Move From Struggle to Strength with Megan Fenyoe

 

 

Listen to the podcast here:

Highlights:

00:47 I’m Not Good Enough Mindset
04:41 Narcissistic Abusive Relationship
10:04 Closure
16:06 Becoming Stronger, Bigger, Better
20:15 Expectation On Being Good Enough
24:00 I Am Enough Movement
29:40 Five Steps To Move From Struggle To Strength
36:31 Expectations From Others

 

Resources :

Books

• You Are Enough: Five Steps To Move From Struggles To Strength by Megan Fenyoe

You can win against your battles. Join in as @myexpectation and @meganfenyoe discuss the 5 steps to move from struggle to strength. #expectations #epiphanies #narcissisticabuse#trauma#goodenough#rediscover Click To Tweet

Quotes:

18:55 “Always give back and go above and beyond for people.” – Megan Fenyoe

22:21 “99.9% of the things that we tell ourselves are from us, which shapes our behaviors.”  – Megan Fenyoe

31:06 “You have to deep-dive. It’s learning the radical acceptance. It’s redefining your values and who you are now because of what you’ve gone through.” – Megan Fenyoe

33:07 “Continue to push forward and create the life that we want without having those negative thoughts that keep us stuck.” – Megan Fenyoe

38:40 “You give all your power away as a human being when you live to the expectations of other people. You will never find happiness.” – Art Costello

Meet Megan:

Megan Fenyoe is a Veteran, Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Transformational Mindset Coach, Best Selling Author, Speaker/Trainer, Host of The Blonde Bombshell Podcast and founder of the I Am Enough Movement. She is a contributing writer for Thrive Global as well as Badassery Magazine. Megan is an Amazon Best Selling Author who recently published her book You Are Enough: Five Steps To Move From Struggles To Strength. Megan has gone through many struggles in life, from childhood to more recently being involved in a narcissistic abusive marriage which rocked her to her core. In order to rise again, Megan had to learn how to acknowledge her negative distortions and negative views on life that were shaping and influencing her for so many years. She learned to be honest about her flaws and what areas of her life where she allowed herself to remain stuck. 

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Transcription:

Art Costello: Welcome to the Shower Epiphanies Podcast. Today, I am honored to have Megan Fenyoe. Megan is an Air Force Veteran, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Therapist, Speaker and a trainer, Host of The Blonde Bombshell Podcast and I Am Enough TV, and founder of the international I Am Enough Movement. Megan is an amazing person. She has got a great story. I want her to tell us her story. So Megan goes ahead and starts out with telling us your story.

Megan Fenyoe: All right. Thank you so much for having me. I love being on podcasts with fellow veterans. So it’s an honor to be on the show with you. So my story has all of its ups and downs, and struggles, and craziness. I grew up in a very dysfunctional home, and I have a learning disability, actually in eighth grade reading level and an eighth grade math level. And my guidance counselor in high school told me and my parents that I should never go to college because I was never going to graduate. And at that moment I think I had started really creating that I have a not good enough mindset. But that moment just being in high school, that was kind of where I really started working on the process of dealing with maybe not being good enough but also saying, watch what I’m going to do. And school is very, very difficult for me. But here I am today, I have my masters, I’m a Licensed Mental Health Therapist, both in Michigan and California have been doing that for about 15 years. So although I still struggle with reading and comprehension, it wasn’t until I got into social work and therapy where I really thrived and didn’t have a lot of issues with doing well. In school I still had like a computer, that scandal, my reading and all of that stuff. But I’ve been very, very blessed career-wise. I started working for the State of Michigan when I was 23 and everything has been government related except, once I got out of the military. So I made this crazy decision when I was 33 years old to commission as an officer in the Air Force.

So I was stationed, I moved from Michigan, that’s where I lived for 33 years, and stationed at Travis Air Force Base here in California and provided mental health and substance abuse treatment to active duty members. So I had already been a therapist for 10 years and working for the government. So it was kind of a crazy decision. I did it backwards where I got all my student loans, and then went into the military, and I can’t use my GI bill to pay off my student loans, but whatever it was, it was good. And I really had a lot of struggles in being an active duty and being a therapist, it was difficult to be a therapist and creating that client/patient relationship, or client/therapist relationship because there’s so many people involved, active duty members life, like commanders, and first sergeants, and that confidentiality isn’t really there. And I struggled and also struggled, and maybe I’m not a good therapist, maybe I’m not good enough because it was really more about the ranks, I felt it was about our patients. So I did leave the service after three years, still miss wearing the uniform. But I just felt ethically, I wasn’t able to do the good work that I wanted to. So in that time I also met my now ex husband, which I was definitely not planning on, I was not moving across the country to meet a husband but that was a whirlwind of a relationship. And we met and were married within 11 months. So I was 34 at the time, and there were a lot of red flags that I saw in the relationship, but I just ignored it. And I think a lot of people are really surprised when they hear that I’m a therapist and ignored all of these flags and ended up being in a very narcissistic, abusive marriage. And I did not even know that at the time.

So kind of fast forward, there’s so much in the years of 2018, February of 2018, but in that time I, so I was involved with that. He had an affair for 14 months of our two and a half year marriage. He kicks me out of our house twice. He filed for divorce and pulled the papers four times. And the divorce, he finally went through with the divorce because I was so traumatized and had created that story in my mind that I wasn’t good enough, and if I just did this or I just did that, that I would make this marriage work. And of course everything was my fault, the gaslighting, the discarding, like everything was my fault. He literally made me feel like I was crazy, that I had all of the issues. So I was literally broken, traumatized, but even at that point still did not know what was really going on in the realm of the abuse that I was in. So after the divorce, I still remained committed to him for two years. I ended up moving to San Diego. I was living in Northern California and made the decision to move to San Diego two years ago, thinking that maybe he would miss me or maybe I just needed to move. At that point, I didn’t know, but I had taken a job transfer because I was working at a hospital up there and it just worked to transfer down here. Five months after I transferred down here, I lost my job as a therapist, which was unbelievable because A, I’m a veteran, and B, I had been a therapist for almost 13 years at that point. But I have to say that I was fired, not because of some crazy illegal thing, but I had done a Facebook live on whole food nutrition and the power of healthy eating when it comes to our mindset and emotional and physical pain. And I did it in my office but it was like a blank wall, and nowhere on my Facebook did it say I worked at this hospital, and they fired me, and I was still on probation, so whatever. But I lost my 6-figure income. I was 39 at the time, had no idea what I was doing and I was still talking to my ex husband. Four months later, so this is now February, 2018, my ex husband says: “I’m coming down to San Diego because I have a job offer. I’m going to interview, and if I get it, I’m going to prove to you that I made the biggest mistake of my life.” Now mind you, he said that for two years after the divorce. We would go on dates, I never went back to our home after the divorce, but he would come over, he would cry. He cried the day that I moved to San Diego and begged me not to go.

Art Costello: He’s a narcissist.

Megan Fenyoe: Yeah, Oh, wait, it gets better. Well, let me tell you. So I remember when I picked him up and I said a prayer, and I said: “Okay, Lord, if this is not meant to be, you need to show me the divorce wasn’t enough for me to leave. The affair wasn’t enough. If you show me, I will follow you.” Because at that point, I had gotten to the point where I was hiding from my friends that I was still talking to him, and it was like he was like my drug. Like I, the minute he would discard me, I would get into this manic mode of like needing him in my life. And I couldn’t survive like he was my drug. And on the outside I looked like I had it all together, but I was dying. Even like living in San Diego, and losing my job four months before that. And then February 15th of 2018, literally 24 hours after I prayed that prayer, I found out that he had actually moved in another girl, not the girl that he had an affair with a month before our divorce was final, bought her a brand new vehicle, and she had been living in our house for two years, and I did not even know she existed. So he had two relationships going on, and I was just like, are what? Like it was like that bandaid, because when the affair happened and the divorce, even though I’m a therapist, I should have gotten therapy, but I’m like, Oh, no, I’m good. I’m just going to open my private practice and work like 60 hours a week, and work at the hospital, and just put on this face. But for so many years I was just living this mediocre life and wanting more in my life but didn’t know what that was. So February 15, 2018, I said goodbye to him. It was not nice, it was like very dramatic, but walked away from him and actually started writing my bestselling book. And at that moment when I wrote, there’s a chapter called Mr. N, which goes into more detail about my trauma and a lot more information about what narcissistic abuse is. It wasn’t until I started writing that chapter did I realize that I was in a narcissistic abusive relationship, and that had been a total of, so he was in my life for six years, the marriage and then after the marriage. So crazy.

Art Costello: Can I ask you a question?

Megan Fenyoe: Yeah, of course.

Art Costello: Was he a pilot by any chance?

Megan Fenyoe: No, he was active duty, but he was not a pilot.

Art Costello: I’ve just had some experience with the narcissistic pilots.

Megan Fenyoe: No, he was not a pilot.

Art Costello: They have the Tom Cruise syndrome.

Megan Fenyoe: Yes they do. But no. So everything, I mean, that bandaid was ripped off. And let me tell you, I had lost my job. He was out of my life. I literally was holding my life, my heart, and my hands, and it was like quick sand. I was like, what am I going to do? And so I started writing the book at that time, I could’ve gone back and gotten a full time job, and made a lot of money, but I also had this nudging feeling, A, which was to walk away from him, and B, to do something more with my life. So I took this crazy leap of faith. So it’s been a year and a half, and I jumped into entrepreneurship. So I’m a contract therapist and work at a chronic pain facility, like 14 hours a week. And then the rest of the time, I’m a therapist and I do video therapy, so right in my house. And then I also, I’m a speaker at my show and my podcasts and all of that. So I’m not making as much money as I did, but I’m happy. I have full control of my life. And once I walked away from him, I got back into my own therapy and really started doing my trauma work. I had done trauma work in my 20’s but had to deep, dive deep again into all of this. And I think the biggest thing that I learned, so that’s where the whole, I’m not good enough mindset came by. I was like, not that I wasn’t good enough for him, but it made me think I wasn’t a good therapist, a good friend, a good daughter, sister. It encompassed every part of my life, and he never told me that I wasn’t good enough. But I created that story in my head based on his actions and his behaviors. So the big thing for me and my trauma work was to release that trauma and define closure, but the closure was not going to come from him, narcissistic abuse, like you’re not going to get that closure from him. So it was huge for me because what I had to do was find the closure of the person I became when I was with him. And the minute I found that realization and really turned inward, inward on me and not looking to him to make it better, that is where everything changed. And it’s been a crazy journey, in the last year and a half I became a bestselling author, speaking all over the country, podcast shows, and my movement. It’s just been an incredible most traumatic time, but also most incredible because I finally can say that I am good enough and I know what that means. And I still struggle sometimes because I’m still human. There’ll be a day where I feel like I’m not good enough, but it doesn’t affect every part of me. And it’s just a quick thought, and then it leaves my mind. So that’s my story in a nutshell, financial struggles, how to file for bankruptcy, all of that stuff. But yeah, that’s it.

Art Costello: It’s quite a journey, and I want to add some things to it because the audience can’t see you. And I know I deal with a lot of my clients that are women who don’t feel they’re good enough because they’re not pretty enough and all of that. Well, you definitely don’t fit that mold. I mean, you’re blue eyed blonde, that is very, very attractive. I would have never ever thought that you’ve been in practice 15 years, you don’t look as old as you are. And you know that narcissism and not feeling good enough. Narcissists actually actively seek out people who don’t feel that they’re good enough because they feel that they can gain control. We’d done a lot of narcissism work on my show. I had Dr. Bindu Babu from New York who has been in actually two narcissistic relationships and she’s had great insights in there. Actually been some of my best shows as far as people watching. But I wanted to ask you something about when you were young, and you were struggling, and you were not feeling you were enough. We tend to live up to that label that we are branded with as a child. We did some research with prisoners and we found out some stunning information with prisoners that almost 89% of them, whether they were male, female, juvenile, or adult, were told as a child they were going to end up in jail. I mean, it’s amazing how we live up to those labels that people, so when you were labeled, I’m not good enough by a school counselor, I mean, I went through the same struggles you did. I came from a very small town in Upstate New York where my family was pretty much shunned because we didn’t fit into the mold of everybody else. And I was told I’d never amount to a hill of beans. Do you think that you are being told, I think we look at it through two lenses. Either we let it defeat us or we let it be our greatest challenge in our lives, because I know I’ve worked hard all my life to prove them, people back there, that I am good enough, and that I am capable, and that I was not stupid, and I was not all the things. I mean, it went as far as where I couldn’t play any sports and I’m very athletic. I played Minor League Baseball for the Dodger organization.

Megan Fenyoe: Wow, nice.

Art Costello: I mean, I’ve gone out of my way to prove. Do you think that that affected you where you’ve gone out of your way to be better, and sometimes it takes us a long cycle to get there. I mean, and my audience has heard this before, I just turned 72, and I’ve come full circle in understanding all of my childhood and all that, and it’s taken a long time. And when I was 63 and lost my wife to cancer is when I really started doing the introspective work, and I had been a counselor, and all that stuff, but it just never clicked the way it did. Once I went through some traumatic trying times, and I think sometimes the trying times really help us become or is the catalyst for us to becoming stronger, bigger, better, and believing that we are enough.

Megan Fenyoe: Yeah, I think to go back to something that you said first before I answer that question, when you had commented about like what I look like, and this and that, it just shows that so many of us, and I talk about not being good enough whether it be like career relationships, health issues, because every single one of us have or currently struggle with that thought, we’ve all thought that, right? And it just shows the narcissistic abuse, it’s not one of those abuses that you have physical marks from. And you can go around and act like you have it all together, and this, and that, but still be like dying inside. And I think that that’s really important to put out there because I was that person, and to go back, like I said, no one has ever said those words to me. I’m not, you’re not good enough. Like my guidance counselor said, Oh, you should go, never go to college. You should go to cosmetology school because you probably won’t graduate, you won’t graduate. So instead of saying, Oh, he thinks I’m not going to graduate, I created that phrase, I’m not good enough. So that’s the difference in my story that no one told me that. And so for me, I wanted to prove that I could do it. I wanted to prove to myself, and because ever since I was little, I just had this nudging feeling of wanting to help people and do something bigger with my life, to always give back and go above and beyond for people. And so I think that that was my driving force, but I think I wasn’t as involved in my mind at that point. I think then I was like in my early 30’s and all of that stuff I was just working full time for the government and getting my masters full time all at the same time. So it’s just like go, go, go, go, go.

“Always give back and go above and beyond for people.” - Megan Fenyoe Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Do you think you’ve always had the expectation that you were good enough though? Do you think that that was in your mind?

Megan Fenyoe: That I wasn’t good enough? No, that you were good enough. But my area of expertise is expectations, and I often identify people, we look at our expectations through two lenses, either faith or fear, and there isn’t any gray in between it. When it’s in your mind and in your subconscious, it’s either faith or fear. It either stops us or it starts us. I usually try to identify in somebody’s subconscious or even their conscious mind, the expectation that they are good enough, that they are capable because that’s what I did when I was young. I mean, I can remember vividly saying to myself, I was going to use a cuss word, but I didn’t. I was good, tell these people flip off because I know I’m good enough, I know what I’m capable of, and I didn’t have the expectation in my head. I always had the expectation that I was going to be more than anyone ever dreamt.

Megan Fenyoe: And yes, I think for me I always had that. But I think the biggest part for me was the personal intimate relationships that I would get in. Because a lot of my abandonment issues would surface, my advantage just from childhood and then when I would get in relationships. And so, yeah, for me, I’ve always had this motivation to do whatever I’m going to set forth. As I was teenager, I was like, I’m going to live in California, I’m going to specifically live in San Diego. Here I am, that’s what I’ve done. I’m going to have something published. I didn’t know it was gonna be a book. But yes, everything that I do that I want to do, I’m able to do. Not saying that it’s easy, but that is different than not being good enough in relationships, like intimate relationships. But that thought, again, affected areas of my life. So it’s just really figuring out what is that message, and I talk a ton about the stories that we tell ourselves, and cognitive restructuring, and how do we change that thought. Because 99.9% of the things that we tell ourselves are from us which shapes our behaviors. So I was in this car accident two weeks ago and I’ve been in a ton of pain, and if I’m like, Oh, this is never going to get better, this is it, blah, blah, blah, my behavior would have been to stay in bed for the last two weeks. But I have to reprogram that brain even though I’m in immense pain to say, no, this is just today, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. So it’s really diving deep to rediscover who you are. I talk a lot about that in my book, because anytime we go through something that’s life changing, whether it be a career health, relationships, we have to go through that rediscovery process because we change. So that means our values and the things that we think about ourselves change. So it’s really, really getting comfortable with yourself, and unapologetically owning who you are, and doing that difficult work.

“99.9% of the things that we tell ourselves are from us, which shapes our behaviors.” - Megan Fenyoe Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Yeah, you’re a cognitive behavioral therapist, and it shows, and it shows, I am too basically. I mean, I understand explicitly how and what your thinking processes on this, but can you tell us a little bit about your movement that you’re doing with the I’m good enough because I really want people to hear that.

Megan Fenyoe: Yes. Which is definitely based on a CBT, cognitive behavioral scale pattern called grounding. So yes. So once the book came out, you know, I had to really learn to be comfortable with being vulnerable. And those authenticity, and vulnerability, and integrity, those are my top values that I rediscovered when I was going through my trauma work. So I wanted to give back after the book, because that was a huge thing for me to start telling my story all over the world, and all of that. So about six months ago, I was like, okay, what else can I do to give back? And I teach a lot about with my patients, and my coaching clients, visual coping skills, which is a CBT skill, and how this goes into the cognitive restructuring and retraining your brain. So I created these cards, and it just says on the front I Am Enough. And then on the back it has the word BECAUSE with three lines, and people can order these cards, they’re absolutely free. And what I tell people is to write why they believe that they’re enough. Even if they can’t think of anything, I’m enough because I got out of bed this morning. Starting somewhere, and then read that card over, and over, and over again. When you find yourself saying something negative to yourself, because what happens is with visual coping skills, when we see something and reread it over and over again, it’s going to distract our mind from the negative right and focus on what we’re reading. So people can order these cards, you get five of them for free. I launched it six months ago, and cards had been sent to 25 States and 12 countries. Meaning that I didn’t just send them to people that I know, people organically have heard about the movement and I’ve gone to the website, have placed their order, I have people ordering them for kids, for their families, other therapists ordering for their clients, schools, I mean, anything. I’ve got one lady that literally orders them and she gives them out to homeless people, and it’s just a way to give back. My passion and my purpose is to empower everyone to believe that they are enough. So it’s pretty awesome. Actually just yesterday, I was on one of the San Diego news stations, so I do a lot of news, TV, and radio sharing the movement. It just became a nonprofit last week so I’m super, super excited about that. So yeah, we have shirts and people will send me selfies of them holding the I Am Enough card, and then they get their own day on Instagram, just showing the world, and more importantly themselves that they are enough. So it’s really exciting.

Art Costello: Yeah. And you can’t place enough value on having people believe that they are enough, because just that simple belief that you’re enough can do immense things in your life. One of the things I do is I start to have my clients make their bed in the morning, the first thing they do when they get up. So if you can’t find something to think you’re good enough about, you can say I am good enough because I made my bed.

Megan Fenyoe: Yes, I heard that when I was active duty. It was commencement speech that someone–

Art Costello: University of Texas.

Megan Fenyoe: Yes. And it was an Admiral, right, that said that. So I use it all the time too with my patients, it’s so funny.

Art Costello: I heard it way, way, way before that. Well, in the Marine Corps, I mean, because we had all kinds of different people come into the Marine Corps and bootcamp, a lot of guys don’t know how to make a bed, and don’t know how to make a tight, I can tell you this as a truth. I have made my bed every single day since July 21st in 65, the day that I went to bootcamp at Parris Island, South Carolina. It gives you a feeling of accomplishment, first thing in the morning, but it builds discipline. It builds this discipline, and I cannot get up out of a bed and not make it.

Megan Fenyoe: Right.

Art Costello: We can present a problem when you’re married, your wife is still in the bed. I mean my wife, my late wife used to think that I was OCD because the minute I get up out of the bed, it’s gotta be made, but there’s a lot of benefits to it. So I encourage people to start that behavior. You have five steps to your program, can you briefly tell us about them, meaning you have to tell them briefly. Can you tell us about it?

Megan Fenyoe: I never thought that, I mean, these five steps, I really didn’t know if I was going to use them with my coaching clients and with my mental health patients. But I actually ended up using them a lot, because these five steps that I developed were steps that I went through while I was going through my own trauma work. So that my book was written in five months, so February, 2018 until May, 2018, the exact same time that I was doing my trauma work. It’s all heart and soul that book, and it’s my saving grace because that was what got me through it. So those steps were steps that I was actually going through while I was writing the book. So the first step is, and what I should say to you is, what I like about the book is that we’ve all read self help books, right? And I’ve done underlining, and then like written in the margins and all that stuff. And then I put it in my dresser, and my bookshelf, and don’t look at it again. What I wanted this book to be was for people to actually start doing the work on themselves because the I’m not good enough mindset is such a worldwide epidemic, it’s crazy. So I pose questions at the end of each chapter with places to journal so that people can actually start doing this work. So the first step is discovering your true self, which is what I had talked about earlier. It’s the first step that you have to do, the deep dive. It’s learning the radical acceptance, it’s redefining your values, and who you are now because of what you’ve gone through. So there’s some questions in there to kinda help get you thinking about who you are today and really closing that door of who you were before this, whatever happened to you. And once you start working through rediscovering yourself, you’re able to start visualizing this life that maybe you never thought of. So for me, I was rediscovering myself and then all of a sudden I started visualizing like, well, I guess I have a story. I can see myself on stages, I can see myself not working full time at a hospital for someone else, but working full time for myself and being in control of my schedule, and still being able to give back. So that for me was so exciting because I guarantee you if I was married or hadn’t, or still been at the hospital and hadn’t done my work, my trauma work, I would just probably just be doing the same old mediocre thing, right? So for me, I wanted more.

“You have to deep-dive. It's learning the radical acceptance. It's redefining your values and who you are now because of what you've gone through.” - Megan Fenyoe Click To Tweet

And that first step led me into step two, which is visualizing your passion and purpose. So I give you some visual tools and exercises to do to start that process. And then of course step three is ground in yourself, which is a CBT thing. So I love this chapter because we all use grounding skills and we might not even think about it. So it’s all about physical, mental, and soothing grounding skills. So you’ve now kind of rediscovered who you are and you’re starting to visualize this life. But those negative thoughts still come in, right? Maybe it’s the superhero mindset, or the I’m not good enough mindset, or the waiting to be happy mindset. There’s all these different types of mindsets that we struggle with, how do we ground that? How do we ground those thoughts so that we can continue to push forward and create the life that we want without having those negative thoughts keep us stuck. Because I’ll give you tons of tools and all of that stuff for that. And then step four is creating your strength plan. So for therapists, we have treatment plans, right? Well this is like a treatment plan, but it’s a strength plan. So it includes all of your self care, all of time management. Hours you have to work, family stuff, dinner, when are you going to eat lunch, dinner, breakfast, when are you going to do your self care? All of the things that you need to have as a plan to be able to continue creating this life for yourself. And then step five is strengthening your healthy habits. So this really talks about complacency where, when life starts going good, we stop doing maybe our self care or our grounding skills, whether that be meditation, gratitude lists, breathing, our therapeutic breathing, whatever. Because life is going good, and we’re like, okay, we got this, it’s good, but then something else happens. Because it’s life, life is crazy. We find ourselves falling apart, and maybe getting stuck again. And so step five really talks about how to avoid complacency, and it talks about accountability. Finding your, what I love to call strength tribe. Who is that? Who are those people that are going to keep you accountable? Good, bad and ugly, keeping you accountable and stuff. So those are the five steps.

“Continue to push forward and create the life that we want without having those negative thoughts that keep us stuck.” - Megan Fenyoe Click To Tweet

And I always like to tell people too, just because you get through the five doesn’t mean that you’re not going to find yourself back in one again, or two again, or three, whatever. Because life is always changing. So those are the steps. Just the brief overview, but it’s pretty exciting. I love watching patients go through this because the first step, 9 out of 10, they’ll come back to me, and they’re like, I’m not ready for this. And I had a lot of friends that read my book when it came out and they were like, Whoa, Megan, I am not ready to do step one. And I’m like, that’s okay. It’s totally okay. It’s hard work. It’s hard work to actually get inside your brain and figure all this crap out that we have. But when people do take that first step, I mean, the transformations that I have seen have just been phenomenal and it’s so exciting.

Art Costello: Yeah. You know as well as I do that we have a lot of clients and patients, whatever you want to call them, come to us and say, I want you to fix me. What I love about what you’re doing is you’re making them do the work to fix themselves. And that is so important because, one of my big identifying things with people that I work with is I asked the question, do you expect me to fix you, or do you expect you to fix you? Because if they tell me they expect me to fix them, I’ll tell them that I can’t, the only person that can ever fix you is yourself.

Megan Fenyoe: Yup.

Art Costello: You’re you, and our experiences are so different. Let me ask you this question, what role do you think expectations play in any of your–

Megan Fenyoe: I like this question. I’ve never been asked this question actually. I love it when I get new questions.

Art Costello: Well, my expertise is in expectations.

Megan Fenyoe: Yeah, I think expectations from others keep us stuck a lot. Because I think we, it was funny that you had just said that the part where you are encouraging others to do their own work, because the word that came up for me was codependency. Because I think as a therapist, we struggle with that sometimes. Are we being too codependent? Are we helping them too much? So I think that codependency part also falls in with expectations from others. So if we’re trying to live up to everyone else’s expectations, we are falling short of taking care of us first. So I really think expectations from others can keep us stuck or really in that negative mindset. Expectations from ourselves, I think for me, and I again, I see it both ways because I have clients that have great expectations. They don’t know how to get to that point, but I know for me, my expectations for myself are motivating for me.

Art Costello: Because you’ve learned to manage your expectations, and that’s what I teach. I teach people how to manage their expectations because as I said before, we see them in two lenses, either faith or fear, either stops us or starts us, and everything stops or starts with an expectation. I always challenge people, tell me one thing you do that is not based on an expectation. We do not take any moves or make any moves without expecting. And I don’t care if it’s breathing, because what I do with people who say I don’t have expectations, I’ll tell them: “Take your right hand and put it over your nose, your left hand and put it over your mouth, and clamp down this.” “I can’t do that.” And I say: “Why?” “Well, I can’t breathe.” You have an expectation to breathe, it’s as basic as that. And when people learn how to manage them, it really, really makes a huge difference in their lives. And I happen to agree with you, don’t live to your expectations, not to the expectations. You give all your power away as a human being. When you live to the expectations of other people, you will never find happiness.

You give all your power away as a human being when you live to the expectations of other people. You will never find happiness.” - Art Costello Click To Tweet

Megan Fenyoe: Exactly right. Yes.

Art Costello: There’s my speech.

Megan Fenyoe: I love it. I love it. I love it.

Art Costello: So we’re heading towards our last 5 or 10 minutes together, and I hate to say that that’s true, because I really enjoy our conversation, really good. But I want to give people the opportunity to hear any of your last thoughts, and then where they can get ahold of you, what you have coming up, what you’re doing, and then we’ll close it out. But I’m going to have you back.

Megan Fenyoe: Yes, I love it too.

Art Costello: I want to do this again.

Megan Fenyoe: Yes. I’m just starting, I mean, it’s like in the early stages, my second book, so it’s very early. I don’t have a date of when I want it written, now that the movement’s becoming a nonprofit, that’s really where my focus is. But for anyone that’s interested in reaching out to me, that’s what I love. That is why I do what I do. I want to hear your story, I want to be there to support you however I can. Because if it’s someone that is really struggling with narcissistic abuse or abusive relationships, and they want to talk to someone, and they feel comfortable talking to me, then that’s all I want. If it’s that first step, so again, like no, like I’m not going to make you start working with me or anything like that. I always have to put that out there because I want to make sure that people are safe, and that they’re able to start doing the work without having to be afraid of calling someone because they’re going to try to trap them into sessions or whatever. So I would like to get back, but excited about the movement. Got a lot of interviews coming up, speaking engagements coming up, if you’re interested in ordering the cards, you can either go to two different websites. You can go to my website which is meganfenyoe.com, there you can order the cards. I’ve also had a ton of free downloads on there, the five step checklist, which is kind of like a summary of the steps and some grounding skills, and all kinds of different stuff that are absolutely free, and some video training. You can also go to iamenoughmovement.info, you can also order the cards there. You can see the Instagram page with the selfies, you can order the shirts and a bunch of the other interviews. I am going to be launching, I’m an FTV, so super excited about that. It’s going to be available on Roku, and that should actually be launching in the next week or two. And I am interviewing amazing, inspiring people, mainly women, but we do have a couple of guys having on the show, which I’m super excited about, just talking about what it means for them to be enough, and sharing how they move from their struggles into their strengths. So super excited about that. Yeah, and I’m kind of known as I am enough girl. I walk around San Diego with my microphone, and my shirt, and interview people about what it means for them to be enough like complete strangers. So you can see those on a website, it’s kinda cool because, that for me took some strength there because that was very, very difficult. It’s like walking up to random strangers, but it was really cool to see the outcome of what people have been saying.

Art Costello: Well, that’s great that you could overcome that because that’s a fear. I mean, that’s a fear of talking to people.

Megan Fenyoe: Yeah.

Art Costello: Well, with that being said, we’re going to have to say goodbye, but I want to encourage my audience to reach out to Megan and the work she’s doing, and if you’re feeling you really can identify with what she said, I want you to most definitely reach out and touch her. She’s got a great heart, she’s got a great smile, she’s got beautiful blue eyes, so now all eyes will be calling us, she is a super person, and she really has your best interest at heart.

Megan Fenyoe: Thank you so much.

Art Costello: No, you’re welcome. Everybody knows where they can get ahold of me, expectationtherapy.com, and I will let Heather White take us out of here.

 

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