Strong Reactions

This episode explores what to do when you are experiencing a strong reaction to something with real-time examples.

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Produced By White Hot
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Beat Provided By https://freebeats.io
Produced By White Hot
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Transcript

0:13

Hey my friends. I noticed something this week, my friends. I was grumpy. Like out of the ordinary grumpy. Like someone will just come up to me and I'll want to tell them to go fuck themselves for no apparent reason. I was just like permanently annoyed. And so I finally sat down with myself and was like okay Melinda, what is this? What is going on? Like for real, like what is the actually the problem here? And I realized I felt unusually fatigued. Good information. But like, why is this extra fatigue here? And I realized that I had been making a lot of decisions for other people. People had been coming to me and outsourcing their thinking to me. And individually it seemed kind of small, right? My boss asked what catering he should order and I made that decision for him even though it was his decision to make. Someone else wasn't sure how to word an email. So I worded it for them even though it wasn't really my problem. And so on and so on and so on. I realized that I had been solving other people's problems and making other people's decisions pretty much nonstop. Like they would just ask me something and I would just do it. So I've made all these decisions and I've solved all these problems that aren't even mine. They aren't even for anything that matters to me. And now I don't have anything left in the tank for the shit that I actually care about. I'm tapped out. I need to set a boundary here. That is what I have realized. That I need to set a boundary here for myself. So instead of jumping on solving other people's stuff, I need to push it back on them. When my boss asks me what catering he should get, I should just say I'm sure you'll make a great decision. I support you in whatever you decide to get. And so on and so on. I need to have other people make their own decisions so I can protect my own energy. This isn't something that I can tell people to do, right? It's not up to other people to protect my energy. It's up to me. It's a boundary that I need to set for me. It's important for me not to take more ownership than I ought to. Just because someone brings me a problem does not mean that I now own that problem. Abuse survivors tend to struggle with this. Abuse survivors , especially emotional abuse survivors, tend to be overly responsible, but overly responsible skewed towards other people, right? They're all too willing to take responsibility for other people's shit. Whether that is taking responsibility for their problems, their decisions, or their feelings even. And it is very draining. Whenever you take responsibility for something that isn't yours, for something that belongs to someone else, something that someone else should be taking responsibility for, I guarantee you are abandoning a responsibility that you actually do own. When you are overly responsible towards other people, you are likely under responsible for your own shit. Like, when I am taking responsibility for solving other people's problems, I am not taking responsibility for managing my own energy. I am also not being responsible for my own decision making because I am putting my own decisions, the decisions that actually belong to me and that I am responsible for, in jeopardy of decision fatigue because I have spent all my mental resources on other people and depleted myself. If you are taking responsibility for someone else's feelings, you are probably sacrificing the responsibility of your own feelings And the truth is we cannot be responsible for everything. It is impossible. You will have to choose. You will have to make the conscious decision how much of other people's stuff you are available for because no one else can decide that for you. People will just keep bringing me decisions to make until I cut it off. They're not going to regulate that. It's up to me to regulate what I can take on. And for any of you that might tend towards black and white thinking, no I didn't say that you should never shoulder any responsibility for other people's stuff. It's not a problem for me to take on some of other people's decisions. It isn't a problem until it becomes too much. It isn't a problem until I've failed to set adequate boundaries around it. So no, you are not stuck in a black and white all or nothing. It comes down to making a conscious choice of what you are available for and what you aren't. And then setting up those boundaries for yourself. This is the medicine. This is the medicine that most of us who have come out of emotionally abusive relationships need. Those relationships will have trained you to be overly responsible for other people's shit, to take ownership of shit that isn't yours. Part of healing is learning to break that and take less responsibility for other people's shit and more responsibility for your own. It's about learning to set boundaries that makes sense for you and will allow you to live in the best way possible. So my friends, is there somewhere in your life that you have been taking too much responsibility for something that really belongs to someone else? The clue to whether you've been doing that or not, will be in how you feel. Where do you feel your energy being drained out? And how can you set a boundary that will repair that If you need a refresher on the mechanics of setting and enforcing boundaries, you can check out the boundaries episode of the podcast where we talk about that in depth. I also want to point out here how much inherent wisdom is in our bodies my friends. When I feel like telling people to go fuck themselves it is because I actually do need to push back on people. I can choose to do it in a more polite way of course, but that was wisdom. I think we tend to dismiss and shame our reactions sometimes. We think oh, I'm acting like a crazy person right now. But you're not crazy. If you are reacting a certain way, you can trust that there is a wisdom in it and you just need to find the reason. Something needs your attention and your care. In my case, it was I needed to set a boundary. So you can find what you need. Your body is already telling you Alright, my friends until next time, be well.