What if the patterns you struggle with today… aren’t who you are?

In this episode of Tammy’s Takes, Tammy builds on her powerful conversation with David Latour to explore how growing up in dysfunction shapes your behaviors, beliefs, and identity—but doesn’t have to define your future.

If you’ve ever found yourself saying, “this is just who I am,” whether it’s anxiety, reactivity, overthinking, or difficulty trusting others, this episode will help you understand where those patterns come from—and how to start changing them.

Tammy breaks down the difference between identity and learned behavior and shares a simple, practical tool you can use right now to shift out of old patterns and into new choices.

Because you are not your past…

You are someone who adapted to it—and you can learn something new.

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As an international inspirational speaker, NLP Practitioner, Trauma-Informed Coach, Neurofit Trainer, and Best-Selling Author, I bring both deep personal experience and professional training to the work I do. I believe in prevention, not just intervention — and use a body, mind, and spirit approach to guide others toward becoming the happiest, healthiest versions of themselves.

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welcome back to another episode of

Tammy's Takes where we , take powerful

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conversations with our guests and

turn them into practical strategies

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that you can use right here right now.

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So today's episode is about my

conversation yesterday with David Latour.

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Whoa.

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Powerful, powerful conversation.

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If you listen to it, you

will not be disappointed.

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He talked about so many things that so

many of us hit home with, but you just

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don't know how to talk about and you just

sometimes don't know how to deal with.

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So he talked about growing up in a home

with addiction, chaos, unpredictability,

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being the adult before you were ever

allowed to be a child, honestly.

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And more than that, he talked about

how you feel like you had to hold

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everything together just to survive.

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And one of the things that came up that

I really wanna kind of touch on today,

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because I see this all the time, is

the fact that people believe that what

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happened to them becomes who they are.

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And it's not like that.

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David made a very important point where

he said, "What happened to you may have

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shaped you, but it did not define you.

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" I always say what happened to me

designed me, but not defined me.

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I think that's a little catchier, right?

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But anyway, I wanna go a little deeper

with this today because I hear a lot

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of people literally grabbing this

identity of what happened to them.

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So they, "Tammy, I get it.

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I totally get it.

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" But then they go right back to

saying things like, "I'm anxious.

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I'm reactive.

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I have a short fuse.

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I don't trust people.

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I shut down.

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I overthink everything."

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And they don't even question it.

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It literally has just become who they

are and they're willing to accept that.

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And what I wanna talk about today

is you don't have to do that.

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You don't have to accept that.

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David described in the, episode

something that we see all the time

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with children or adult children

from dysfunctional families.

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When you grew up in that chaos, your

brain creates patterns to survive it.

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So you become hyper

aware or hypervigilant.

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You become ultra responsible or sometimes

you don't become responsible enough.

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You become emotionally attuned,

you learn how to read a room,

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you learn how to handle crisis.

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And those things, they

become your skillset.

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He even talked about how this carried

into his career, being able to handle

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high pressure situations because

nothing felt as intense as it did

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as what he went through as a child.

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But here's the part that most people

miss, and I want you to understand that.

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The same patterns that helped you

survive can also keep you very stuck.

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So I like to call it the identity

trap, because at some point, those

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patterns stop being something that

you can use and they start becoming

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something that you believe you are.

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So instead of saying , "I

learned to react this way," it

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becomes, "This is just who I am."

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And that is the point where people

can literally stay stuck for

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years, sometimes decades, sometimes

their entire lives, and that's not

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what we want for you, my friend.

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Here's what I want you to start doing.

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And it's simple, but powerful.

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I like these tips and tricks and

things that you can implement

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right now, right here, right?

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The next time you notice yourself

saying something like, "I'm just an

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anxious person," or, "I'm just bad at

relationships," or, "I'm just completely

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reactive, or I'm just like my parents."

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I want you to pause and I want

you to change that sentence.

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So shift the language.

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So instead of saying, "I am,"

I want you to say, "I learn to.

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" So instead of saying, "I'm

an anxious person," just say,

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"Hey, I learned to act anxious."

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Instead of saying, "I shut down all

the time," say, "I learn to shut

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down when things get stressful."

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Instead of saying, "I'm a reactive

person, saying I learn to react

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when things get stressful."

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And instead of saying, "I, I'm

mistrustful or distrustful," just

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say, "I learned not to trust people.

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" Because when you say, "I am," feels

permanent, feels like who you are.

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And when you say, "I learned

to, " then all of a sudden it

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becomes changeable because we all

know if you can learn something,

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you can certainly unlearn it, right?

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So you're adding choice, because now if

you learn something, you can make the

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choice to learn something different.

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That one shift literally will move you

from identity to awareness to possibility.

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So instead of saying, "I'm

an anxious person," say to

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yourself, "I learn to be anxious.

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And if I learn to be anxious,

I can learn to undo that.

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I can learn not to do that.

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And why does this work?

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Let's talk about why it works."

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Because your brain is

wired to protect identity.

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If you believe this is who I

am, your brain will defend it.

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It will find every opportunity

in the world to make sure that

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you know this is who you are.

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But if you see it as something different,

if you see it as, "This is something

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I learn," your brain becomes open to

change, and that is what is so important.

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This is why the conversation with

David matters so much, because yes,

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what he went through shaped him.

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And let me tell you, if you did not listen

to the episode, I want you to go back.

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He, wrote a book and he wrote a

book all about his life as a child

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and the life of, like, kind of the

drug world, but from a child's lens.

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And I can't wait to

get the book, actually.

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I'm gonna put the link in the show notes

in this episode as well, because I think

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it's very important that people that grew

up in this kind of chaos understand that

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they are not alone because, yes, this

did shape him, but it also shaped him

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in a good way, and it taught him things

that he might not have ever learned

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had he been in this situation, right?

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It gave him resilience, it gave

him awareness, it gave him the

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ability to handle pressure, but it

didn't define the rest of his life.

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And I think that's the

important part to focus on here.

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It's really the part I want you to

hear because you are not your past.

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You are not your trauma.

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You are whatever you decide to be next.

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And I always talk, and you've probably,

if you've listened to this podcast, you've

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heard me say a million times that the way

you were born was joyous and beautiful

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and divine, and then life happened,

and people told you differently, and it

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changed the way you looked at the world.

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But again, your brain is so resilient,

and your brain is so pliable.

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Like, it's so bendable and so changeable,

and anything that got wired, if it got

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wired the way you don't like it, you can

do whatever you have to do to unwire it.

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I promise you, my friends, this

is actually the work that I do

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with my clients every single day.

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I help you separate who you are

from what you learned, because who

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you are is this amazing, beautiful,

divine, joyous creature, and what

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you learned are things that happen

because of what happened to you.

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So once you can see a pattern, once

you can identify a pattern, you

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can learn to change the pattern.

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So if you're listening and you're

thinking this, right now, you're

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sitting here and you're listening and

you're thinking, "Oh my God, this is

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so me, " then book a call with me.

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It's a confidence and calm call and

we talk about whatever you wanna

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talk about, but we'll talk about

mostly what the patterns are that

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you see showing up in your life and

how you're still operating from them.

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And let's see if we can get to the bottom

of it and let's see what your next steps

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are, whether it's with me or whatever

it is, your next step to being the most

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joyous, happy, beautiful, divine creature

that you were put on this earth to be,

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not the one that is running from these

subconscious programming patterns and

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habits from stuff that other people

told you, stuff that you saw, stuff

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that you witnessed, stuff that should

never have been part of your life.

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So remember this, you are not broken, you

are patterned and patterns can change.

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So until the next one, I will see you

back and hopefully you got something

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from this and hopefully you can make

just that one small shift because

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guys, healing does not happen in a day.

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It happens tiny little moments at a

time over and over and over again with

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implementing the things you learn.

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So you have a blessed day

and we will see you back.

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I