Moving On

This episode contains the key to avoiding indecision and moving forward towards what you want in life. 

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Transcript

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Hey my friends, What is the biggest obstacle in the way of you setting and maintaining boundaries? What is the biggest obstacle in the way of not people pleasing? I think for most people, it is something along the lines of being worried about what people will think of you. Fearing what people think, at its core, is just the fear of being uncomfortable. It is fearing the uncomfortable feelings you anticipate you will have should people be displeased with you. I think it ends up very empowering when you realize that what you actually fear is your own feelings about something, not necessarily the thing itself. The thing itself holds no sway if you miraculously did not have the feelings you think you would I do want to acknowledge though the intensity of the discomfort have about it. that this can bring up. I tell you, I have this thing specifically about authority figures, especially male authority figures, being displeased with me. And like I can trace it to a specific trauma as its origin. But the fact remains, if I think a man in a position of power is going to be displeased with me, I go into full nervous system activation. It's awful. It's the same fucking reaction my body would have if I was facing an attacker with a knife. Nervous system activation is nervous system activation. The nervous system doesn't give a fuck about the difference between emailing an executive and dealing with an attacker with a knife. It senses danger in both of those scenarios and floods my system with the exact same damn chemicals either way. It fucking sucks. It makes sense that I would want to avoid that activation. If I can't avoid interaction with male authority figures entirely, it makes sense that my next instinct is to go into fawning and people pleasing mode to try and make it so they won't be displeased with me and I won't be shitting myself scared. It makes sense, and it might not be always how I want to behave. Maybe there are times where I decide, yep, this particular executive is nasty and I do want to avoid their displeasure, if at all possible. But there might be some situations where I don't want to do that behavior. I have to figure out how to get around this. We have to realize that there is no path that has no discomfort. Being somewhere you don't want to be and behaving in ways that you don't want to behave has its own kind of discomfort. If I people please someone when I really don't want to, there is discomfort to that. It may be shame ,or self loathing ,or regret, but it has its own discomfort, whatever that form is. It is extremely powerful to realize that there is discomfort in either path. It is a matter of choosing the discomfort that I want to have. I think sometimes we get stuck because we want there to be an option with no discomfort. I have to tell you that there is no such thing. The only time you will have no discomfort at all is when you are no longer alive. When you can really come to terms with there not being this magical path that avoids all discomfort, you can begin to look at the choices you do have, and examine both their benefits and their potential discomfort and make a real choice about what you want. I might want the benefit of being able to stand up for myself no matter who is on the other side, even if it is a male figure of authority. I might want to have that benefit. Choosing that benefit is also choosing the discomfort of the terror of my nervous system activation. I can't have one without the other. If I don't want the discomfort of my nervous system activation, then I am choosing the self loathing of people pleasing when I don't really want to. Either way I'm going to have discomfort. It's my choice which one I want to have. I don't have to like it, but that's the reality of it. The human experience doesn't come with a never be uncomfortableoption. I really wish it did, but it doesn't. Accepting that lets you go for what you really want. It keeps you from being stuck. We made a choice like this when we left our toxic relationships. There was the discomfort of being inside that relationship, whatever that looked like for you. For me, it looked like walking on eggshells all the time and living in fear of what he was going to do next. And then there was the discomfort of leaving and the unknown on the other side of that. For me, that was the fear of not knowing if I would survive on my own or even if I could make it out. There was fear either way; there was discomfort either way. I chose the discomfort that provided me a chance at freedom and happiness. Because there was no option without discomfort. The human brain has a bias towards the familiar so it can feel safer to choose the discomfort that we're familiar with than it is to choose new discomfort. But the short of it is that our discomfort is limited to our own range of emotions. Fear is fear, whether it is the fear of your partner or the fear of the unknown. One of the specific fears I had about leaving my abusive marriage was homelessness. I was afraid of being homeless. What I was actually afraid of though is how I would feel about being homeless. It was the anticipated shame and fear and sense of failure that I was really afraid of. I watched a video of an interview with a homeless person A while ago, and the interviewer was asking if she had any regrets, if she would change anything about her situation. She said, No, she didn't need anything different. She felt completely content in her life. What's wild about that is, I, as someone who has all the typical markers of success, have never felt that level of contentment in my life ever. It is not about the state of homelessness. Is about how you feel about it. I feared my feelings about it. This woman didn't have the same feelings I have about it. She was experiencing a level of happiness and contentment I may never experience in my lifetime. When we come to understand that what we tend to fear the most is actually our own feelings, it brings such an opportunity for freedom from those fears. I realized that what I fear is the feelings of shame, fear and failure. You can also realize that all of those things are just sensations in the body. Can I feel shame in my body and be okay? Can I feel fear in my body and be okay? Can I feel a sense of failure in my body and be okay? The answer is, yes, I have felt all of those things before and more, and have been okay. And I can feel them again and be okay. So my friends, if there is a path you want to go down but you have been holding back out of fear, I challenge you to name the feelings you are afraid of having and ask yourself if you can feel that in your body and be okay. Ask yourself what discomfort you are choosing now. What discomfort would you rather choose instead? And then see if those fears have the same hold on you as they did before. Alright My friends, until next time be well.