23: Why Dysfunctional Can Feel Comfortable

[00:00:00] Shanenn Bryant: Today's guest has a lot of experience getting people to take charge and conquer fear. In fact, you've written four books on anxiety, anger, emotions, and I know that you've been invited to speak what, 10 or 11 times at the Anxiety Disorders of America? Welcome, Reneau Peurifoy. 

[00:00:25] Reneau Peurifoy: Yeah, thank you.

[00:00:26] Shanenn Bryant: I'm so looking forward to this conversation because with jealousy, we certainly have anxiety, fear, anger, all of those different things come up at different points or sometimes at the same time. And it's really hard for us to control those. And then of course we behave in certain ways that then typically we're later embarrassed about.

[00:00:55] Shanenn Bryant: So, we're all ears. How do we control these? 

[00:00:59] Reneau Peurifoy: Well, first, let's, talk about what, what we're talking about cause we're talking about threat. Uh, Jealousy, envy. You know, those things all get mixed together. They're actually a little bit different, uh, but they're based on threat. 

[00:01:12] Reneau Peurifoy: With jealousy, you have insecurity, and you have mistrust, and so you're threatened by others. The threat is somebody, or something's gonna take away something that's mine. And typically, uh, people that are very jealous they, you know, it comes from childhood, you know, your childhood environment. 

[00:01:32] Reneau Peurifoy: Sometimes you have a parent that was very jealous, and so it's modeled. You know, sometimes you come out of an environment where there was no trust, and you were insecure because you never knew when the next shoe was gonna drop. And so you're always on guard and you're always watching. That just becomes part of your core response pattern. Uh, and so that's something you carry into adulthood.

[00:01:52] Reneau Peurifoy: Your mind when you're born is kind of a blank slate and you have some core emotional responses. And then as you start to experience things and as you start to be able to think about stuff your mind starts to develop associations, and then these associations are always going on at an unconscious level.

[00:02:10] Reneau Peurifoy: What is safe? What is not safe? What is good? What is bad? And by the time you get to be at adulthood, you just got thousands and thousands of these associations with, you know, good and bad, you know, positive, negative things in your environment, and that's what triggers your, your anxiety. 

[00:02:25] Reneau Peurifoy: If you've grown up in an environment where you are not safe, where you are insecure, where uh, people are not trustworthy, then that's just all you're carrying into the adulthood world.

[00:02:36] Reneau Peurifoy: Now, to change that is difficult, it takes time. And you never completely get rid of it all. I mean, old patterns will reemerge, typically when you're sick, hungry, tired, really stressed out. Uh, and that's when the cognitive part of your brain kind of is not working very well. And so those older patterns will start to emerge at those times.

[00:02:59] Reneau Peurifoy: And oftentimes when you're starting to see some old patterns come up, it, it is just a message. You know, you are a sick, hungry, tired, stressed out. There's some stuff going on in your life that maybe I need to look at and take care of because I thought I had that conquered, but now it's coming back up and instead of saying, oh my gosh, I'm back to, you know, square one and everything I've done has been useless, just take it as a message. 

[00:03:19] Reneau Peurifoy: Well, you know, there's some stuff in my life that maybe I need to address and maybe it's just, it's simply that I'm just really doing too many things that I'm too stressed out, and I think that's an important thing to consider. 

[00:03:30] Shanenn Bryant: You know, that's one of the places I think that those that are trying to overcome jealousy in their relationship get really hung up on, because they will try all of these different things and sometimes try them all at once, right?

[00:03:44] Shanenn Bryant: And so, they have a lot going on. And then if something doesn't work or one of the things doesn't work, it's sort of that like, ugh. That didn't work and, and I give up, right? But I think there's a lot more to consider of what's going on when we're trying to do those things. 

[00:04:02] Reneau Peurifoy: And a lot of times, uh, people that are jealous have a lot of, should/must rules, you know, they have oftentimes an exaggerated need for things to be fair or possibly a vendetta kind of mentality.

[00:04:15] Reneau Peurifoy: You know, if somebody does something, they deserve to be punished. So those things frequently get into it as well. And, and again, those are oftentimes messages that develop during childhood, oftentimes because parents had 'em or because that's just the way they responded to the stuff that was going on at that time.

[00:04:32] Reneau Peurifoy: So, you know, the other difficult thing is that a lot of times a person coming from that type of environment will choose a mate or have friends, not trustworthy. So, a lot of their fears are actually founded in reality. The whole idea of mate selection is interesting because we choose people, unconsciously.

[00:04:54] Reneau Peurifoy: Uh, you can take somebody, uh, from a dysfunctional background, let's take a lady and she's in a room with, you know, 20, 30 guys, and within, a half hour, if not sooner, she'll be talking to all the dysfunctional guys. Now at first everybody's presenting well, so on the surface you don't know who's who.

[00:05:12] Reneau Peurifoy: But what's going on is at an unconscious level. She gets around people that come from a healthy environment, they have appropriate boundaries, appropriate disclosure, that type of stuff, and they feel funny. They don't match that internal experience of what's familiar, what's predictable. She gets around the people from dysfunctional backgrounds and they're giving off signals, and they're acting in ways that feel familiar at an unconscious level.

[00:05:38] Reneau Peurifoy: And again, none of this stuff is usually registering consciously. It's, it's more of a kind of a, a gut feeling, unconscious response to these people. And that's, so at that moment, everything seems okay, but then the true natures come out down the road, right? 

[00:05:54] Reneau Peurifoy: Well, and Reno, I'd have to argue I think we do it probably earlier than 30 minutes

[00:06:00] Reneau Peurifoy: I feel like we do it right away. I'm just kidding. But I feel like I could always spot the bad ones. 

[00:06:06] Reneau Peurifoy: Yeah. Well, I, I try to be generous. 

[00:06:07] Reneau Peurifoy: So Yeah. So why is that? And you're saying 

[00:06:14] Shanenn Bryant: on an unconscious level? Yeah. But why is that? What is that draw? 

[00:06:19] Reneau Peurifoy: Well, we always want something that's familiar and predictable.

[00:06:25] Reneau Peurifoy: May not necessarily be comfortable, but we like predictability. Uh, things that are not predictable, unsettle us. So being around people and things that are predictable may not be the nicest thing in the world, but at least I know what's gonna happen. I know what I'm dealing with. I know how to respond to it.

[00:06:42] Reneau Peurifoy: I get around people where I'm just totally out a fish out of water and that's really threatening to me. So I'd rather be in something that's predictable.  Once you kinda understand that it's going on, now you can start to desensitize yourself to those things. And you know, when you work with phobias and anxiety and stuff, people have different things they avoid, and you go through a process of desensitization.

[00:07:04] Reneau Peurifoy: You, you start with simple things they avoid. You come up with tools for managing the symptoms, self-talk, things of that nature, and you go out and you start exposing yourself. And one of the things that you have to do if you've got a history of hanging around people that are not trustworthy and having a lot of jealousy and anger and, and all that other type of stuff is, is you have to identify some people that are trustworthy and healthy and hang around 'em.

[00:07:30] Reneau Peurifoy: And I know when I've talked with people and clients, you know, when people first start doing that, the number one complaint, you probably already know this, is they are so boring, right? There's absolutely no drama or excitement in their life. They're just so even keel and everything's so smooth. You know? I don't know how to deal with that.

[00:07:49] Reneau Peurifoy: It just, it's, it's, it's unsettling to me. It's boring. 

[00:07:52] Shanenn Bryant: I just talked about that in a recent episode about, well, I was actually guesting on someone else's podcast, and I said I would be in these relations, you know, I did relationships with, bad men and great men and the great ones I was so bored. Yeah.

[00:08:09] Shanenn Bryant: Because, you know, when I was going through this and really struggling and, and trying to heal, but not knowing that, like, that boredom was a good thing. 

[00:08:18] Reneau Peurifoy: Yeah. You, you have to literally desensitize yourself to normal, to healthy relationships. And if you stick with it, after about six months or so, usually it starts to feel good.

[00:08:31] Reneau Peurifoy: Uh, and, and you have to just remind yourself that, okay, this feels boring and uninteresting because I'm used to not dealing with intimacy. Instead, I'm used to dealing with drama. I'm used to always having stuff going on. So, there's always something, and, and tender feelings for me are threatening. And, and again, it's like, um, oh, if you have a parent who every time you try to get close to them, that's the thing that a child wants more than anything else, right? To be close to the parent. And every time you try to do that, the parent distances themselves, then there gets to be an association between intimacy and danger. 

[00:09:07] Reneau Peurifoy: And so now as an adult, you start to get close to somebody and you create distance. And you know, I've had clients all the time say, well, I don't understand it. It was just getting good. And then I pushed that person away. You know, I created problems and then we and eventually broke up. 

[00:09:24] Reneau Peurifoy: And it's because intimacy has been associated with danger. And so you have to literally desensitized intimacy, and it is unsettling at first. It's kind of just the same as somebody who's having panic attacks and has trouble going into the grocery store or anything else.

[00:09:39] Reneau Peurifoy: They have to go through a process of desensitization. Understanding that and understanding that what I really want more than anything else is to have an honest relationship with people with some true intimacy and friendships, whatever you want, at various levels. But that's really at my inner core what satisfies. Drama keeps me distracted, but it doesn't really satisfy. Right, 

[00:10:03] Shanenn Bryant: Right. You know, you talked about if we were searching for a partner and there are things you know, that we can do or try to do so that we're seeking out those that are more secure and not filled with the drama. but I think a lot of the listeners are probably already in a relationship with someone, and it could be that there's no evidence of cheating or infidelity or something like that, but we just carry that jealousy regardless, right? It's just something that we carry with us and we're already in a relationship. Could be with a great, secure person, maybe not.

[00:10:44] Shanenn Bryant: If we're already in that relationship, what are things that we can do then you know, outside, we're not, we're not gonna be jumping to finding a new one probably? 

[00:10:57] Reneau Peurifoy: Well, one of the things that I would do is, in fact, uh, I have something very similar to that in, the anger book where people do what I call a summary sheet, and it's got four parts.

[00:11:07] Reneau Peurifoy: And the first part is, why am I doing this? Why am I like that? Why is this an issue? That doesn't change anything. So much of our psychology and self-help books are insight oriented, and that's good to understand. Understanding doesn't change anything. However, I found it's important because people do a lot of, I don't understand, why am I acting this way? How come I keep doing this? And so you need to have a quick answer so that you can now get onto what am I gonna do about it? Right? 

[00:11:35] Reneau Peurifoy: And so for example, it might be, well, I grew up in a household where my dad was very jealous and now I'm modeling after that person or whatever. You know, it varies from person to person.

[00:11:43] Reneau Peurifoy: So, you get that out of the way on the summary sheet. And the second thing is you identify specific places where I tend to be jealous. I get jealous when somebody looks at my partner. I get jealous when they're out with their friends and I start to interrogate him or her. So you come up with those specific situations and then you now have to develop both self-talk to tell yourself and some new behaviors.

[00:12:07] Reneau Peurifoy: So self-talk might be things, and again, this, this really becomes very individualized for the person, but it might be that my partner has never done anything that really has been inappropriate. Uh, so my feelings, based on reality, are inaccurate based on reality. My partner is faithful to me.

[00:12:26] Reneau Peurifoy: Uh, he or she does, treat me with respect and I have no conscious or observable reason to suspect her to be unfaithful or to be doing things I don't want. These are just feelings from the past. It's what I call 'what's happened, What's real? I'm responding to my partner as if she or he is those people in my family in the past, she's not or he's not.

[00:12:51] Reneau Peurifoy: Um, she's reliable. She comes from a different place. So stuff like that, uh, that you can tell yourself and then try to develop some behaviors. Okay. In the past, my partner would come home, and I would start to do an interrogation. Okay, a new behavior. The opposite of that would be my partner comes home and I say, oh, did you have a good time?

[00:13:10] Reneau Peurifoy: And if they choose to share things, fine. If they don't, fine as well. I can practice complimenting. Oftentimes people that are jealous are very poor at complimenting so I can practice giving compliments to my partner, to my friends at work or whatever. Uh, you know, genuine compliments, not just, that's a good job, but finding something specific that was positive and saying something about.

[00:13:31] Reneau Peurifoy: All for of your negative behaviors try to find an opposite positive that you can start to practice, and you'll be real good at that on days when you're feeling good and on days when you're not feeling good, you'll be less, uh, well doing those things. 

[00:13:47] Reneau Peurifoy: So yeah, those are the four areas. So why am I like this way? What are some things I can tell myself? Where does it come up? And, what are some things I can do that are different? 

[00:13:57] Shanenn Bryant: Well, I'm so glad that you said practice because that is one of the things that, I kind of preach on when people are trying to overcome this jealousy because we want that quick fix.

[00:14:08] Shanenn Bryant: We want things to change right now and when it doesn't, we get really disappointed in ourselves. We get disappointed in the process and that's when we tend to give up. And so I'm always like, you have to go with a mindset of I'm practicing it. 

[00:14:23] Reneau Peurifoy: Exactly. We live in a culture of instant gratification. Have it your way. Have it now. Again, you've, if you've been jealous for, 20, 30 years, that's a lot of practicing, a lot of unconscious habit patterns that you've built into your unconscious. So, the change that takes time. Now it does get better. You know, but you'll, you know, even, 20 years from now you may find, uh, an odd situation comes up and some of the old stuff comes up.

[00:14:51] Reneau Peurifoy: And so the other thing with jealousy, like with anger in general, since jealousy is a form of, you know, threat and threat is based on anger, is to learn not to respond immediately. You need to put some time between that initial emotion and your response so that you have a time for the conscious part of your brain to kick in and say, well, is where is this coming from?

[00:15:13] Reneau Peurifoy: Is this just that old past, program being run? Or is this something that's actually going on in the here and now? Uh, and that's hard to do. And again, that's something you need to practice is to just close your mouth and wait before you respond. 

[00:15:28] Shanenn Bryant: Oh yeah. Cuz those come up really quick. 

[00:15:31] Reneau Peurifoy: Yep. And intensely. 

[00:15:32] Shanenn Bryant: And intense yeah. And it's very intense and I think that it's probably one of the hardest things when we first start out is just like I want to explode right now. 

[00:15:45] Reneau Peurifoy: And one of the myths that keeps that going is I can't help myself. It's just the way I am. The reality is, as an adult, you can control your emotions.

[00:15:55] Reneau Peurifoy: If you're in a court setting or some guys got a gun on you, you know, robbery setting or whatever, those emotions are all gonna be kept in check very well. We can control ourselves as an adult. Uh, we just have a history of not practicing it. So you need to practice that. 

[00:16:14] Shanenn Bryant: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Cuz it does feel very out of control and almost like I have no control over what I'm saying or what I'm doing in the moment. 

[00:16:26] Shanenn Bryant: But with practice, you know, the control gets easier, and you'll have successes and you'll have failures, uh, especially early on. And that's just part of the learning curve.

[00:16:35] Shanenn Bryant: Whenever you learn anything, you don't do it perfectly out of the gate. You know, you, you apply the information, you apply the stuff, some of the stuff works and then something comes up and it kind of gets a fly in the ointment. 

[00:16:46] Reneau Peurifoy: You gotta go back and reassess and rework some of the stuff, especially when you're working with things that you can tell yourself and things that you can do opposite from the old behavior. Those are really difficult at first. 

[00:17:00] Shanenn Bryant: You know, I talked earlier that you have done a lot of talks on anxiety and have a wide knowledge base on anxiety and hat is certainly something very strong with people that have jealousy. You almost feel like you're just on edge, anxious every minute of the day.

[00:17:27] Shanenn Bryant: Do you have some tips for us on how to relieve some of that anxiety? 

[00:17:32] Reneau Peurifoy: Well, and that's again, that insecurity that comes from childhood. Often coming from a very insecure childhood, in terms of your relationships with your parents and oftentimes if it's real severe, there's techniques like EMDR, I, I have found that works really well, to go back and reframe.

[00:17:52] Reneau Peurifoy: Basically, you're just reconstituting some of those emotions because when you have trauma, whether it's a big trauma or a little trauma as a childhood, it gets encapsulated. You can think of and when something triggers that response, it's like the conscious part of your brain shuts off. 

[00:18:09] Reneau Peurifoy: Things like a brain spotting or EMDR, what they do is they start to reconnect the conscious part of your mind with those unconscious responses. And you basically go through the standard things with any kind of trauma. You know, what happened in the past is in the past. It's not current. You're a different person now.

[00:18:29] Reneau Peurifoy: You have tools and skills that you can use now that you didn't have in the past. And then you do some rehearsal of those things, uh, using like the EMDR or one of the other techniques that are currently out there. 

[00:18:40] Shanenn Bryant: Can you talk a little bit more about the EMDR? Y ou know, what is it, what is it stand for, and kind of that process? There is a lot of talk about that being successful for people who are jealous. 

[00:18:52] Reneau Peurifoy: Right? Because it works with any kind of PTSDs type of stuff, and jealousy has an element of that into it, right? Uh, it stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. And so essentially, they have very fancy, little wands and lightbars and stuff, but I used to be very low tech, just, have people start tracking eye movement back and forth.

[00:19:13] Reneau Peurifoy: And then you tell the person, I want you to think about, uh, some incident that's related to whatever the issue is. And what'll happen is they'll cascade through a series of emotional responses that are connected, not necessarily in a logical way, but in an emotional way. 

[00:19:34] Reneau Peurifoy: So maybe there'll be threat or there might be insecure incidences that'll come up and then you go back, and you reframe those with those things that we're talking about: that's in the past, this person's not like your people you're around right now. And when it's over, when it's done well, and again, I need to emphasize when it's done well because a lot of people don't do the rehearsal at the end.

[00:19:54] Reneau Peurifoy: Typically, what I would do is after we would get all the issues clarified, is then we would have them rehearse their tools. Imagine themselves in a situation where those old feelings come up, they use their self-talk and other tools, and they visualize themselves as being successful with them. And that's another way of kind of rehearsing before you're actually into the situation mentally, and it helps to, again, reinforce those skills.

[00:20:19] Reneau Peurifoy: On a brain level, we don't know what's going on. Uh, I know, uh, Panksepp, who did a lot of the effect of neurobiology, he thought that the circuits for a lot of your memory and some of those fear emotions are very close to the visual circuits. And so he thought that somehow doing the eye movement, which is also tied into what's called the seeking circuit which, all mammals, if you look at any baby mammal, they wanna explore their environment. That's actually an emotional response that we have. I never thought about that until I started doing this research. Even babies, they're pushed. Just like you're, you're thirsty, you want water. If you're hungry, you want food.

[00:20:59] Reneau Peurifoy: You know, they have that urge to go out and explore the environment and it's how mammals find resources and danger and stuff like that. It's a seeking. And so somehow when you're doing the eye movements, that seems to be stimulating that seeking circuit. It helps you to reconstitute that memory. So the memory doesn't go away. It's just that with practice and with this type of technique, the emotional response gets turned down. So instead of being a 10, it might be only about two or three. 

[00:21:28] Reneau Peurifoy: So, yeah, it's a very useful technique I know with PTSD, like soldiers and stuff. It's proved to be very effective or car accidents or whatever.

[00:21:36] Reneau Peurifoy: And of course, if you come from a dysfunctional family, you've got a whole lot of many PTSD experiences, uh, that have all kind of hooked together in your subconscious. Right? 

[00:21:47] Shanenn Bryant: Well, and I love the rehearsal part and I can see why that would be really important cuz it's just like if we would say, well, I've seen CPR done before, could I go through the steps and know exactly how to do it?

[00:21:59] Shanenn Bryant: No. Um, you know. Anyone who isn't trained or rehearsed in it, you're not gonna be able to do that right away. So I like, I like that rehearsal part. 

[00:22:09] Reneau Peurifoy: And I found that that's the piece that sometime is missing with practitioners that aren't as experienced as they don't do that rehearsal at the end and tie it all together.

[00:22:18] Reneau Peurifoy: So the person now has, and again, you wanna do the rehearsal until a person can do it and feel on an emotional level, successful with it. 

[00:22:27] Shanenn Bryant: Well, and the other one that you mentioned I've heard a lot about as well recently is the brain spotting. It's similar but a little bit different, right? Where it's kind of where it's showing up for you?

[00:22:38] Reneau Peurifoy: I never really, trained in that. Uh, I found the EMDR was, for me, a great response. It worked well for me and actually some of the brain spotting came out after I retired from active practice so not gonna spend a lot of money on something you're not gonna use.

[00:22:57] Reneau Peurifoy: Well, you've definitely given us some ways to really take the

[00:23:03] Shanenn Bryant: anxiety piece of it and start doing some work on that. Any other tips, tricks that you have that we could incorporate? 

[00:23:12] Reneau Peurifoy: Well, we talked early on about how hanging around people who come from, you know, healthy loving families feel uncomfortable, right?

[00:23:19] Reneau Peurifoy: Therapy or reading books can only go so far. When you hang around people who are living life appropriately, even though they're uncomfortable, if you can hang around them and, and get a bunch of them in your life, whether that's through a church, an organization, a club, or whatever, find some people like that and just hang in there.

[00:23:39] Reneau Peurifoy: What happens is you start to respond at unconscious level. It's kinda like you start to rewire from the inside out. And that's really important because again, you can only do so much with cognitive learning or even this type of EMDR type of learning. You have to actually hang around people and get used to having something undramatic, but pleasant happen.

[00:24:02] Reneau Peurifoy: You know, just talking about their grandkids and having fun with 'em or their kids or whatever. And being able to see that, yeah, that's an enjoyable thing of being relaxed is actually okay. Cuz again, people who have a lot of drama in their life, a lot of times have difficulty with relaxation.

[00:24:18] Reneau Peurifoy: I know sometimes you'll give them a relaxation response tape or exercise and it actually make them anxious right?. Because that's such a foreign feeling to them. Wow. I'm peaceful. Oh my gosh, this, this can't be right. What's wrong? Because again, at home, when they were little, when things were peaceful, that's when something would happen. So again, there's danger associated with it. 

[00:24:39] Reneau Peurifoy: So, learning to desensitize and these feelings of comfort and peace and, uh, just enjoying somebody, they really can be safe and they can be enjoyable. And after you get over the initial hump, you find that they really are enjoyable, and it really is where life is rich and where life is reward.

[00:24:58] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. It's kinda like getting to that sweet spot of Yeah. Okay. You know, things can still be fun, and I can still have fun in my life but that, that excitement is not coming from drama. 

[00:25:11] Reneau Peurifoy: Yeah. And I can just sit on the back porch with my cat or dog and enjoy my backyard or sunset or something and be peaceful and that's okay.

[00:25:20] Shanenn Bryant: Mm-hmm. Thank you for going back to that because it is so important. I think in the beginning for people who did grow up in that environment, it, it may be hard for them to find those people because they've surrounded themselves, it's their friends that have all of those same things in common cuz that's who they're drawn to and their family and yeah, their partner.

[00:25:44] Shanenn Bryant: And so it probably may be a little bit difficult for them to find those people in the beginning. 

[00:25:50] Reneau Peurifoy: Yeah, they're out there though. And again, a lot of times, like I said, like at a church or an organization, a bicycling club or whatever there are people there that are like that. And, and when you sense, you know, those uninteresting people that you run into, start having lunch with 'em, start, connecting with 'em and make the effort.

[00:26:09] Reneau Peurifoy: Cuz the other problem with that is, you know, people who are come from a healthy background, their dance card is probably full. In old days, you'd have a card you'd take to a dance, and you'd put people's names on it and, and you'd fill it up for the dances, right?  And so if the modern expression of that is they probably already have friends and a social life of their own.

[00:26:29] Reneau Peurifoy: And so when you're trying to move into that social life, a lot of times you've gotta, you know, work on, try several different times before you find some people that really have that dance card open so you can go in and you can interact with them. Because that's the other thing that gets discouraging for people is they'll identify some people that are healthy, but they just don't have time for them.

[00:26:48] Reneau Peurifoy: And so, you know, persist. Uh, there are people out there, there are people where, for one, whenever one reason or another somebody's moved away or whatever, and so now there's an opening on their dance card and you can slip in there and, do that dance with them. It's worth the effort.

[00:27:05] Reneau Peurifoy: And, but again, it's a desensitization process and that's something people have to understand is you're desensitizing yourself to feelings and situations that have been associated with danger in the past. 

[00:27:20] Shanenn Bryant: So, like getting to see that, oh, I've been waiting for the other shoe to fall and it's not falling. You know, like when you're around those other people. And not only maybe their dance card is full, but sometimes people that are secure and healthy, they may have issue with being around someone else that has a lot of that drama in their life. 

[00:27:45] Shanenn Bryant: So, I think that that's, maybe another potential barrier, but a hundred percent there are groups that you can join. There are positive things that you can do to meet those people and kind of experience life through them initially. 

[00:28:00] Reneau Peurifoy: And if you have some other people you know, that are similar to you but are on a growth, pathway, they're actually working on it sometimes that that can be useful. I mean, the truth is that most people don't change because they don't wanna change. But there are people that are on a growth pathway. You know, they do wanna become more self-aware. They do wanna change patterns and sometimes somebody like that makes a good friend as well. 

[00:28:24] Shanenn Bryant: Mm-hmm. Great. Thank you so much for the information today. I really appreciate you being on Jealousy Junkie. 

[00:28:33] Reneau Peurifoy: Well, it's been really rewarding, so thank you.