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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 and welcome. I wonder if you worry about this. Do you fear that if you start making your needs a priority or start voicing your opinions, that you will become a selfish or self-centered person? This is a fear I have often heard from the women I've worked with over the years.

Often when a woman brings up this fear, my first response or reaction is to ask, do you really think that's possible? Do you really think that you could stop caring about other people and their needs? Usually, as I'm asking this of a client, I know her to be an extremely caring person who struggles to put her needs ahead of those she cares about and so I think it's a safe bet that the answer will be no, that it would be hard for her to stop caring for others and their needs. 

And yet the answer often surprises me. I often hear, yes, that is exactly what happens when I speak up. I'm not very nice in how I share my opinions or in how I ask for what I want. I don't like who I am when I do that And I end up feeling guilty. 

I'm curious if you can relate. Do you become this woman you're not very proud of when you assert yourself or your opinions or ask for what you need? In my experience, my own personal experience, and in working with women over the years, being assertive, saying no, or taking time for oneself often happens when we are at the end of our rope, when we have had it and have tipped into the stress response. 

So when I ask women if they were calm when they ask for what they needed or voiced or voiced their opinion, rarely is the answer yes.

Almost always the answer is no. Usually I hear something like I've had it and I yell or I demand, or something like I give and give, and do I get that back? Never.

So speaking up, asking for what we need, or voicing our opinion often happens at a time when we have disconnected, which most often reflects a tip into the stress response. When we have tipped, we don't have the ability to feel compassion or even to recognize another person's needs.

All of that is because of the changes that have happened in our brain. Those changes make it physically impossible. And because what fires together wires together in the brain, speaking up and anger or disconnecting often get wired together. And so when one happens, so does the other. When I get angry, I disconnect and that is when I speak up. And when I speak up, I do so in anger. 

Let me back up for a moment and share what I mean by disconnecting. I introduced this concept in the episode, When is it my turn? Or how do I hold on to my needs in relationships? I'll put a link to that episode in the show notes.

In that episode, I shared a pattern in relationships that I've seen over the years, and that is a tendency to swing back and forth between appeasing and disconnecting, or working hard to keep the peace, not make waves, avoid disapproval, and then when we've reached our limit, disconnecting in some way.

Either through our words or our actions. It's just too hard to keep giving and giving without reaching a limit. Disconnection can happen by getting angry, and it can also happen by creating distance, hanging up, ending a relationship, or in more subtle ways, like no longer calling or returning phone calls.

As I think about disconnection, by its very nature, it is the expression of our needs and wants. I'm doing what I think I need to take care of myself in that moment. The problem is that because we are often tipped when we disconnect, we no longer are aware or care about the needs of the other person. 

So when we have swung to that side, we do act like the selfish, self-centered person that we fear. In a tipped state, the focus is on survival. We are meant to be self-centered when our lives are in immediate danger. There are other stress responses that do push us to care for others.

And usually by the time we have reached our limit, we are in the defend and protect ourselves stress response, and caring about the feelings of others really isn't possible.

the main point I'm trying to make is that when it comes to taking care of ourselves, when we have disconnected, it backfires. Speaking up while we are tipped usually doesn't get us what we want and leaves us feeling guilty and maybe self-centered. And when we feel guilty or afraid of how we acted, what do we do? For most of us, we swing back to appeasing. 

For me, this often happens by apologizing, taking way too much responsibility for what happened, and basically dismissing what I was initially concerned about.

If you think of the pendulum on an old clock, when it is pulled over to one side, what does it do? It swings to the other, right? It has to stop swinging in order to rest in the middle. And therein lies the problem for many of us. We end up swinging back and forth from appeasing or keeping the peace, avoiding making waves, avoiding disapproval, to the disconnecting side where we've had it and we no longer care what others think or feel or need. 

Sometimes women spend more time on the disconnecting side. I stay out of the sticky mess of relationships where I might appe end up appeasing, and I instead focus on working out or staying in shape or my work. And for many, the pull to disconnection is short-lived. Either way, it's more of an I'll show you state that is hard to maintain because it's lonely and often ends up being a state filled with guilt, which leads us eventually back over to the other side, where our needs end up getting put on the back burner.

So I guess the long and short of this is that we have to be in the middle, the place of both and to be ourselves and feel good about ourselves while maintaining relationships and avoiding becoming self-centered. 

Someone listening to the episode I mentioned earlier where I introduced the concept of the pendulum. swinging back and forth between appeasing and disconnecting, related to me that as she was listening, she kept hoping that I was going to share what to do about it. 

As I thought about her comment, I realized that that really is the basis for my triggered and trapped course, and probably way too long of an answer for a single podcast episode.

And I also know people are busy and money is tight right now. I may try to revise that course to shorten it. And for now, let me share some ideas about how we find the middle, the place where both my needs are important and I still care and respect your needs. Or in other words, I'm not being self-centered and I'm also not ignoring what I need.

I also want to say that some of you may not relate to this pattern of swinging between appeasing and disconnecting. Some of you may have downloaded the skills to stay connected with your own needs and the needs of others, or to be in the middle when you express what you want and need. And none of us can do that very well, if at all when we have tipped into the stress response. So, one of the most important things we can do to both be ourselves in the world and avoid being selfish or self centered is to learn to recognize our brain state and to do what we can to keep ourselves in the balanced brain state. As with most things, prevention is usually much easier than repair. And the first thing that we need to do in order to do that is to learn or start to pay attention to what is going on inside. For most of us, those of us that have these struggles with being ourselves in the world, our attention is most often out, outside of ourselves, on the needs of others.

And this bringing our attention back to ourself is the B-step in the Bloom model in my book Never Enough. And I'm not going to go through all the steps. And we can't get to the middle without noticing what's going on inside.

Because what happens way before that moment when we want to express our needs or be ourselves is what helps us to find the middle and to stay there. So let me give you an example from my life, one again that I'm not proud of,

I tend to get overtired often. I have some health issues that make it difficult to stay rested. Because of that, fatigue is a constant companion. And it is registered as a stressor by my nervous system, triggering my body's defensive responses. So, in essence, because my body is already fighting to defend against the stressor of illness and fatigue, it is really easy for me to tip. 

Yesterday, and believe me, I am embarrassed to share this, I got into a screaming match with the Amazon delivery man. I won't go into the details. And I had been mowing and I was exhausted. He came up and was yelling at me and wouldn't listen. Well it didn't end well for either of us. He was so tipped, I'm not sure anything I could have said if I could have gotten in a word in edgewise would have made a difference. 

And afterwards, when I was more rested and back in the middle, I thought, I could have simply said this. I won't say what it is because I didn't share the details. And I thought, why didn't I do that? And the answer is because I was too tipped. So being in the middle starts way before the moment when we when we have disconnected  and end up feeling guilty, ashamed, or self-centered. 

Think back about those days when you haven't had a break, when your boss dumped an unexpected project in your lap, when you already had the one she handed you yesterday. Or your child is sick and you have to drop everything and go to the school. You know those days I'm talking about. And then take a moment to think about how short your fuse is on those days. It doesn't take much, does it? 

So by stopping throughout the day and noticing how we are doing in that moment we can start to give ourselves the care that will help us to stay in the middle, that will help us to avoid those moments of disconnection like I had yesterday when we end up feeling guilty and ashamed. I know from my own experience this is a difficult practice to get in place.

 It's also a practice that I bet you are already skilled at, noticing continually how others are feeling and doing. So you already have the skill. It's the remembering to do it and to give yourself that attention that is the hard part. Our brain prefers business as usual.

So doing things differently adding new things is usually hard. some ideas are to schedule it, to put an alarm on your phone, to put sticky notes up, whatever will help you to remember. 

Some people have found it easiest to imagine that they are checking in on a child. Either themselves as a child or simply a child that they care about and wouldn't want to ignore all day. 

I know from my own experience that getting skilled at this isn't easy, and I also know we can get better at it. Meditation is another way of increasing our awareness of what is happening in the moment.

And when we notice we need to follow through, we need to give ourselves the advice or care we would have given to others. I needed to stop mowing probably an hour before the Amazon delivery person arrived. Not doing so left me feeling guilty and ashamed about how I handled the situation. I'm gonna stop here.

And I hope this has been helpful and given you some new things to think about and some ideas about how you can work on being in the middle. As always, I'd love to hear your reactions and your feedback. Until next time, 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.