Keeping the peace around you (and not within you) is self-abandonment

Transcript

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Hi, I am Dr. Sarah. If you don't know who I am, I am a clinical psychologist specializing in helping high achievers heal from toxic relationships and grow self-confidence. So let's get into it, because today we are going to be talking about how it is that you might be trying to keep the peace around you. But you are definitely not keeping the peace inside of you. And actually, even though outside might look okay internally, there is chaos and you are feeling panicked. You are feeling frantic, you are feeling anxious. You are on edge, and you are seeking to feel that peace and security inside of you. The reason why you are working so hard to keep the peace around you is so that you feel okay and safe inside. But somehow it's a relentless rat race and you never get there. So what the heck is going on today? We are going to be talking about all of that to add more. So please stay tuned now. For those of us who are anxiously attached, or in fact if you're avoidant, if you are dismissive, uh, if you are disorganized in terms of your attachment. But the majority of us, about 70% of people who've got an insecure attachment style tends to be anxious. So, you know, I fall into that category, although I half healed. But anyway, most of us. Who are anxiously attached are definitely going to have had this experience where we work incredibly hard to make sure that other people around us are okay to make sure that we're maintaining the peace that we are in order, that we are doing exactly as we are told that we are. Making sure that we're avoiding any parti potential disruptions. That we are not being a burden to somebody else. That we are giving, giving, giving, giving, giving. Definitely not taking. And if we do take, we take it with such trepidation and you know, we're, we're really nervous when we do take, because we're really worried about what the consequences might be. But if you are in that camp. It's because you have had this whole heap of history, especially during childhood, where you were conditioned to believe that you would only be safe if other people were safe. You would only be okay if other people were okay and it, the story might go a little bit like this. You walk into a room, you look at your parents, you look at the big people around and. If they were okay, if they were happy, if they were laughing, if they were joking then, huh, okay, I can breathe. I can laugh and joke. Things would be okay. But if you walked into the room and there was a lot of tension, there was anxiety, there was frustration, there was anger. There was sadness, there was depression, there was something that just felt heavy. And even though it might have been because of your parents' work or their other stuff that they had to deal with, like, you know, the big people problem. So even though it might have been their own issues and their own problems, that had nothing to do with you as a child, but if you walked into the room and you experienced that tension from them as a young child in that innocent mind. You believe and you assume that everything is about you. And so you would've felt that tension internally. You would've seen the big people feeling tense. You would've been tense, and you would've interpreted that as, oh my goodness, I have to do something to resolve the situation. I have to do something to make sure that everything is okay, so that I'm okay so that this person's okay. Like I, I just, I have to do something. I might not know what to do exactly, but I have to do something. Um, as a young child, you might try out different things, the things that you think might help. So you might try and play a game. You might try and give them a hug. You might try and give them a pair of slippers. You might try and do whatever it is your homework. You might show them that you've got a certificate from school, but you're trying out all these different things to see that. Some of these things might make your grown up whoever it was that you grew up with, but it might make them feel better. And if they start feeling better, then in your innocent mind you start learning, Hey, well, if I do this, it makes other people feel happy. And when they feel happy, I feel better. And so the only way for me to feel better is for someone else to be happy. So we end up developing these associations of, okay, well I need to please other people. I need to make sure that other people are okay and heaven forbid, if they're not okay, then I need to frantically try and find something to correct that and make sure that they're okay. So that. They're happy, but also ultimately, for me to be safe, I, I, I just have to do that. And so I'm on call. And for anyone who has ever done the Enneagram personality test, which I would highly recommend, by the way, this is how we get geared to become helpers. So that's the type two. And if you don't know what that is, so. It is ultimately the personality trait where we are geared to help other people and we help other people so much that it might look nice and other people really appreciate it and we might feel connected to other people in that moment, but actually they then believe that we have to rescue them and we place ourselves as a rescuer in our relationships, and that has. Uh, really detrimental impacts on our own wellbeing because we end up prioritizing other people above ourselves. And also it might gear us up to become achievers because we then start to associate, well, if I achieve really well, if I do really well and I see my grownup, my parent, my caregiver. Being proud of me being happy, and then they get me ice cream. Well, I just need to work even harder. I just need to do even more. I need to achieve even more because if I keep doing that, then great, I keep somebody else happy. And if I don't, if I just perform average, let's say, or even below average, but you know, if I, if I just perform that. Then I get met with shame. I get met with disappointment, and I really want to avoid that.'cause when I experience shame and disappointment from someone else, it teaches me that I'm not safe, that I'm not good enough. And ultimately what we keep doing is we're having to provide, we're having to do more. We're having to give more in order to keep the peace around us. But. We do that with the ultimate goal of keeping the peace inside of us. And unfortunately we never get to that point. We never feel peace inside of us. We might feel a glimmer of it. We might be able to breathe a sigh of relief at some points, but it's never sustained because there's always the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And you are ultimately going on a detour. You are trying to feel safe internally through other people, through making sure that other people are okay. But guess what? You cannot control other people. You can't control what is going on for them. You can't control other external factors that influence their wellbeing. And so you are trying to control the entire community that you live in ultimately, and anything else that might influence the community and the ripple effect can just go really wide, but you are trying to influence and control something. That is not in your power because you are going through this detour because you believe that this is the only way that you can feel safe internally, but it doesn't happen because it's not true. So how do we do this? How do we, how do we resolve this issue? Really? I wanna start off with a question of, well, how much are you abandoning yourself? Because that's really the starting point. You've been working so hard to attend to other people, but you left yourself behind in the process. You left that little boy or that little girl. That little they you, you left your little self behind as you are working so hard to make sure that other people are okay. Yeah. And isn't that sad? Isn't that devastating? So the question that I would really like to ask you to start off this conversation is how much are you abandoning yourself? Like really, how much are you abandoning yourself? And we really need to start considering that there are many parts to ourselves. There's the part of you that is doing, that's doing all the people pleasing, doing all the achieving, that's doing all of the, maintaining the peace for other people, but then there's the part of you that is the being. There's the part of you that's the essence that's really your soul. That's really the part of you that is innocence, that is vulnerable. It is the part of you that has been there since the day you were born. And even though you get so caught up in the doing and the people pleasing and the pushing, and the being more, and the, all the shoulds and all of these remits, even though you get so caught up in that, but you know the part of you that's vulnerable, that's innocent, that's been there since the day you were born, it's still there. And. It's been keeping you alive all of this time. That part of you that is so naive, the part of you that innocently but incorrectly believed that it could only be safe if everybody else was okay. That is the part that is still keeping you alive today. That is the part that has stood by you every single day of your life. Begging for safety, begging for love, begging for care, begging for something, for its needs to be met, and it still kept going even though it's not received, that it's still kept going, even though it's been a state of anxiety, of being frantic, of being panicked. It's been patiently waiting, hoping for the rescue, hoping for the attention, hoping that its needs will be met. But. It never got met. And that is really devastating because as you were spending so much time attending to other people, you abandoned yourself in the process. And I go back to my question, how much are you abandoning yourself? And from this point, what would it be like to start holding yourself? I. And maybe you wanna hold yourself physically doing this. I always think that this is really helpful. And there's, there's, um, the, the arm grip hug. I don't know if you can see that, but, but ultimately, if we're able to give ourselves a big squeeze, sometimes we can get the nervous system involved and, and really starting to feel that, and maybe you can put your shoulders back as well when you do this and really giving yourself a big, tight squeeze, but. It's really about considering, can I hold myself, the part of me that is so vulnerable, the part of me that has been working so hard to please everybody else, but has still felt so frantic. Can I just. Pay attention to that. Can I direct all of my doing actions, all of the actions I've been doing, giving, being more, trying to keep the peace for other people? Can I just, just fri us a while, just take a break from all of that and actually just direct my energy and softness and to just leaning into. The part of me that is so innocent, the part of me that has been craving all of this love and care, but also the part of me that has kept me alive all this time. Because if it's kept me alive all of this time, surely it deserves to be cared for. Surely it deserves to be seen, to be held, to be loved, surely. I can give it that time. If that part of me has kept me alive all of these years, I can give it 10 minutes. Like I, I can't scrimp out on that. In fact, 10 minutes is nothing right. I can, I can give it the rest of my life. Because it is really, when we start self attending it is really when we start recognizing our own needs. And you know, you might think of it as needs to be loved by other people or your need to experience communication, to experience respect, to experience, attention, admiration. You know, it might come down to these things like from a practical sense, but ultimately it is us that has to give. That part of ourselves that need, we get so busy people pleasing that we attend to other people's needs. We prioritize other people's needs and we see needs on a physical basis. But somehow when we're making a commitment to needs, it's so much easier to make a commitment to other people's needs than it is to our own needs because other people are external. Like we can make a commitment to Bob, to John, to Sarah, to whoever, like we can. We can make a commitment to other people who are externally and it's easier'cause we can see them. But when it comes to us and we're saying we're gonna commit to our own needs, feels less tangible, feels like we can. Negotiate that down, it feels like, well, actually, is that really that important? Maybe not. We can, we can play it down. Um, one, one piece of advice that I would give you, one good tip that I would give you is if you're in that state, if you're willing to do this work, is really talk to yourself like you are a third person. Actually externalize that part of you that is so vulnerable. So for example, if it was me, I would say. I'm going to make a commitment to Sarah, and I would actually have a photo of myself. I would have my name written down in the diary, not me, but I would have my name, Sarah, and you can replace it with your name. But the moment that you start committing to yourself is if you are a third person, then it becomes real. Then you recognize, oh. This person has a name that, that, that person's me, but that person has a name and because they have a name, because they have a face, because they have a body, because they have a being, because they have breath, just like anybody else, they also have needs like anybody else. And if I'm committing to anybody else, then that is also a being that I'm committing to. And when we are taking these steps, we are really then starting to self attend. We're moving away from self abandonment, which is also associated with people pleasing, and we are starting to move towards our own essence. And some people when they're looking at this, they get really scared and frightened, well, what if I'm gonna be selfish? And actually I don't want to not have these connections with these other people. I don't want to stop helping other people because I genuinely like and care for other people. And you know what, that's, that's great that you love the people that you're around and that you want to contribute to their lives. But it's really a shift in our mindset, and it's really a shift with regards to. The importance that we hold in our own mind versus the importance that other people hold in our mind. And actually we are all equally important. We are all equally important, and that's okay, but that means that you're important too, and more imperative, more crucial than that. Is the point that you are safe even if somebody else is unhappy for whatever reason, that does not mean that you are unsafe. That does not mean that you are a bad person. Just because someone else is suffering, someone else is struggling. We can feel empathy. We can feel compassion. We can feel love for this person. We can extend the care to that individual. We can signpost them, but it's not up to you to rescue them in order for you to be safe. It's important for you to recognize that you are safe anyway. Because when you get to that place of self safety, then the game changes and actually you can help people a lot easier, a lot better. It's you are able to make these steps, these commitments forward. You are able to feel secure, to feel emotionally stable and emotionally regulated. And you can help the other person. Actually, I would say that that is a much better setup for any kind of relationship because you are coming from a healthier place and the other person can feel co-regulate by you. They can borrow some of your emotional stability and your safety for them to feel safe. But if you don't feel safe, if you feel frantic and you believe that, making sure the people are happy so that you can be okay, that's really, really going to be detrimental to your wellbeing. If you liked today's show, please like please subscribe and please share it with a friend or a family member because if you found it helpful, I bet you that one of them will do too. Take care of yourselves and I'll see you on the other side.