People-Pleasing / Fawning (S3 Ep1)

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Beyond Survival. We are in season three. This series, I am going to be doing some solo podcasts and I'm going to have some guests on. And today, I want to talk about the topic of people placing and specifically forning how we've not really understood the two, that one is really people placing about focusing on the external, but this is really this episode is going to be what is forning in terms of our nervous system response. Like what is happening internally? And for anybody listening or for anybody that's recognizing themselves, this episode is going to be for you if you are a person that avoids conflict at all costs. If you are a person that feels fear or anxiety in the pit of your stomach when other people have a problem and feel guilty if you don't do anything about it or that you feel so responsible. I often people hear people say that they feel compelled, almost forced to help them out, right? It's this knee-jerk reaction that they have to fix the thing for the other person if the other person's upset, that they can't even sit with themselves. Are they're trying to avoid feeling guilty? The guilt that they'll feel later. This episode is for the person that feels most comfortable giving but feels so uncomfortable when they themselves are receiving. So if they're receiving any form of help and feel really guilty if somebody gives something to you. The fauna, the people pleaser, is the person that says yes when the mean no and constantly doing something for other people that they're capable of doing themselves, right? So this is the rescuing, the fixing. This person often finds it easier to stand up for other people and express any injustice or anger when they see something been done to somebody else but really struggle to connect with this themselves. Often saying, "Oh no, that's fine, it doesn't matter. You know, I'm okay." And this swallowed in any feelings of resentment and really struggled to get in touch with their anger. Often I hear people pleasers, "No, I'm not angry, I'm not angry at all." And they could even describe themselves as really easy going. Although their internal experience will be something different because they're so constantly driven with this adrenaline and they're unable to relax and switch off and feel guilty about stopping or taking any sort of rest unless they've completed every single task on their to-do list. Which we all know that that is just such an impossible ask. And I can continue that list about the ways that somebody can abandon themselves. If that sounds like you, then this is the episode for you. And this episode is going to look at where this comes from and why do we still repeat things patterns that we know as adults are not helpful for us, you know? I hear so much blame and criticism around this when people are saying, "Oh, like I'm a pushover or a madormat and I just need to hold more boundaries." And they're blaming themselves without really understanding what is happening in their nervous system. So back in series one, I did an episode called The Invisible Winds of Childhood. And that really is to help people uncover the layers of actually what happens in childhood, especially when somebody says to me, "You know, well, it wasn't that bad." You know, I wasn't abused. But when they say the word abuse, they're limiting that to physical or sexual abuse. And whereas one of the things we know that in these dynamics is that underlying those behaviors both physical and sexual abuse is emotional abuse. Those two can't be present without emotional abuse happening. But often people don't know what emotional abuse is in their own family systems because they've been told that this is what love is, right, that this is what care is. So back in that episode, I talked through the invisible wounds and what can happen at home. But I'm supposed to just briefly touch on it because this is the core of what we're talking about when we're talking about with safety and our nervous system. So if you grew up in a home where you had to walk on eggshells around a parent, if you grew up in a home where you had to be the parent to your parent, that their emotions ruled the house. So if they were in a good mood, everything was wonderful. You could kind of take a sigh of relief, right? But you also knew it wouldn't last. You were waiting for the shoe to drop. You knew that it would only take a moment for somebody to say the wrong thing or somebody to piss that parent off. And you knew that the whole thing was just gonna collapse, right? So walk on eggshells, round them, being able to predict what they're gonna say like in a negative way. So if you have to really think about how you're gonna bring something to your parent, that's if you bring anything at all, right? Because a child growing up in this environment learns to be hyper-independent. That is not a choice. They have learned that they are punished in ways if they go towards the parent and share anything with them. It's not even that they learn this consciously and they're gonna have conscious memories. Although a lot of people, you know, they might have the remember the shame or the humiliation or mockery if they go towards the parent. A lot of children that go up in this environment, it's as if their needs don't exist. There's an invisibility because the parent's needs and emotions just triumph and take over that they are centered. So the child doesn't get to have a sense of identity with their own needs. And of course, then if they ever have needs or express them, they're told that they're selfish or that they should think about somebody else or it's not all about you. And so all these things are threats to the child because there will be punishment. There will be the silent treatment. There will be the consequence that the parent isn't that form and is really upset with the child and blaming them. So their nervous system can't tolerate this because we are so dependent on the parent. This is the thing right in childhood, we are helpless. We have no money, we have no other options. There's nowhere else we can go. We have no car, we have no job. And we're told that this is normal that there's something wrong with us. But our basic survival needs are dependent on the parent. We need them to survive. So the child will pretend everything is fine and continue falling for perpetual safety, to feel safe. I love the way Pete Walker, what he describes falling. He calls foreign types as seeking safety by merging with the wishes, needs and demands of others. And even more he goes on to say that they learn that the price of admission to any relationship is the forfeiture of all their needs, rights, preferences and boundaries. So when you're hearing that, there's an invisibility in the person I don't get to exist. And that's because when there's a threat, our bodies don't ask our opinion when we feel threatened. You think of this in terms of now that there's somebody in front of you and they're asking you do you want to do something and you don't want to do it. Our bodies don't ask our opinion if we feel that there's a threat in the situation. And the threat is tapping back into this place where we feel really helpless and dependent on the other person to like us for safety. This is the difference when I hear people talking about really struggling with their own idea when they say that I can't tolerate when somebody doesn't like me. Like even the thoughts of it, I struggle with, like they can feel sick in their stomach, they can feel like their palms being sweaty, you know, they're catastrophizing. And then they'll tap back into their logical brain and they'll be like, "But I don't know why "it bothers me so much, I don't like everybody." And like, I'm not even that close with this person. So I don't know why it bothers me so much at the thoughts that they don't like me. And when we really tap into it and go down, well, what's happening? And it's that I really feel threatened that there's this sense of self. Like it's like I won't exist if they don't like me. My whole purpose is to make them like me. And then if we follow on with that, well then then what can happen? If you get that person to like you, what does that mean for you? Oh, I can breathe a sigh of relief. Yeah, my nervous system relaxes. So this is then deep internal child work, right? So this is again where the child learns that it's not safe for me to disagree with somebody else. Have my own opinion. They've learned in being conditioned that they're gonna be punished or shunned or humiliated or mocked or judged. And the only way that they're safety is that if I abandon myself, don't have an opinion and merge with the beliefs of other people, right? They learn that it's not safe to have a difference of opinion. And when we break this down, you know, when I talk about this in the podcast and because this can be quite overwhelming, you know, and everybody just wants to know, how can I fix it? How can I stop this? And I suppose what I want to say firstly is that yes, this can evolve, right? But we need to, and I'm not gonna say that we need to write 'cause I'm not gonna tell other adults what they need to do. Again, that's that's shaming language that I'm trying to get out of ourselves. But what I invite you to do is shift from that kind of needing to fix because fix means that you were broken in the first place. If we're gonna fix something, that means that you were broken in the first place. And that is not true. You were not broken. You developed these behaviors to survive and an environment that wasn't healthy. An environment that was solely focused on another person that was outside of you. And the only way that you got to exist was to make them happy, was to appease them. But it was never the foreigners intentions or the child's intentions. They were never there to please or compulsively caretek, right? We were looking for power in situations where we were powerless, where we were helpless. And so this is a coping mechanism. This is a survival mechanism that is actually out of a rational brain. We don't think about it. This is what a survival response is. This is the same as putting your hand on an iron or a hot stove and instinctively jerking your way before you even had the thoughts to say, "Take your hand away, this is hot." Like we do it instinctually. And this is what these behaviors were. They were instinctual behaviors for our survival. So that's why even the idea of saying that I need to fix myself has negative connotations that somehow you were broken in the first place. You weren't. I often think of, I know somebody that had their hip replaced. And before they did for years, obviously, they were compensating, you know, and they were kind of swinging their leg out when they were walking because it was so sore and painful. So they had to have this coping mechanism to avoid the pain. And one of the things that happened when they got their hip replaced is that they had to learn how to walk again in a healthy way. So to not compensate and swing their leg out, they had to have physio to be able to learn how to use these muscles again. No, that's somebody that has for years and years and years learned how to walk in a healthy way. And there for these last few years have just learned a coupon mechanism to avoid the pain. And so their journey will be a short journey with physio to go back to learn how to walk in a healthy way. The heavy or sad or truthful part of this is that a child that grows up in dysfunction doesn't learn the healthy way. There only knows self abandonment. So they haven't developed this strong sense of self or even any sense of self at all. There is such an invisibility. There is such a void in the person that it's so much easier, it's conditioned, it's compulsive to look outside and be hyper-vegillant and see what everybody else is feeling. The hard work is actually to go internally. And first, there will be a void like this echo, this blankness, this like I don't know, I don't know who I am or what I want. I don't know what my value is outside of what I do for other people. Right, they will think that their identity is solely based on the things that they do for others. Right, so let's just say that if that is, well, I know I'm a worker, I know what my role is there or I know I'm a mother and I know how I provide here or I'm a wife and I know how to provide as a friend. But if we switch this around and say, well, what is it like for you if none of these things exist? If you've lost your job, if you either are not a parent or your kids are older, what is your value? What do you stand for if you are not the one giving? And by the way, giving is such a kind thing. I'm not in any way saying that somebody should cease to be kind to others. In fact, in the society that we live now, what we want is for people to care more about others, to live in community, to give, but not at the point of self-abandonment and not at the point of that you are invisible and that every interaction that you have with people, that it's like this erasure of yourself and that you only exist there to serve them or serve others. You know, because we're talking about really just one-sided relationships there, but we're talking about to the point that if you are in relationships with other people and you can't access your healthy anger to recognize that if this person is taking advantage, exploiting, being cruel, mocking, humiliating, and that you stay in that relationship just constantly given. You know, I know we talk about kind of that we need to fill your own cup first, but I heard a wonderful quote by Dr. Raquel Martin where she was talking about, like, an empower phrase in here, but it was like, never mind the cup. For a lot of people, it's a calendar that they have. So you know the calendar that you drain the pasta in and the water runs out? Well, this is a calendar that the person has never learned a healthy, strong sense of self that, who am I? That anything comes in, it drains out. And I wonder what it's like for you when somebody gives you a compliment? We got feedback there from a letter that we did last week where we were talking about what we could see with this person that had written in. You know, we could see their personality, their humor, their kindness. And they wrote in and they had said that it was lovely to hear that and that they're working on being able to receive that, that before it was really uncomfortable, that they would dismiss that. And so that they're working, you know, we're trying to regulate their own body that it is safe to receive this. So again, think of this as a calendar that if somebody compliments you, do you receive that? Or does this seep through and you dismiss that as being ridiculous or oh no, that's not true and you just go back like berating yourself? And again, this will be linked to childhood where the child learned the kindness is not kindness that it's manipulation, right? That somebody's only kind to me if they want something for me. Or if I accept this kindness now, that now I will be indebted to you, that I will be under a compliment to you. If I accept your kindness, now you're gonna turn around in two days or two weeks or two months. And when you ask me for something, if I say no, you're gonna say, well, I did that for you and you're gonna feel trapped. So now again, this is about safety in the body. That if I don't accept this, well, then I won't be indebted to you and I'll be able to hold some form of identity. Whereas the safety is one, let's look at the character of the person and are you a trustworthy person or are you a manipulative person because we get to have discernment. This is where we can fall into the all or nothing, right? The binary thinking that either everybody is trustworthy or nobody is trustworthy. Whereas what we're talking about here is discernment. Can I trust this one individual? Are you trustworthy? My experience with you have you shown me that it is safe for me to say no to you. Is it safe for me to accept kindness from you and that you won't hold it over me? And a lot of the times we won't know that until we actually do the thing and we actually accept the kindness. But there's such a fear. The fear is that if I say no to you or if I don't do the thing that you want me to do or if I don't behave in the way that you expect me to, the fear is that I'm going to be treated a certain way. And so here's where it's protective. I don't want that to happen because I don't want to lose the relationship. I don't want to threaten the relationship. I don't want to jeopardize the relationship. I don't want to get into conflict because my fear is that my needs or wants will be unimportant. My fear is that I will be invisible and unhaired and so that there's no point. So I'll just avoid all this and do the thing that you want me to do in the first place. Whereas this is actually what self-awareness is and when you grow up hyper-vegilant, we don't get to develop a healthy sense of self-awareness about what our own internal experiences because we're living in survival mode. We're focusing on the external and the threat. Think of it being in the woods with a bear and you know that the bear is there and you know that the bear can turn on you. And so you are hyper-vegilant for the noise of where is it, right? You have to keep watch at all times and now let's ask that person, you know, what their favorite color is or what their favorite music is or where do they want to go for lunch? It's like what? That's relevant. Like I am focusing on my safety here now and where the threat is because I have to appease the threat. I have to, you know, throw them some meat. I have to be kind. I have to be avoidant. I have to be invisible, right? The focus is on the other person and there's no safety to be able to get in touch with this part. That's why I really struggle with this idea when I hear some stuff on TikTok and I think it's an ill-informed take or somebody that doesn't really understand trauma. So a non-trauma informed take when they're saying that people please and is manipulative. I don't believe that people please and is manipulative because I believe that it's an unconscious pattern of being in a survival response. Now do I think that people can be manipulative and can love bomb somebody and can say the thing that they want for them to get the thing that they want? Absolutely. But I think that that is a separate thing because they are intentionally using behaviors to get with the one for the other person and they don't care how much it's gonna hurt them. The fauna is doing these behaviors for survival because they were forced into it. And then what happens is is that the child loses their internal navigation system, their internal guidance system. This is gonna cloud their perception, right again, because it's survival. And it's literally for the fauna that we don't know where we end and somebody else's begins, right? Again, think of Pete Walker's. We merge into the other person. This is where, you know, with one group, oh, I can fit in with this group because I know exactly what they want and expect for me and I can merge and become this color with this group. But then when these two interact, it's like, I don't know who I am. I don't know how to be because I only know how to be with what's expected of me. So this is not a conscious, intentional manipulation. Now do I understand that actually when somebody is constantly in a phone response that then the person in front of us is not actually in a relationship with us with who we are internally. They are in relationship with a survival response. I've said this many times, you know, loads of people when I had first started on TikTok and when I talked about the phone response, they were like, oh my God, you know me so well. And I'm like, no, I don't. I don't know you. I know your survival response because the survival response is predictable when we're talking about either phrase, fight, flight, or phone. That is predictable what we do to survive. But actually I don't know you. I don't know who you are. I don't know what makes you laugh. I don't know what type of comedian you like. I don't know what type of holiday you like. I don't know what brings you joy. I don't know any of these things. I don't know what foods you like. I don't know what foods you dislike because these are all so personal. But these are ways that an identity is toward the identity is arrested, a personality is arrested because it wasn't safe to develop this in childhood. And when we don't know who we are, we are very vulnerable then to being manipulated. The hyper-arousal aspect of falling, the hyper-vegillance has us instinctively managing the moods and states of those in charge, anybody that holds any form of power. And so we can lean into the very relationships that are causing us harm, appeasing those harmful people, right, appeasing those perpetrators. While taking personal responsibility for all the relational difficulties, this is the part where we think that we're broken and this is all my fault. This is not, but we have to be aware of what's happening. And this is the hard part because everybody wants to know, well, tell me what to do. Tell me what to do to stop this. Tell me how to hold boundaries. And yes, there is a point in that, but we have to know what your limits are, not impose somebody else's boundaries on you. So what are your limits? What is acceptable and not acceptable being in relationship with you? Is it acceptable for somebody to raise their voice? Is it acceptable for somebody to call you names? Is it acceptable for somebody to mock and humiliate you and run you down and devalue you? If your answer is a strong no to that, that is a healthy sense of self. If you are making excuses for somebody in your life saying, well, they only do that sometimes, or they don't really mean it. And so here is where I would ask you, if this was your child or somebody you loved or a friend, would you want them in relationship with that person? And then here we can see somebody's really strong, again, their sense of injustice. No, I wouldn't want that. Okay, well, what makes this okay for you? And a lot of the times what we're looking at here is grief. So again, I don't want to look at these things. So I'm going to go back into my survival response and protect myself from this. But the manipulative person that is using kindness to manipulate, they don't care about the other person. They're doing this for their own gain. For the foreigner that's doing this, they don't and haven't developed the care for themselves. They love for themselves. And so there's an abandonment of self and an invisibility of self. This is not about harming another person. This is actually about trying to keep these other people in your life. But you are no longer that helpless child. You are no longer that powerless child. And that can be both hard to hear and also liberating and empowering. The part where it's hard to hear is this sadness that recognizing that that child felt so powerless and helpless. But then the hard part is is that, oh shit, I have to do this now. I have to adopt. I have to spend the time to shift from that external focus of other people in hypervegillance and actually turn this internal and start trying to get to know myself. Start trying to befriend myself. Like think of if you had met somebody new, what sort of questions you'd ask them? What are you interested in? What brings you joy? What foods do you like? Where do you want to go and get something to eat? Do you like tea or coffee? Yeah, so we're going to be curious. But this takes work to develop a relationship with somebody else. This takes time, this takes patience. This is not something that happens overnight. And as opposed to again the person that's relearning to walk after the hip, they have a healthy blueprint from before of what this looks like. A child brought up in dysfunction does not have a healthy blueprint. So they not only have to create their own new blueprint of who are my, what's my likes, once preferences and boundaries. They have to also unlearn the things that they were told about themselves, right? And often this comes down to being selfish. That if I focus on myself, that I'm selfish. And so that's the first part that this is not selfish. Somebody only told you that for their own gain because it's not selfish to center yourself in a healthy way, it's not selfish to consider yourself. In fact, if you don't do this, your relationships, even the healthy ones will become unhealthy because you will develop such a feeling of resentfulness for not being seen in the relationship. But are you seeing yourself? Here's an example of this, only the other day. So obviously all of you know that I'm Irish, but I love the Irish language. I would love if I was fluent in Irish and I'm not. And over the years at different times, I have gone back to different courses to learn and different conversations. And I haven't done it in years like in years since I was pregnant with my first child. So that was like 13 years ago. 'Cause there's kind of a revival. I see loads of people talking about it on TikTok and there was this like pop up chat group that was meeting about two weeks ago. But that coincided with a very busy period for me. So I had written a parenting course. That's for anybody that's interested in that. If you go to my website and click the camera parent and if you fill in a form, I will notify you when I'm running another one. It is being, oh my God, it is, it is just, it's been a wonderful experience working with parents that focusing on themselves and seeing what's really happening here instead of focusing on the behavior of the child. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. So I was doing that and I was in the middle of running the course and this pop up Irish chat had come up and I had gone to the previous one about two weeks before. But I saw it and it was running at the weekend and this all happened like in an instant in my head, right? So I saw that it was coming up in the weekend. One, I recognize that part of me that was like, I want to go to it. But I straight away had this conversation in my head that no, that's not fair in Frank. I've been taking too much time, you know, he's gonna be at home with the kids. And I was in the way that I was thinking about it. I was thinking that I'm being very considerate towards him, right? Because he hasn't had very much time for himself. And there is a point in that. There is a truth in that, right? That as a partner, that I have to be considerate. But when I look at kind of the history of our relationship, I am looking at, well, am I considerate? A lot of the time, right? Not all of the time, this is not perfection. And yes, a lot of the times I am considerate. And so then I was thinking and I was looking at the ways that I was rescuing him, right? 'Cause I was thinking I'm not gonna ask him, you know, I'm not gonna say it to him that I want to go. It's a terror all these years and all these years that I have trust in him in a relationship that, you know, he's not gonna punish me or give me the silent treatment. There was still in that moment that fear that he was gonna be mad at me, right? I was gonna get in trouble if I wanted this extra thing because I'm asking for too much. And the difference now is that I'm able to recognize this in real time. And I'm able to see how infantilizing that is of me, how straightaway I'm going into a parent role, which is so familiar, right? The preantified child, it's so easy to slip back into this way where I'm rescuing and taking care of another person. But did that person ask or did I even give them the option to say no, right? I'm assuming so much. And so my work in that is to actually treat him like an adult to put forth and say, "Hey, there's this thing on, I want to go, can we make it work?" And here allows space for him to be the adult and say, either, "No, there's too much on," or, "No, I have something on that day." And then we can work on that because then there's other options. Okay, well, I could get the kids minded or we could get a babysitter because this is, I mean, it's only an hour like I want to go, this is important. So we can have a discussion there. In most people's fear is the fear of the conflict, right? But if I let that fear in the driving seat, I will erase myself and be invisible. Because if you notice the stuff that I was telling you that I was doing, although I love my work, it was work related. This is something else that brings me joy and is like a different part of my culture and my identity and something that I love that would bring me such, like it's just a different part of me, right? When we're talking about kind of a cop and filling us up, but the way that I could have in that moment, erase myself and not asked, and under this illusion of being nice, right, that I'm being nice to him, whereas really there is, there's an infantilization of that, and I'm being driven by fear and not kindness, because where is the kindness to me? And yes, this is not about being demanding and saying that it's my way all the time, because if there was a lot on and so much happening and if there was stuff happening with the kids, yes, that is something that I could have let go and rearranged for another time. I could have went to the next one. It's not that I'm being inflexible or demanding, but it's that part where we erase ourselves and be invisible in the moment. A lot of people when they're in therapy, you know, when they're kind of faced with this reality of the ways that they abandon themselves or become the parent or phone, how quick they go back into that narrative of, I'm broken. Like, oh my god, there it is again, I'm broken and I'm never going to be fixed. It's not that you're broken. It's not that I'm broken in that moment. It's the awareness to catch the narrative, the learned conditioning, the survival response that I have when I'm in a relationship and I care about somebody and I don't want to lose the relationship, but the biggest difference then is recognizing is this a safe relationship over the relationship that I was brought up in, because the relationship that I was brought up in childhood was that I would be punished, was that I would be criticized, was that I would be judged in explicit ways, but mostly implicit by looks, by size, by conversations that would come back to me third-party for the way that I wanted to do that and how mean or selfish or how much this cost, and I don't mean financially, but how much everybody had to give up or sacrifice, right, all these different ways. And that's only at a time when I would have considered myself. Because environments like this, you don't consider yourself, it's always about the other person. It's always about blending and merging and believing the narrative that you're told and having the thoughts and perspectives of what you were told. One of the ways to work against this, think about when you grow up in childhood, what was said when another person in the family or extended family said no or wouldn't do something that was asked, what was said about them? And because in my family of origin, it was prayed the person that was most selfless. Oh, they're brilliant and you'd never hear them complain. They're wonderful. Where's anybody that complained? We're moaning, we're winging. And there was this idea of like, oh, Maria, which is like, poor you, like they were being the victim. And what it meant was that like what I learned is that anybody that said no would be ridiculed. And actually the thing to aim for was to be selfless. And while it is important in relationships to put other people first, again, not at the point of self abandonment, not at the point of erasure. And so it's being aware that this narrative can happen inside you and it's not that you're broken. It's that you have been programmed not only by the family narrative, but this goes beyond that into society, right? Like how many people grew up here in the words like respect your elders? Don't be cheeky to your elders. Don't talk back to your elders. Whoever they were, parents, aunties, uncles, grandparents, somebody in power. And that kind of that phrase, respect your elders, it carries a different connotation because it conveys that the child must obey and never ask questions. It means bending down and appeasing to people who are older or hold higher status, no matter what. It means being ruled by fear, being put in your place, do as I say and not as I do. So this is not only going against the internal family system, but this is also going against an outer, a larger, a macro system. And so we phone, we shape shift to stay safe. We abandon ourselves, our needs, our values, our opinions. But this behavior now will reinforce our vulnerability. So if I can offer that to shift from that idea that I'm broken, no, these are behaviors that I use to survive because I was dependent on the person that was hurting me. I was dependent on the person that was mocking me and humiliating me. I was dependent on the person that was gaslighting me and minimizing my feelings and dismissing them. I was dependent on that person for survival. This is where the behavior worked for me as best it could in childhood to allow me to survive and escape, but it was never meant that we carried on these behaviors. But what happened is when we didn't develop a sense of self, we think that the survival responses are personality. That is one thing that I am so grateful for social media that there was this platform. And for me, it was TikTok that we were able to and so many other therapists, you know, were sharing what survival responses were, what trauma was. And people were like, oh, my God. I thought that was just my personality. I thought that was just me. And then they learned so much from seeing other people's experiences. And hopefully you learned that you are not alone. And I hope, and this is a strange thing to say, but I hope that you learned how harmful your childhood was. Because if you don't or haven't, you will continue to minimize and dismiss then you're coping mechanisms. And you will continue to gaslight yourself and berate yourself and minimize and shrink yourself if you are blaming this as your personality. This is not your personality. This is a survival response. And this is not about being fixed. This is about being aware of the times that we fall back into foaning. Or if you are somebody that phones constantly, this is going to take you time to consider yourself and recognize yourself as a human that is equally deserving as other people. And that you measure and that you are worthy just as you are. You know, when I think of my kids and I think of what they have to do to earn my love, the answer is nothing. Nothing they just have to exist. And by just existing, I love them. And that's not to paint a, you know, an airy fairy, sort of Mary Poppins picture, you know, there is conflict, there is annoyance, there is frustration. But my love there is consistent. And this is where in children that grow up in dysfunction, that grow up with emotionally unavailable parents, narcissistic parents, you know, generational trauma, is that the love was never consistent. It was conditional. I will love you only if you behave this way. I will love you only if you do these things. I will love you only if you center me. I will love you only if you remain invisible. And that is not love, that is control, that is emotional neglect. And that is hard to hear and sit with because it's only when we truly understand the impact of emotional neglect that we will be able to have compassion for our younger selves. And this is the work, again, that we are considering ourselves and considering that our needs matter and they were ignored. And it's in recognizing the ways that we are still programmed for that. And so my job or my awareness in that moment when I recognized I was going back into it with that conversation that I had with Frank or the one that I nearly wasn't going to have because of this conditioning is to recognize it and be aware of it. And to clock us, oh, that's what's happened in there. This is what self-awareness is. We can't have awareness of self if we don't recognize that there's a self there to begin with. And that we don't erase ourselves for ways that I did this. I think people can say, oh, well, you recognize that in real time. I wouldn't have done that and I would have not gone to the thing. OK, well, when would you have recognized that then? And then that is the point that you recognized, oh, this is what I was doing. I was going back into paradigm mode again. I was asking you and somebody because when we're doing that, we're infantilizing. I was assuming something would have been given the choice. And this is then that you address it then with yourself first and then with your partner. And if you are constantly being met with control or anger from a partner and that you feel that you don't have freedom to go somewhere to meet a friend, that your needs don't matter, this is something to turn towards and look at because by ignoring it, it doesn't mean that it's not happening. By ignoring it, you are just shrinking yourself further. You deserve to exist. You deserve to be. This is a reality that is there. It just is. And this is the hardest part. If we recognize, right? If we have that awareness and recognize and allow, will I allow for my wants to come through? Because they are there. If you listen initially, it can be a void. But if you listen, they are there. Our body will leisurely, like we can feel that within us. Yet what we are drawn to, if we listen to it, our body will resist the things that we don't want. If we listen to it, think of something if you're talking about your ideal night that you want, right? And this, again, this will change. This is where it's not binary. For some people that had a really busy week or weeks, their ideal night could be, oh my god, I want a quiet house. I want a cup of tea or a glass of wine. I want to watch a movie or read a book or I want a bath. And that is their bliss. But look at how their body will, like, literally be moved towards, they will want to walk towards that. For somebody else, their ideal night could be going to see their favorite comedian or musician or a meal with their best friend or group of friends and laugh. By the way, these two separate descriptions could be the same person just depending on how their day or weeks or months have gone, right? Their needs will change. Because if we are exhausted, the thoughts may be of going out and having to get dressed up or doing any of these things, it might be appealing to us, right? So our body will want to resist that. Oh, no, right. It's there if we listen to it and allow it. Our opinions are there if we're not scared, not only to not share them, because this is not a bad external. This is about us validating our own opinions. Like, yeah, yeah, you do think that. Yeah, you do want to do that. Yeah, this is what you think about this person, like validating that. And a lot of times we will do this in relationship with others. If there's space to allow our opinions to be held or said, you know, often when my friends are with Frank, like I'll say to them, I'm confused about something I just need to talk this out. And there I need somebody that's going to kind of be reflecting back to me, like to tease it out because there's something that I'm not getting or even help shed awareness on us. But what can happen in relationships is that again, we're shut down, we're ignored, we're not listened to. And that can make us feel invisible. And the mistake we make is that we think that we're unimportant. And then we become quieter and smaller and not share. Whereas actually what we're not looking at is maybe that there's no safety in this relationship for me to share. And actually, where is it safe for me to share? A lot of people when they come to therapy first, this is one of the first places that they actually learn that they're safety. They actually learn that they matter. They actually learn what it's like to sit with their own thoughts and be reflective and think about what are my thoughts, opinions? Where are my boundaries? What is okay for people to treat me? What is not okay for people to treat me? Before kind of the emergence of TikTok or in social media, I know in my own work before I moved online, most people that came to me, in fact, I can really think nearly every single one of them didn't know that they were being abused. Didn't know that there was harm in their family of origin because they thought that it was them and that they were the problem. A lot of people listening to this will recognize the damage that was done by your childhood, but can still think that you're the problem that needs fixing. Instead, you develop coupon mechanisms in order for you to survive, and you did survive, and you are listening to this now, and you do have choices, and those choices are not easy. Even the one from shifting to external, to internal, to what do I want. That is simple, but it's not easy. It takes time, but it is the most important piece of work that you will do. And from this, there is so much that can grow. We're talking about here, even a personality can grow, and there can be such fun, and there can be such light. But it's you that has to allow that light switch to turn on. Because what happens is that when we put this external, and somebody shines a light on us and gives us attention, we can be so addicted and drawn to that light, so desperate for that light, for that love, for that kindness, for that warmth, that again, we can appease and phone with them. And so this is about turning on your own internal light, being curious about yourself, befriending yourself. And then, yes, we need these other people. Yes, we need these lights. Yes, we need this warmth, but you will be clear where you end and they begin. You will be clear about who you are. And this will be ever evolving. Again, this is not binary. You will not be the same in your 30s as your 40s, or 40s and 50s and 50s and 60s. You will have new life experience, and so your opinions will grow and evolve. So this is not like an exam where you're going to learn the answer, and then that answer is right, and that's it. No, this is not a bad perfectionism. If you're falling into that way again, catch it. This is not a bad perfectionism. This is about evolving. And while there's such joy in that, there's grief in it too, because there will be deaths in the way, and letting go in the ways that we learn to survive. So that people pleasing, there is a death in that. Yes, there is a letting go, and it can be very scary to do that, because this is the way that you learn to survive. This is what was there to protect you. Before we go, I'm thinking of, I remember there was a TikTok trend, and it was that movie inside out, you know, the kids movie. And she had an imaginary friend, BingBong, and they were, you know, they had fallen down this huge hole, and they were trying to get out of it, and it's a little car that was able to fly in, get out of it. And BingBong was with her on the back. And BingBong was what she used to survive, that helped her get through and have joy in her childhood. But BingBong had to get off the car in order to reduce the weight, so that the car could fly to the top of the hill. And the person driving the car, her name was Joy, and she was saying, we made it, and she could only make it by letting go of him. She could only make it if we let go of him, her coping mechanism. And there is both a joy and a sadness in that, but that is what healing looks like. And it is never linear and just a destination. It is an involvement, a continuing involvement. And so I hope in this, that you've maybe learned something, but really what I hope is that you are going to go bit easier on yourself, that you are going to have less blame with the understanding that this is a bit nervous system and this is about safety. And that all the ways that you try to survive and are still trying to survive, the negative self-talk, substance misuse, disorder to eating, the lack of boundaries, there are ways that we try to cope amid pervasive and serious ongoing threats to our safety and our sense of self. And now it is important to recognize those ways and to, honestly, thank them for being there to help you survive, but recognize which ones are serving you and which ones aren't serving you anymore. And because now you matter, you get to grow, you get to choose you, you get to make choices, but recognize that they're empowered choices. So even back to that one with Frank, if we had had a conversation and that didn't suit, I have a choice in that still, I can still make decisions. I am not helpless, I am not powerless. So even if he was going to be an asshole, I still have a choice in that. Do I listen to that or do I get the kids minded and go anywhere? A lot of people will hear the fear in that then if somebody is abusive, no, let's not worth it because I'm going to be punished further. Okay, if that's the reality, I really need to face that reality and then seek external help in ways because my safety isn't jeopardy here. Your body is clever, your body is speaking to you and it's your job to listen to it, to listen to the narrative of what's been said and to check it out, to see, right to fact check it, to see if this is actually the case. Am I going on a normal narrative? Am I infantilizing? Am I rescuing? Am I being the parent here? We do need to check it, but in doing that, we need to be aware of it first and not that the narrative is controlling us. Yeah, you matter, you are important, you are worthy, just as you are. Thanks for being here, I would love to hear if this resonated, if this landed, share your thoughts with me and share this with anybody that you think might benefit from us. And with that, I will see you again next week. Take care. Bye.