Perfect On Paper, Hiding Behind Closed Doors

Transcript

0:01

Hi, I'm 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 somehow you might be wildly successful, life might look perfect on paper. But you feel broken inside that actually you wake up every morning with a headache, you might feel really anxious, you are nervous, you are not looking forward to what the day has to bring, and your thoughts are just rushing around in your head. You might be really worried about what somebody might say, what somebody might not say, how other people might treat you, how other people might respond to what it is that you are doing or not doing. And inside of you, there's this frantic energy of I am not doing enough for the people. I am not performing enough. I'm not succeeding enough. I'm not going fast enough. I should be doing more. I should be accomplishing more. And I would only figure out whether or not other people love me or like me, or admire me or appreciate me based on how it is that they treat me. And so on the outside, on paper. If I was to write it all down, it might look great, might look great for some people, but it doesn't look great for you. And not only that, you feel destroyed inside. You feel like you are endlessly soul searching and endlessly looking for some meaning for something to be relevant, but you're just not getting there. And. What this really boils down to is feeling emotionally unsafe. You've worked so hard in life to try and grab onto something, but your foundation of safety isn't there. And it's almost like Maslow's hierarchy. So if you've never seen Maslow's Hierarchy, please google it. It's something that everybody should know and should have basic understanding of. But if you imagine a pyramid. We all have a pyramid, which is a hierarchy of needs. These are the needs that we possess as human beings to live a fulfilling life. And at the base of this pyramid, the bottom is the most basic needs. And the basic needs are things like food, shelter, water, warmth. Physical safety, but guess what? Psychological safety is in that category as well. Psychological safety is just as important, just as necessary as physical safety. And when I'm saying psychological safety, I am talking about emotional safety as well. That is necessary. And if you don't believe me, there's even been research that was completed on this many years ago now where they had a bunch of newborns. They gave these newborns, all of the physical. Needs that they had, food, water, shelter, warmth. They gave everything from a physical basis, but actually they did not give physical contact. They did not give affection. They did not give hugs to these newborns, and the effects were detrimental. A lot of these newborns had underdeveloped brains. They developed these learning disabilities, but also a lot of them passed because they did not have that emotional need met. They did not feel emotionally safe, even though they had all of their physical needs met. So this is just really to highlight how necessary. Emotional and psychological safety is, it is just as important as the food that you eat, as the water that you drink. And you're not going to stop drinking water. You're not going to stop eating. So why would you cut the umbilical cord on emotional safety? Because that is really part of our basic needs. And as you move up the hierarchy, you get the needs around social contact. Friendship family members, you get the needs around achievement and at the very top you get your self-actualization. The self-actualization is the best potential that you can ever live up to. That is ba sickly your ultimate goal in life. And unfortunately, what I see with a lot of high achievers. Especially if you are a number three on the Enneagram, is that you work relentlessly hard trying to get to the top of the pyramid, trying to self-actualize, trying to be the best possible version of yourself. You are doing anything in everything. You are ruthless, you are determined, you are motivated, you are really going all out. But. Your foundation is cracked, so you are trying to get to the very top of this pyramid. You are trying to self-actualize, but your foundation for the pyramid is just flawed because you don't have psychological safety, you don't have that emotional safety, and you are feeling very, very fragile and. You somewhere along the lines, somewhere along the way of growing up, you believe that? Well, if I just push more, if I just do more, if I just outperform everybody else, if I just achieve more than everybody else, if I just do. More and be more. Then at some point I'll feel safe. If I get to the top of the pyramid, then the bottom of the pyramid will just sort itself out. So that's ultimately what we're saying. If I can achieve, if I can succeed, if I can show everybody just how much I've done. If I can show myself just how much I've done, if I can prove my worth somehow, and, you know, showcase something for all of the sleepless nights, all of the worry, all of the anxiety, all of the walking on eggshells, and you know, the difficult conversations and the difficult actions and the exhaustion that I've experienced, if I can showcase something for it. Then I'll be able to breathe. Then I'll feel safe, then I'll be able to, whew, calm down. But guess what? That is never the case. That's never the case because you are trying to get to the very top of the pyramid when your foundation is cracked. If anything, you are going to come falling back down. So really what we need to start off with is the foundation of the pyramid. And I know many people when I talk to about this, particularly some of my clients when they first meet me and I introduce this idea of, hey. Let's get to your foundation. Let's just really go to the part that is wounded and let's go direct to the emotion as opposed to just sitting up there or trying to climb up there in a way that is very hard. What if it, what would it be like if we just sat with the softness? Many of my clients get really anxious when they hear this. There's a bit of resistance. They dunno what to do. There's a bit of ick, there's a bit of rejection. There's this kind of visceral sensation that of repulsion around me when I say this, but I say this with love and I say this with compassion. You are never going to be the best version of yourself. If your foundation is cracked, you are just never going to get there. You are never going to be able to self-actualize if you are broken internally. If you are walking every day in a state of fear, in a state of anxiety, in a state of trauma, you're just not going to get there because you will always either self-sabotage. And somewhere in your subconscious mind, you'll start to approach greatness, but then actually you'll destroy yourself and you'll put obstacles in your own way. You are going to get in your own way. You are going to be your own bottleneck, and I absolutely guarantee it. So that might be a possibility that you self-sabotage. Or you get to greatness, you get something good and you never appreciate it. You never see it. You never show yourself any form of gratitude. You never sit with the realization of, oh, okay, maybe I am good enough. Maybe I did do well. Maybe I can be proud of myself. Maybe I can pat myself on the back, like maybe I can show off a little bit. Like, is that okay? We never get to that stage because we're actually so ashamed and we see any form of achievement in a negative light. We say, oh, well you know what? I should have done that achievement 10 years ago. And actually that is really pathetic, that I'm only getting there now. Like, oh my goodness, I don't wanna say this to anybody because I'm still feeling so shameful, so disappointed, so disgusted in myself. What is going on here? Right? So the thing is, is that if your foundation for your emotional safety is destroyed, if it is cracked, you can work as hard as you wanna work, but I guarantee you are going to come sliding down that pyramid. You are, you are just not going to be able to make it. It's like trying to build a very tall block of flats on quicksand. Like it's just not going to happen. You just don't have a foundation and anybody in the construction world out there. You will know that the most important part of the building isn't even the building on top that you live in, that you see, but it's actually the foundation. It's actually how solid the roots of the building are. That is the thing that is most important.'cause that's the thing that's going to keep the building up. And so what's the point of having a space to live in if that space is going to disintegrate pretty soon. But ultimately that's what all of these people are trying to achieve. That's probably what you are trying to achieve as well, is that you're trying to ruthlessly relentlessly work on accomplishing something, but there is just no foundation. You are just sinking further and further still and you are running, you are trying your very, very best to climb up, but you are forever sinking and so you are at best just going to meet. Equilibrium. You are just at the very best going to maintain status quo in terms of how you feel. You are running, you are doing, you are relentless, but you just never get there. It is an endless chase. You are just on a rat wheel, like you know, you're just on a hamster wheel. You're just in this rat race trying to get somewhere and you never get there. So how do we even navigate this? What do we do? It's really based on your inner child. Oh, it's a thing that people don't like to talk about, but let's go for it because even though I might say stuff that you don't necessarily. Want to hear, not necessarily like to hear. Um, but I'm here to be honest with you. I'm here to show you the truth. I'm not necessarily here to be liked, but I'm here to honor you and to really show you what it is that you need to hear, even if you don't necessarily want to. But it's really about your inner child. Now, we're all young children walking around, dressed up like adults. And some of us are a bit more mature, some of us are a bit more developed, particularly if we've done the healing work. But we all have inner children. And, uh, there are two things here that I want you to keep in mind. The first thing is. The state of your inner child, how fragile, how fractured, how unsafe, how vulnerable that inner child feels. And then the second thing is the relationships that that inner child has with you as an adult, but also with other people around. So let's start off with the first one, the state of the inner child. Well, if you are inner child. Has never had the experience, the opportunity of learning that they were okay, that they were safe, that they were loved, that they were healthy, that they would be accepted, that they are good enough just as they are, that they don't have to perform, that they are held in mind, that they're cared for. If your inner child has never had that opportunity to experience that growing up, then. They wouldn't know that they could be safe. They then get trained to believe, well, safety only comes this, the sense of being okay in other people's eyes. The sense of being accepted by other people. That only comes if I do X, Y, and Z. So I need to do X, Y, and Z for me to be okay, for me to be safe, for me to progress, for me to whatever it is. And. That's really. Really damaging because what that means is that our sense of emotional safety then becomes conditional. So we may or may not feel safe, and so we're then caught up in the foundation of our basic need. It's almost like saying, well. I can only ever get water if I run five miles a day and only at that point can I get a glass of water. But when I get that glass of water, well, like I'm gonna drink it because I'm so exhausted. I'm sweating so much running all of that. So I'm going to get that glass of water. I'm going to drink it, but then I'm still thirsty. And so I have to run another five miles. In order to get a glass of water, I have to drive, run another five miles to get another glass. I have to run another five miles to get another glass. And so what we then get accustomed to or what we then get conditioned to and what we believe is that we can only have our need for water to be met if we do the thing that exhausts us. Which will deplete that need anyway, right? And so we end up getting caught in this endless cycle of trying to get our need met, but never actually feeling like it is met. And then we just don't know what to do with ourselves. But at the same time, we believe that we have no option because we can't just turn on the tap and just drink it. We can't just get the bottle of water or the glass of water. We can't just get it without the run. We, we just never had that experience. We never had the experience of somebody just giving that to us without it being under a condition. And so it's the same with emotional safety. If you've never experienced that emotional safety without conditions, I. Then you are geared to believe that you have to perform in order for you to get emotional safety. So safety is just conditional. You have to work really hard in order to have that. So you get so caught up in the foundation and never really build your foundation. You never really have, you know, cement to really solidify your foundation and you believe for you to have a foundation. And safety that you have to achieve the thing that's at the very top of the pyramid. And so you are bouncing between emotional safety and self-actualization, emotional safety and self-actualization, and you just don't know which way to go. You just can't figure out which way to go because you are conditioned. Well, if I self-actualize, then I'll be safe. That, uh, that's the way, that's the wrong way around Really. We need to start feeling safe in order for us to self-actualize. That is the only way forward. That is the only way that we can really start building ourselves up. We have to start from the foundation of safety. So let's go back. When you are young as a child, you look up to the big people, hoping and expecting that the big people will know. How to keep you safe. You expect them to show you the way, because when you are born, you don't know anything about the world. You just look up at the big people and believe, assume that they know what the deal is, and if they are showing you something that is unsafe or that safety is conditional, that's what you grow up to believe. And so we really do need to rewrite the script. Rewriting the script is really about how do we start experiencing that emotional safety. Even if we didn't have it back then we need to start experiencing it now. We need to start rewriting the script as if we are that child still, because guess what? That child still exists somewhere inside of you, even though you are dressed up like an adult. Your inner child is still there, still fully present, and it is talking very, very loud. Even if you try to keep it quiet, and this is really what this is about. It is rescripting that narrative of safety being conditional and the way that you rescript it is through the second method that I was talking about. The relationship that that inner child has with you as an adult, but also with the people around you, so you as an adult. We need to really treat that vulnerable, that wounded part of ourselves with so much care and so much compassion. Instead of us trying to resist and trying to fight and trying to avoid and trying to push away that inner child, we need to start to come to terms with, Hey, you know what, like any child isn't annoying, but any child of us isn't a burden. We might. I believe we might get geared to feel like that that inner child is a hindrance or that inner child is annoying, that that inner child is just a nuisance and we'd like to like make, do that. That actually it's really imperative that we start to recognize that that inner child is so vulnerable, so innocent, and all they want is safety and. Can we come to terms that it is safe? Do we know with absolute certainty that if we didn't do all of these things, all of these projects do we know with absolute certainty that we would not be safe? Because chances are you are. Going to be okay even if you didn't carry on driving. Even if you didn't carry on pushing and you know really forcefully doing, achieving more, accomplishing more, chances are you would be safe. You would be okay. But you just need to come to terms with that. We actually need to start teaching and rewriting the script. We have to rewrite the narrative. We have to start rewiring the nervous system for that inner child, for the inner child that lives inside of you. And this is not woo woo work. This is work that we do day in and day out with so much success because it is really transformative to. People who start engaging in this, who really want to start working towards their own healing so that life can look good on paper, so that they can look successful on paper, but they also feel good internally there is this match between what life looks like on the outside and how you feel on the inside. If you like what we have spoken about today, please like, subscribe and share it with a friend or a family member.'cause if you found it helpful. I bet that one of them will do too. So please take care of yourselves and I will see you on the other side.