide who you are in order to be loved anymore. You are enough as you are and you can be loved fully and without condition.

Attraction to Bad Relationships

Do you seem to have a magnetic attraction to toxic partners or poisonous relationships? Has every partnership crumbled in a dramatic implosion which left you hurt, confused, or otherwise uncertain about who you are and what you want? Believe it or not, this attraction to terrible relationships can be a learned pattern. If you watched your parent or caretaker spiral through terrible partner after terrible partner, you’re highly likely to do the same.

At some point, you have to make the decision to stop letting broken people into your life. You can’t save anyone else. The only person you can save is yourself. While you may encourage someone to grow or to change, you will never change a partner by being faithful, or by loving them hard enough.

We either choose to be excellent partners, or we choose to be bad ones. A lot of it boils down to addressing the past and working through the hangups which hold us back, or cause us to lash out. The rollercoaster of love is only a rollercoaster when we insist on making the wrong choices with the wrong people; a habit which is learned through the patterns our caretakers show us in childhood.

Avoiding Real Connection

Are you someone who doesn’t wind up in awful relationships, because you avoid them altogether? Avoiding genuine connection can be just as damaging to our health and happiness as engaging in disastrous relationships. For many of us, close partnerships form a piece of the happiness puzzle, and they provide us with a sense of group belonging, security, and support.

Rather than avoiding actual connection, you need to be open. Someone may come along who wants to be a productive part of your life. In order to enjoy all the opportunities they bring, we need to be open to the possibility of being loved for who we are and what we want from life. The risk is worth the reward in being loved by a person of value and integrity.

Trouble with emotional regulation

Perhaps the most common affect of childhood trauma on our relationship behaviors is the disruption of emotional regulation. In childhood, we go through a series of developmental phases and periods which bring us closer to the world and our place within it. We learn how to talk and how to walk, but we also learn how to confront and handle our emotions. While some learn how to manage these emotions with openness and understanding, others aren’t so lucky.

Did your parents or caretakers teach you that anger was the only safe emotion to express? Were blowups and blowouts the standard for communicating hurt or disappointment? When our parents aren’t emotionally aware (or they cannot control their emotions) we learn to treat our emotions (and reactions) the same way. Struggling with emotional regulation can very often be traced by to our adolescence and the lessons that were taught both directly and indirectly there.

Moving forward effectively is possible, but not until we learn how to identify and understand the specific childhood experiences which wall us off from ourselves. If you’re seeking to love someone on a deep level, then you need to first learn how to love yourself. That will not happen until you address everything in your past that is holding you back. Building better relationships requires that we turn ourselves first into better partners. Empower yourself to heal and you’ll find a meaningful peace that opens the door on true and lasting love.

Understanding childhood trauma and the way it impacts children - by and large - is not the only step in creating real and lasting change that improves your life or relationships. You've got to get in the mud and get down and dirty with your pain, and you have to analyze those events in order to figure out which direction your healing comes from.

We cannot afford to downplay the importance of the bonds we shared with our parents and the bonds we watched them create for themselves. How did the relationship with your mother or father specifically warp the way you see yourself? Or the way you see your partners? Until you link the research with your own personal experiences, the right transformations won't click.

It's time to be honest with yourself about your past so that you can be honest moving forward into a future filled with love, support, and understanding. What is your history? How does that history play a part in your relationships right now, in this moment? Until you commit to radical honesty and recognition, nothing is going to change. Your bad partner patterns will continue. Is a romantic relationship a crucial part of your happiness? Then you need to get serious about fessing up to the past and embracing it with the incredible strength and courage that's led you this far in life.

Our parents make us who we are

Truly changing ourselves and the intimate relationships we build in adulthood often requires that we start with our parents and the relationships we shared with them. Starting here is to start at the very beginning of our story, which is extremely effective if you want to get to the root of your childhood issues related to relationships.

This is a process which must be navigated as carefully as it is managed honestly, though. While your parents may play a part in your relationship trauma today, blaming them will bring you no closer to a resolution. There has to be a balance. Whoever made a mess of your life, you still own the property. It's your responsibility to make peace and heal. This journey is yours and yours alone.

When you are in a calm and quiet state of mind, spend some time looking back at the relationship you shared with your parents. Question how it really was, and look back at your child's life with the adult eyes you possess now. Who were your parents? What was their relationship like? What did they teach you about your own relationships - either in word or in deed? Don't hold back and don't avoid the truth because it's too close to your heart. Being honest about your pain now will help you to find greater love in your future.

Journaling is a great way to open up the door on our past in a safe, and judgmental free space. Each day, I cracked open my journal and wrote a little bit more about my past connections. I wrote about my mother too and the torrid history that she had revealed in snippets and pieces to me.

This journaling helped me immensely, and it helped me to understand the learning I had internalized from my mother's own examples. A journaling practice can help you to do the same. Don't worry about grammar or about how anyone will feel. These words are for you and for you alone. Let the consciousness flow and let your words flow however they need to. Free write for at least 10 - 15 minutes a day and focus on how you felt in crucial moments, rather than focusing on the actions of your parents or the mistakes they may (or may not) have made.

Toxic behaviors and beliefs we internalize

Generally, you may find that there are some core behaviors and beliefs that you internalized from the relationship examples set by your parents. Everyone has different parents, but we tend to take on similar lessons when it comes to connecting with others and establishing ourselves within a relationship.

I didn't just take on my mother's taste in men. I had also taken on her limiting and toxic beliefs, and the idea that - as a woman - I had to find someone I could fix, heal, or care for full-time (while also looking for someone to do the same for me). Beyond that, a little more digging revealed that I was leaning into the same patterns of behavior that she had which attracted the same romantic disasters she had invited into her life. When I got into a relationship, I became desperate to keep it and terrified of losing it. I attached myself in totally insecure ways and centered my relationship around the instability of a worthless partner.

Have you taken on any of the following behaviors or beliefs from your parents or caretakers? Until you let them go, you'll continue to struggle with connection. These behaviors and beliefs could be the underlying cause behind some of your relationship misfortune in this life.

Needing validation

Adults who crave the validation of others are very often those who did not receive a sense of validation from their parents. This is to say they had parents that were emotionally absent, or unable to show that child a way in which to feel self-fulfilled. Maybe that parent always chased the outward validation of their own intimate partners. Perhaps they taught their child that the only thing that mattered was the approval of the outside world through career success, relationships, or material goods. However this craving for the love of the outside was created, it's toxic and can lead us into the hands of dangerous and toxic partners.

Toxic connection

Have you often found yourself in relationships with toxic partners who injure you physically, mentally, or emotionally? Do you go for controlling or abusive relationships that leave you broken and looking for a savior? This type of settling for abusive or toxic relationships is also a learned behavior and one we very often learn from the first relationship we ever hold in this life: The relationship with our parents.

If they engaged in abusive or toxic behavior that harmed you, your siblings, or another loved one - you can become used that abuse and comfortable with it in your own relationships. Accepting this as the norm, you fall back on that toxic sense of connection again again. It becomes the familiar that brings you to a sense of comfort, despite the chaos.

Intimate avoidance

Intimacy is an important part of a successful relationship for most couples. It's a source of connection an vulnerability, but it's also a powerful font of fun and excitement. When we find ourselves dealing with a complete lack of intimacy, it signals major problems and potential hangups in our own pasts which need to be addressed. Perhaps you never saw intimacy expressed in a healthy way in your parents' lives, and it confuses your own understanding of that openness with your partner. Or, maybe you have some trauma around intimacy that's rooted deep in your past. This trauma couple make it psychological challenging to be present and willing with your partner in intimate moments.

We can't ignore intimacy avoidance when it comes to being in love and having a successful relationship in which both parties feel seen, heard, respected, and fulfilled. The sooner we address our issues (either on our own, or with the help of an experienced mental health professional) the sooner we can get our partnerships back on track to thriving.

Settling for less

Are you someone who has consistently settled for one sided, sexist, off-balance relationships throughout your life? Sadly, when we grow up in a dysfunctional or turbulent home life, we can find ourselves building on warped ideas of love and happy partnership. Was one of your parents subjected to regular abuse or belittlement? When all this negativity and criticism becomes the norm, it can lead us to settle for people who take advantage of us or make us feel bad. Again, it comes back to comfort and what we get used to. If your childhood was full of settling for less, then that is what your adult life will be too.

Ill-fitting standards

If you had to label your parents as independent thinkers or society-conforming normies - what would you consider them? A parent who lives life on their own terms (successfully) can be a powerful thing. It teaches the child to stand firm in their own truths and to live a life that's aligned with their values and morals. Not every parent is brave enough to live their life this authentically, however. For the most part, our parents play it safe. And we watch them as they play a part that keeps them small and miserable all their lives long.

When we don't live truthfully, we become removed from the things that make us truly happy or fulfilled. Bowing to society rather than respecting yourself - in every arena of life - will always lead to greater hardship on the inside and an ever-growing need to find where you really belong.

Our parents teach us most of these beliefs discreetly, through their own barely-aware behaviors or poorly thought-through decisions. We, as children, watch what they do and we use our child's brain to make sense of it where we can. We rationalize their actions with our limited knowledge of the wold and look up to them as the example that we should live by when we one day have a life of our own.

This is a dangerous standard to live by, though, when you're being raised by people who think less about the long-term consequences of their actions than they do about what they're going to have for dinner.

We take the behaviors of our parents and we run right off into the sunset. They are only a starting place, though, and a handing-off of guidelines on which we build the rest of our relationships rules. Looking into our childhoods is our starting point (and a good one at that), but we have to keep tracking through our history if we are truly committed to building better intimate relationships here in the present moment. How did you get from your childhood examples to your adult life? How have you internalized these foundational lessons and turned them into the guidelines that rule your life? Moving on and moving forward requires taking off the training wheels for everything that comes next.

Working through the shade of our pasts to understand our innermost workings, is not an easy process. It requires that we look into the deepest and darkest parts of who we are, and it asks that we shine a light on the truth that we find there. Taking time to consider the relationship we built with our parents empowers us to take the next step forward. We hav to be more brave about uncovering our root issues. We have to allow ourselves to take those starting lessons and follow the thread through the tapestry. While our parents set the groundwork for the relationships we build, we are the ones that test and expand on the examples that they set for us.

As we get older and move on in life, we form new ideas on what romantic love means to us. Throughout our adolescence we test these ideas, and test and test them again. We look to our parents and we look around at what's going on with our friends and their loved ones. Running through new connections and all these tests, we begin to solidify the concepts that dictate the course of our futures and our happiness. Part of building adult relationships that are meaningful requires that we examine the experiments of our adolescence, and all the experiences that brought us to our current state or position in the world.

Uncovering Teenage Heartache

When I was a teenager, I fell hard and fast for anyone that was willing to offer up a little attention or a little validation. It was the only thing I knew. After all, I had spent more than a decade watching the woman I idolized treat herself like a worthless commodity. Surely I was no better? I internalized what she taught me and spent a great deal of my youth chasing an idea of love that was both shallow and toxic.

It was all for the best and all in benefit of the bigger picture.

Believe it or not the heartaches of your teenage years play a big role in the patterns that you use to connect to others in adulthood. When you allow yourself to acknowledge these pain points, you can learn a lot from them and see a lot of warning signs for the mess you find yourself in now. Often, our teenage cycles are the ones we keep repeating even decades later. Have you ever noticed how many people behave as though they never left high school? Mentally, they probably haven't.

Don't be afraid to look back at your teenage heartache. What similarities are there? What painful lessons there taught you to put up walls or chase the wrong things in love and romance?

I was almost 30 before I realized I was still chasing the same perpetual losers that I had chased as a teen. Why? Because I was still that broken teenager who accepted and settled for explosive breakups, immature infidelity, and abusive cycles that were far below anything I possibly deserved from a decent and worthwhile partner.

Explosive breakups

Were your teenage years filled with lots of explosive or dramatic breakups? It's not uncommon to experience turbulent endings to our relationships when we're younger. We're dealing with entirely new concepts, and on top of that we're also dealing with the pain and the frustration of stress and puberty and a quickly accelerating life. Emotions are strong and even adults don't always know how to manage them. We can end up with nasty breakups, but without analyzing them for the lessons they contain, we can find ourselves repeating those same explosive patterns.

Immature infidelity

Infidelity is another common mistake in adolescent relationships, but left unacknowledged it can become a habit that destroys all your future relationships. Someone who cheats time and time again learns that it's a safe behavior to engage in. If there's never any self-analyzing, and there's no reckoning, then lessons are never applied and relationships continue to be undermined into adulthood.

Abusive cycles

Abusers aren't born overnight, and they aren't born only in adulthood. The tactics that abusers use begin often in their adult relationships. Those who engage in physical abuse often engage in that abuse of their teenage partners and friends. Likewise, they learn how to spread their wings when it comes to mental and emotional devastation as well. Manipulative behavior is learned through observation and through practice. Realizing where the roots of these problems lie allows us to move forward in healthier ways.

Settling for even less

Although you may not be aware of it, your tendency to settle for less than you deserve is something which you may have learned in adolescence. Think about