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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.

 Hi there welcome. This week Mary, not her real name, a client of mine, tearfully shared with me in her session how no one in her staff meeting seemed to understand or appreciate the work she's doing. She said that she kept trying to explain how her ideas would benefit the company and no one seemed to get it.

Not even her supervisor. Before long, she had moved into worries that she is no longer valued, that maybe they think she is just too old to have good ideas. On another occasion, Tabitha, another client, and again not her real name, shared with me how she and her office mate had decided to walk during lunch.

At first it seemed like it was a good idea, and now she said she simply feels badly about herself because she can't walk as fast as her office mate, and no matter how hard she has tried, she hasn't been able to explain to her friend that her legs are shorter and she just can't keep up. She went on to say that she knows that she weighs more than she should, and that if she was just thinner, maybe it wouldn't be a problem. 

In another session, Dorothy tearfully shared with me her attempts to get her husband to listen to her concerns about needing his help. She said that either he tunes her out or says that he'll do it and then doesn't get it done. She related having talked to him about this numerous times and shared with me the toll it has taken on her self-esteem.

I'm wondering if you're relating to these women and their situations. If you find yourself trying hard to get people to understand, and that when they don't, it feels personal. It feels as though you are unimportant, or maybe even unloved, or maybe that your ideas aren't good ones.

Over the years I've come to recognize these seemingly different situations as being reflections of a stumbling block that many of us seem to run into in being ourselves in the world. It is the belief, most often unconscious, that sameness equals love or being okay. That if you get it, or agree, or are happy with my idea, then I'm okay.

This need to have people understand or agree with us seems to be intricately intertwined with our worth, our sense of being okay or lovable. If my worth is tied at a deep subconscious level with the reactions of others, what does it mean when they don't agree or get what I'm saying? How can I know that I'm worthy, okay and lovable?

 As I say that, I guess this is an answer to the question I posed a couple of weeks ago about how we know when we're when we are okay. Maybe we know when we're okay or good enough when people agree or value our opinions.

It seems that having people understand or feel similarly about a situation is like a branch on the tree of the belief of I'm okay if you approve of me or don't disapprove of me. That branch seems to be sameness equals love.

Sameness and mutual understanding seem to protect us from fears of not being good enough or not being lovable. This is probably a topic for another episode, and this unconscious belief is one of the ways that we both support big businesses like the fashion and the dieting industry and remain trapped by them. We have a driving need to know what will make us be seen as okay. And those big businesses are very willing to let us know how we can be okay through all of their marketing.

I think that I have shared with you before that what that in what I have come to call an entangled intimacy style, there is the expectation that if you love me, you will see it my way. Bowen, a family theorist, talked about the ability to be oneself and remain close to those we love as a measure of becoming an adult or an individual. And that young people who had not developed this skill had not truly become individuals, separate and yet connected with their family of origin. He talked about some families making it more difficult for this individuation to happen. 

Bowen's work stimulated me to think about the female experience as being like that of a family or a family system, a system in which there's a strong pull toward sameness and a fear of being different and not good enough.

In my family of origin, it was very clearly stated and also more subtly expressed that to be loved and part of the family, one needed to do things a certain way. I often heard, That's not how we do it in our family. As a child, being a part of the family ensures survival. And so messages that help us to understand how to stay a part of the family become strongly wired and become the template for our safety in future relationships. 

I think I've shared with you in the past how when I was in high school, I developed interests in many solitary activities. I loved to research ideas for my science courses. I loved to drag my sewing machine out in the sunshine and sew my clothes.

My parents didn't understand these types of activities. Thinking back, I think maybe my father did, as he was an introvert as well and loved problem solving and solitary creative endeavors. And my mother was a strong extrovert who in those early years overshadowed my father's preferences.

Really something that I think often happens in our society in general, as there are more extroverts than introverts, and being an extrovert has become, I think, equated with normality. 

To my mother, solitary activities like reading meant you had nothing to do. I remember when a man that I was dating came to visit for the holidays and he told me this later that he was sitting and reading in the living room and my mother walked into the room and asked him whether he was bored and didn't have anything to do. And he thought that that was so interesting that she would respond in that way.

It probably helped me to see that in my mom him pointing that out. I love you, mom, wherever you are, and I hope you know that. And in so many ways I am like you in that I like to be moving and have a hard time sitting. And clearly the message that I heard was that there was something wrong with me because I enjoyed solitary activities. 

I remember trying to explain why my science projects were important, and what I heard was that it wasn't normal to be spending so much time alone. I'm sure from my mother's extroverted perspective, she totally believed that, and those messages, and probably many before them became the template for my search outside of myself to determine what was okay or acceptable. 

I'm quite sure that my mom was feeling her own fear about sending a daughter out into the world who might not be good enough to be chosen, to get married, and to be accepted. And the upshot of both her wiring and my own wiring is that over the years I have spent a great deal of time trying to get people to understand or agree with something I felt was important. 

Now just to be clear, I'm not talking about campaigning for causes that are important to me. I'm talking about trying to get people to understand why I was doing something or why I needed something. Like my client who was repeatedly trying to convince her husband that she needed help. I have spent more time than I'd prefer to share, trying to explain why I was doing something in hopes that someone would help me. Did they know I wanted them to help me? Did they know I was internally questioning my ideas each time they didn't respond? I doubt it.

Who knows really what was going on for them? And then there were the times when I responded in a defensive way because someone didn't seem to care about my perspective. Years ago where I lived, my neighbors built something - a building that really changed my view and my experience in my backyard and I hated it. one year my sister came to visit and she said, ⁓ I just love the design of that building. It felt like she slapped me.

I immediately jumped in to defend how ugly it was and how I wasn't the only one who thought that. I feel embarrassed sharing this as my defensiveness was so out of place.

Looking back when my sister commented on how pretty the building was, without me realizing it, a fear of not being okay, understood, supported or loved had been triggered, when in fact she was simply sharing her opinion, which had nothing to do with a lack of caring for how that building had changed my life. 

I'm wondering if this type of situation or the situations similar to the ones my clients shared with me have happened for you and left you feeling the need to keep explaining? What I've needed to learn is to ask directly for what I want and also how to deal with the old wires that light up inside me  when people don't agree or aren't willing to help. 

Just like Tabitha, who ended up feeling like her roommate didn't care, old wires of not being okay or lovable have been likely to light up for me when my explaining has fell on deaf ears, or in the case of my sister, when she complimented something that had so negatively impacted my life, or when I finally got up my nerve to ask for what I wanted and didn't get the answer I was hoping for. I'm still working on bringing new information into that wire that people can care about me, they can disagree, disapprove, be unwilling to help me, and that means nothing about my worth. 

I had a client share something with me this past week that a previous therapist shared with her, and I thought it was great, and I want to share it with you. Her therapist had her imagine that she had this big mirror in front of her, and that everything that came at her from another person was simply a reflection of them, of that other person. I wonder if this could be useful the next time you're feeling derailed by someone not getting it, or disagreeing, or even disapproving - that what you are experiencing is a reflection of them and not a measure of your worth or value.

I hope what I have shared has invited you to notice. When you find yourself explaining and explaining, is there something that you need to ask for more directly? Or do you need to remember the mirror and that what people say and do has more to do with who they are, their brain state, and even whether they’re paying attention than any possible measure of your worth. 

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts and reactions. And until next time, take really 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.