Nine, take a few minutes and write down the things in your past that helped to see yourself as competence, connected, or purposeful. This can be anything, it can be little league, when you're eight, it can be soccer when you are four, it can be a school play when you're 12, or 14. And you were just trying to make a short list of things that we've accomplished or done in the past to help us gain a perspective about our life overall, instead of just this period of our life. One other thing that can be very helpful is to attend a group for battering. And I want to point out this really important concept that Batterien is not necessarily physical. In fact, some of the women I've worked with over the years, have said to me that they wish that their perpetrator the abuser had hit them twice as often, but kept their mouth shut. Because the verbal battery and the psychological battering the mental battering just stays in our minds. And it creates a faulty belief about ourselves, and oftentimes a faulty belief about the world. So those are some recommendations for some actions or interventions that you can use if you find yourself in a trauma bond in a friendship or a romantic relationship. And then the second thing is to find a way to develop a stronger sense of self. It's okay to be in a place of observation. One thing that tends to overwhelm us, as I mentioned before, is this internal voice that tells us, I have to do something, right this second, know that your brain also will vacillate between the left side and the right side. And the left side of the brain is where your functioning is going to come from, and how you maintain everyday life, even in a living situation, or a relationship dynamic, that's really overwhelming. And the right brain is the emotional brain. So it's not unusual at all, to be in this place of vacillation, where you can have an accomplishment at work or in a volunteer position or in friendship and think, oh my gosh, I'm doing okay at this. And then something can happen to trigger your reminders of the things that you've heard from the person that you're in a trauma bond relationship with. And you can go into that emotional side of your brain and feel really overwhelmed and have a sense of incompetence and a sense of ineffectiveness in your own life. Number three, when this happens, notice without judgment, use benevolent curiosity to lovingly take a look at this. And when I say benevolent curiosity, I am talking about loving curiosity, curiosity that has the best intention gins and is not looking at things to judge. But to notice, number four is notice when you tend to under react. And when you tend to overreact in the context of your relationship. These two extremes are very, very common under reaction is designed to be protective, because it is a way to avoid conflict or to get out of a conflict. And overreaction is the opposite end of that spectrum where we're so overwhelmed that we can't manage our reaction very well. And so we're overreacting. Both of these things are normal. And it's really important that you realize that. One other idea number five, is to write down in what way the intensity of the relationship creates a sense of emotional intimacy in your brain. When we're in a trauma bond, there's an intensity and there is a misconception or a inaccurate belief that the intensity means that we're very, very emotionally close to somebody. And in actual fact, in order to be very close to somebody, you have to be in your prefrontal cortex more often than your fight or flight. And there has to be in the relationship or reciprocity of both people and their emotions and their thoughts being acknowledged and important, instead of one person who constantly is bringing attention to their thoughts and emotions and blaming you for how they feel. Number seven, notice emotions and body sensations as information. Just notice it as information. There are no good or bad or positive or negative emotions, emotions are energy. And when you are able to notice what's happening in your body, and what your emotions are doing, if you can just observe and be in your observers mind, you have a chance to gather information. Number eight, practice widening your window of tolerance by noticing when you are flooded with emotions. And then use a coping tool when your prefrontal cortex comes back online. One thing that I see a lot in my coaching and therapy practices is that people in the moment of great overwhelm, actually cannot remember the tool that they've decided that they're going to use. This is normal, it's typical, it's actually a biological way that the body prepares to flee or to fight. And so I encourage people, once you're back into a little bit more calm state, and you can think to yourself, Oh, I forgot to use that tool, use the tool, right, then don't beat yourself up that you couldn't access it in the moment, when the blood flow is reduced to your prefrontal cortex, you're, you don't have the same kind of access to that part of the brain that holds our wisdom, our reason, our logic, and that kind of thing. The ninth idea in finding a way to develop a stronger sense of self is to find and notice and acknowledge any wins, gains, forward movement, et cetera, the brain is 40 times more likely to notice what we perceive as negative than it is to notice neutral or positive. Because the brain is so terrible at this, I have a little formula that I explained to my clients that can be helpful. The first thing I say is identify the behavior that you want to increase or decrease. So let's say I want to decrease eating ice cream. You're gonna hear a lot about me and ice cream in this podcast. So I want to decrease my consumption of ice cream. And that's number one. Number two, I'm going to pay attention to the frequency that I consume ice cream has it reduced even by one day, or even by one spoonful. And I know this sounds ridiculous because it seems so minut and tiny. But it really can be helpful. So first, I want to decrease my ice cream meeting second I'm going to notice if there's any reduction in frequency, almost always there is when we pay attention to something that we want to change, but our brain doesn't consciously notice it. So being able to use the prefrontal cortex and our accurate perception, and our logic and reason can give us an opportunity to notice that the frequency is reducing. The third step is to notice if the intensity is less if the intensity is lower. So if I tend to eat ice cream frantically, I know this is silly, but work with me here. If I tend to eat ice cream frantically, am I now approaching it from a more calm and rational mind set? Often what this looks like for me is I think I shouldn't eat ice cream because I have high cholesterol. And then I have this other part of me that's like, I will eat ice cream, because you cannot boss me around. And this is very common as well, when we have these seemingly opposite parts of ourself, argue with each other. So is there a reduction in intensity. And the fourth thing you're looking at is, is there a faster recovery?