It’s hard to change your habit of taking on too much or ignoring your own needs (while you just get this project/biz launch/ task done) with awareness alone. Even if it feels super obvious and painful to watch yourself doing it again.
The most common reason for this is there’s a subconscious investment in “being the competent one”.
My clients are often women who had to be independent from an early age, and who have a very strong and capable “doer” part.
A part is like a sub-personality within each of us that hold emotions, perceptions, and belief systems, and that affect our behaviour and emotional wellness. Parts are either with us from birth (a soul aspect of self like being-ness, space or deep abiding calm) or develop in childhood and through life to help us cope and adapt (like the Strategist, the Rebel, the Pusher, the Critic etc).
So for someone who Needed to be competent and adult before their time, they will often develop this strong part that’s very good at getting things done, taking charge when others cant or wont, removing their own emotionality, supporting others at the expense of themselves and just taking care of business.
This strong part will often squash or deny the more vulnerable needy parts in the person in order to create a feeling of safety. When we are competent and strong, we don’t feel the incredible vulnerability of Having needs and being vulnerable to others’ responses (or lack of responses) to them. This dynamic sets up a struggle between the primary (competent) part and the disowned (vulnerable and needy) part. (To be clear, sometimes a person will have a primary part who is needy and in a victim stance – “I cant do this, I need help” etc, and will repress their inner strength and capacity – we’re just talking about the other version for now).
Clients like this often come to me exhausted and feeling like they’ve managed to do all these amazing things, (and survive incredible hardship) but they feel very sad or lonely or even desperate inside.
When we literally speak to each of the parts in turn, we find the root of the sadness in a disowned part so it can be integrated gracefully into your life. This is super healing and transformative for an over-achiever,.. and also can be very tender and a bit scary because its so new/unknown.
When we do this, rather than running with this hard-edge “I’m fine” attitude, you’ll also have access to the softness in you, and be more open to receiving the love and support you might be craving (which your strong, competent part has been keeping out till now).
This process forms one of the first phases of my Reset Program for exhausted successful women. We meet the parts of you that have been criticizing or pushing you to Just Keep Doing, and invite the other, softer and more connected parts to come forward. We help you create healthy boundaries (around your time, energy and communications), you get core tools so you can manage your emotional, physical and mental state, we heal the core stress drivers stuck in your nervous system (the reasons you cant sleep well or get foggy brained when you’re stressed) and we expand your capacity to hold and feel pleasure as you plan out a new way of doing life.
This is a complete package to walk you from hectic pace to calm and grace It includes 1:1 sessions, group processes, an accountability coach (cause yes, sometimes we do need accountability to do these important, lovely things for ourselves) and unlimited email support over 3.5months (we’ll break over xmas).
This’ll be a match for you if you have achieved success in your external world (business, finances and “achieving” in general) and are over-ready to stop pushing yourself so hard.
Reach out through the contact form if this sounds good for you, I’ll ask you some questions to see if you are a fit and we could begin next week.