If you're tired of feeling never enough, of constantly being derailed by your own fears or the reactions of others, then you are in the right place. I'm Deb, a licensed psychologist, and this is Blooming Outside the Lines, a podcast dedicated to women who've spent their lives trying to stay within the lines of what's acceptable, who've never felt good enough and who are ready to break free and bloom. Let's talk about how you can build a solid foundation connected with your strength and your wisdom. Before we start, I need to make sure that you know that the information I share with you is just that. It's just information. It's not meant to be a prescription for what you should do or meant to replace the advice of any of your healthcare providers. It also doesn't mean that we have a professional client-therapist relationship.

This transcript was created using AI and has had some light editing. Please forgive transcription errors. Thank you!

Hi there and welcome. In this episode, I want to tackle a struggle that I've had in my own life and one that I repeatedly see in the lives of my clients. And that is the struggle to figure out how can I take care of myself or get my own needs met I'm in a relationship.

I often hear from women, when is it my turn? although women may face many factors which could get in the way of them getting their needs met. One that I hear over and over is how can I get my needs met and still keep others happy or not disapproving of me? I’m going to come back to that in my next episode, to this idea of keeping people happy. And so if you struggle with that, I'd really encourage you to check it out when it becomes available. 

In this episode, want to focus on the conflict that many of us feel between meeting our own needs and meeting the needs of others in relationships. Actually, I think what seems to be more true, at least from my experience in talking with women, is that we forget about our needs once we're in a relationship. They seem to fly out the window, at least for a period of time.

The idea to talk about this today came from a client session. I've changed the details to maintain her confidentiality. And when my client arrived for her session, she said, I'm really glad that we're meeting today. I really need to talk to you about something because I really blew it with someone and I need help figuring out what to do.

It turns out that she had given and given in a relationship without saying anything. And then this past week, she had lost it and blown up at the other person. She was feeling guilty and embarrassed and wanted to figure out what she should do. I'm wondering if you've been there, trying to be nice, to be polite, putting up with things way past your limits and then at some point losing it. I know I sure have. This is the pattern that I've witnessed repeatedly in conversations with my female clients over the years. And as I noticed this and other patterns of relating, I came to call it an entangled intimacy style where my needs become entangled with your needs or your approval. 

My suspicion is that this style of relating was survival-based for our female ancestors and has been passed down to us both genetically and through our socialization. And I've shared more about this in previous episodes if you want to learn more.

There are many aspects to this style of relating, and I go into it in much more detail in my book, Never Enough. And what I want to talk about today is the tendency to swing back and forth between two opposite styles of relating, appeasing and disconnecting.

 The in sharing this information with you is the hope that if you see yourself in these patterns, this knowledge will help you understand and see your behavior in relationships in a new light that you might feel less critical of yourself having this understanding.

Okay, so what do I mean by appeasing and disconnecting in relationships? Appeasing is what we do to keep the peace, not make waves, keep people happy, and avoid disapproval. I chose appease over please for a couple reasons. First, because it captures the tendency to set aside one's own needs in order to keep the peace or keep others happy. 

And second, because I think people pleaser carries with it a negative connotation. Women who've come to see me describing themselves in this way have seen it as a flaw or a weakness that they needed to change.

From my perspective, if these tendencies to keep the peace and be approved of are in fact carryovers from a time when our lives depended upon them, I would categorize them as strengths rather than weaknesses. They just don't serve us as well in today's world. This connection between approval and worth keeps us constantly striving and never really feeling good enough. 

And it keeps us putting our needs aside in the process. I think the caregiving roles of women also support this tendency. Mothers often have to put the needs of their children ahead of their own. The problem is that most of us can only keep appeasing for so long before we've had it. Like my client who had patiently listened and listened until she couldn't take it anymore, we tend to reach a breaking point and then we explode. She disconnected from that relationship through her anger.

So disconnecting is on the other side of the continuum from appeasing. Most of us are on a pendulum swinging back and forth between appeasing and disconnecting. Never really feeling comfortable or okay about ourselves no matter which end of the continuum we are on.

Let me just say a bit more about disconnecting before I talk about that discomfort at each end. Disconnecting can happen in many ways. I've often used the example of getting to a limit and blowing up and had clients say, ⁓ that's not me. I don't get angry like that. Well, in some cases we've discovered that it's true, that they don't disconnect and instead they keep appeasing despite the emotional and physical consequences. 

More often what we have discovered is that the disconnection has occurred in more subtle ways. I had a client describe her disconnection as slithering away. She said that she quietly slithers away from a relationship by not calling or returning calls. Okay, so disconnection can happen in many ways. It doesn't have to happen through anger. 

And so why do I describe it as a pendulum swinging back and forth? Because what usually happens after we disconnect- after we blow up or after we've slithered away and not returned phone calls. Most often we end up feeling guilty like my client and often this guilt leads us right back to appeasing, trying to make sure the other person is okay with us and still likes us or we move on to a new relationship, and then what happens? As soon as we form a relationship, those old pulls to appease are right there back there with us. We find ourselves agreeing to coffee when we don't really have the time, feeling this pull to make sure that we're doing enough, that we're doing enough to be seen in a positive light, doing enough for the person to be happy with us or to keep them happy, which again I'll come back to in the next episode. 

And then the whole cycle starts over again. We give and we give, we feel responsible and we feel responsible until we reach a limit and then we're done. And we swing back over to disconnecting.

The problem is that although disconnecting feels good in the moment, it feels really good to stand up for myself. I wish I could remember the term that one of my clients used to describe how she felt when she had disconnected. It's probably in my book. I can't think of it right now. We typically feel strong and powerful and like, I don't need you. I don't need to keep taking care of you, you only drag me down. 

Whether we disconnect through anger, by leaving a relationship, or by slithering away, it feels good in the moment. And then the guilt sets in. Or the loneliness sets in. Or the wires, those old wires connecting worth with approval light up and we swing right back over to appeasing which is most likely wired with safety and what we have been socialized as women to do. 

So neither side ends up being comfortable. On the appeasing side, I have set aside my feelings and needs. And on the disconnecting side, I no longer care how you feel or what you need. It's finally time for me. Except that doesn't feel good either, as it's lonely and I feel guilty about the way I treated you.

There is another point on this continuum, and that is what I call the middle. It's the place of both and. The place where I'm connected with my needs and I care about or respect your needs. That's why it's in the middle. I'm not giving up my needs for yours nor am I discarding you and your needs for mine.

I call this point the mysterious middle in my book, as most of us have a hard time finding it and staying there. Clients have often asked me, what is the middle again?

I think part of the problem for us as women is that we have never learned to pay attention to what is going on inside of us. We're very good at identifying what's happening in others.

And often for a variety of reasons, women feel selfish when they pay attention to their own needs, which again seems like a topic for another episode. Most often when I have asked women what they are feeling, I get this deer in the headlight look.

Now I know if I asked them how they thought someone else was feeling, I would get a quick response. We have been trained to look outward to the needs of others. And when we are around other people, we lose touch with our own needs. 

Most of us struggle to hold the both and. That I can feel one way, and you can feel another, that we can disagree and we can still care about each other. We're either busy trying to be good enough by appeasing or we're swinging over to disconnection in order to be ourselves. The middle allows freedom from fears of measuring up or being good enough.

 As I can be me and you can be you, we can care about each other and we can be different.

And this is exactly what makes it so mysterious for most of us, because it's hard to believe that it is okay to be me, if you don't see me as being okay. Usually, the only time when I feel like it's okay to be me is when I've swung over to disconnecting, where I no longer care about how you feel.

I deserve to think and feel the way I want. And it doesn't matter what you think. That is until the guilt or the loneliness sets in. The missing piece in disconnecting is connection or concern or respect for the other person's feelings. In the middle, I have the right to be me and I respect your feelings and needs. It's the place of both and in relationships versus the either or of appeasing or distancing.

If you think about the pendulum on a big old clock, where does it come to rest? It rests in the middle. The middle also allows us to rest. It brings freedom from our fears of measuring up or being good enough, as I can be me and you can be you, and we can care about each other and be different and disagree. 

And this is exactly what makes it so very hard for most of us to achieve because it's very hard to believe that it's okay to be me if you don't see me that way. Because of that, for most of us, especially those with a trauma background, the middle is often difficult to attain. Fears are often entrenched so deeply that these patterns are difficult to change.

 So please be kind to yourself. I share this information with the goal of normalizing, for you to be able to say, of course I would do that. And then being able to let go of some of the guilt or the shame. Because we just can't grow or change from a place of shame.

Okay, that's it for this episode.

In my next episode, I plan to talk about one of the beliefs that keeps these wires, this tendency to appease alive and well. So until then, take good care and bye bye.

This has been Blooming Outside the Lines, a podcast dedicated to supporting you in blooming into all you are meant and wish to be. If you enjoyed it and gained value, please consider leaving a review, as it will help other women to find it and please share it with anyone who would benefit from it. And if you would like to be notified when new episodes become available, be sure and follow on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, how will you light a candle of self-acceptance? Because you deserve to be you, even if others disagree.