Handling Other People’s Expectations Without Losing Yourself

Spam Filter For Your Brain - Episode 138

Listen Here

I've been thinking a lot about doing things for other people, and how often so many of us do stuff that we say is for other people, but actually our real motivation behind it is that we're worried about what we might say to ourselves if we don't do these things for other people.

Rather than doing something that we feel is out of the goodness of our hearts, which is quite often how we frame it to ourselves, quite often it's about trying to manage other people's emotions in the hope that they don't feel something bad about us, or say something bad about us. And then if we just peel back a little layer of that, it's actually them. We don't have to deal with how we would feel about ourselves, or what we would say to ourselves if someone else disapproves of us.

And it's wild because we kind of have this invisible pressure that we we carry around trying to manage other people's emotions, trying to manage other people's expectations. And we can use it as a kind of default coping mechanism that if we can just control what other people think about us, then we won't have to ever have to get round to dealing with some of the horrible things that we say about ourselves. If we don't think that we've hit the mark, or we've got up to scratch with things.

I wonder how much of this is something that you experience in your life. And if it is, it's not that surprising. We are socialised by being rewarded for being easy, being helpful, being accommodating, not being a fuss, not being demanding, basically not having any human needs. These are the kind of things that make us the kind of person that we are told that other people would want to be around. And very few of those socialised messages instil the idea that we are allowed needs, that we are allowed once we're allowed to be ourselves. It's about trying to shrink ourselves to be someone that someone else desires, rather than us actually having desires for ourself.

The reality is that no matter what you do, how many things you do, how many times you try and overgive and overextend yourself, you can't actually control what someone else thinks or does. You're the person that you go home with.

When we start recentering and focusing on the things that we say to ourselves, the way that we speak to ourselves, the way that we treat ourselves, this is the stuff that is going to be able to resources, to be able to be the kind of person that we want to be able to show up in the way that we want, irrespective of other people's reactions and irrespective of other people's responses.

I don't know about you, but I want to support people and help them because I've checked in with them and I know that it's something they want, and I know it's something that will be valued and appreciated by them. I don't want to be supporting other people or to be helping other people because I'm worried about what I'm going to say to myself if I don't do it.

Equally, that is exactly the same for how I want people to treat me. I don't want obligation help. I don't want people to do things for me because they feel obligated to do so.

When I stay in my own story and I start looking at the ways that I speak to myself when I do things, I'm able to have more spaciousness to be able to check in with what my capacity is, what my body's needs are, or I have space and availability for and to be able to have the communication and the boundaries and the heart centeredness, to be able to check in with what other people might need as well, rather than what I think they need to avoid me having to feel a feeling.

If this sounds terribly familiar to you, trying to untangle some of this stuff and find the solutions for it is what we do over self-care. So you will hear a little bit about that in a minute. But there are loads of brilliant resources in the show notes for this episode.

I try and keep each episode as short as you like. It's just one thought really elaborated on for each episode, and if you enjoy these podcasts. If you would like to leave a review, Apple Podcast is actually the one that it makes a huge difference to help me be able to get these and these little missives into more people's ears, I'd be super grateful for that.

But I hope this idea of centering yourself, concentrating on your own needs, and making sure that we are giving from a place of heart centered, authentic abundance, rather than being terrified that we're going to do that to our selves is something that is useful for you to reflect on a little bit this week, and I'll be back in your ears next week.