The Real Reasons Why You Don’t Know Who You Are Anymore

Live Class Recording: Do you feel like you no longer know who you are or what you truly want?
In this live class, you'll discover how people-pleasing, guilt, staying quiet, and constantly putting others first can slowly disconnect you from yourself. You’ll learn why these patterns can feel strangely safe, even when they leave you exhausted, tense, angry, or unable to feel joy. Most importantly, you’ll discover how to begin reconnecting with yourself and rebuilding self-trust.

Transcript

Today, I want to talk to you about the real reason you don't know who you are anymore. And I prepared a couple of things here because I often see that when clients come to me. And now me working with clients for over 11 years. I would say I have an eye or I have an ear for what they are saying and what they are not saying and what it means that they are saying. And I want to share that with you today because. Like me, Like them, We often don't know that we lost ourselves and it might be not very subtle. And it might not be in your face, Because you don't wake up and say, Ooh. Here I am, I lost myself. Now what do I do? It's not that straightforward. So when clients come to me, The first session that we have is always consultation. And in this consultation, We talk about what's going on, What's going on in their life, What made them come here. So they tell me their story. They tell me what's going on in their personal life and their work life with children, With the husband, With themselves. And it's usually quite an scrubbing on the surface, Because often, Particularly when you're disconnected with yourself, You're not going deep. Into explaining your emotions, Your feelings, Your thoughts. That's why you're disconnected. But nevertheless, So they tell me. And then I say, Okay, Now the second part of this consultation is that I'm going to ask you, What do you want? What do you want to get out of working with me? What do you want to get out of spending this hour with me every week. End. Here are the first indicators where I realized, Where I put it down in my little remarkable pad. OK, Look out for this, Because 11 years, You get an idea. And here are a couple of things that people say to me that make me listen up and the question more. So the first thing they might say is, When I say, What do you want? I don't know. I don't know what I want. And I just know I want it different. But I don't know what and how and how that looks like. I had one client and when I asked her this question, So how is your ideal scenario? Because she told me about shouting a lot at her children and at her husband. And I asked her, So how else, What is the ideal scenario? And she said, I don't know. I can't picture it. I just don't want to do it. It should be different. That's like you're disconnected. Another thing they might say is, They want, Or maybe you want, Others to change. So either the person, Your husband, Your children, Your colleagues, Your manager, Your sister, Your mother, Your father, They should be different. Or situations should be different. But even this, That shows me that there is no connection or responsibility for taking. Responsibility for your behavior but also having that self-leadership in this is my life. I can't change the others, But I can change myself, How I react towards a situation or towards an outcome. Another thing they might say is, This is what I don't want. And then they give me this very long list of things. That they don't want or how they don't want to behave anymore, How they don't want things to be anymore. Oh. Ooh, Betty wants on my lap. And for that, We take a little break to get her up. Look at this cutie. So let's continue. So they say, This is what I don't want. And I want to share a personal story with you. And it happened a couple of years ago after we moved to China, After I had my fifth miscarriage, After COVID hit and the job that I started here went into a pause because people didn't know me. So they didn't want to work with me. So I only had one client. A week. And there wasn't much money. And for the first time in my adult life, I was financially dependent on someone else apart from my parents. That was a huge thing for me. But everything came together. And I remember there was this moment we went to the metro. And I needed some nail polish remover. And on the way in. I thought about it and I. . . My head was exploding. With reasons why it's a good idea to just get it. But also with shame and blame of, No, I can't just buy it for me. It would be just for me because he doesn't use nail polish remover. So it would be just for me. It's his money. And I can't do that. And is that okay? And I was going in circles in my mind, I felt exhausted just from my mind being so busy and in questioning my question, Questioning my need, Questioning my want and standing there, I just. . . And he noticed, Of course he noticed, He noticed that. He said, What's going on with you? And I said, Nothing, Nothing, Nothing. And then eventually I said, Look, Here's the deal. I need nail polish remover. There it is and I want it but I don't want to put it in there because it's your money and I don't want just use your money because I don't want you to think that I'm just a gold digger or whatever. That's bullshit. Just grab the nail polish remover. It's okay. And of course it's okay. I knew it would be okay, But I didn't give myself the permission that it be okay that I could do that. And I stood there and. After that, I was walking through that metro and I just thought like, I don't want to feel like this anymore. It's exhausting. I don't want to feel like this anymore. I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know that I was lost. I just knew I don't want to feel like that anymore. And another. . . Example of how it could look like is that when they tell me, I should want, Or I should want this. I should want my children to be happy. I should want my husband to come home and have his time to relax and calm down. I should be happy with what I have. This I should. And I should is you feel guilty. At least in most cases, You feel guilty for wanting something else, But a good person, Someone who's kind-hearted and is loved by people and is maybe respected, That kind of person, They would want this, So you should want this as well. And what all of this show me. That there is this disconnect because all of them are not true to themselves. All of these sentences is you're not honest with yourself. And you disconnect it. You're disconnected to your body, Probably, To your mind, And to your energy, To your soul. Everything is like. . . Like you would say a people pleaser you you put it you put yourself last you put yourself someone the back burner and everything else is more important. You forget about yourself. But often, This isn't something that happens overnight. Like I said before, It takes time. It's slowly. And It happens. By ignoring your needs, For example. I have a client and she doesn't allow herself the time to have an hour or two in the morning after the children went to school, After her husband went to work. And they have an IE. So here in China, I have an IE. She comes once a week and cleans the flat. And others have IEs also for cleaning or for babysitting or for cooking. And the IE would come and do whatever needs to be done and she doesn't give herself permission to enjoy this time because when she's going back to wherever she's came from she probably doesn't have an IE. Helping her. Cooking and cleaning etc. But she doesn't give herself permission to rest. So that coffee in the morning is usually a 30 minutes, And then she feels guilty. Then she wants to get away. Then she wants to fall into action, Doing something, Being somewhere, Just showing her worth to herself, To someone else, So that later she can say, Oh yeah, Today, This is my list of achievements. This is what I've done today. So she needs a justification and a permission. To allow her needs for rest, For example. Could be anything else as well. Or it might be that you stay quiet. And this might be to avoid consequences of speaking. Yeah, Whatever those consequences are, It could be that you're afraid of the blame and the shame that you get from others. It could be that you're afraid of the blame and the shame that you get from yourself after you said something and after someone made a comment. And then you think about why did I say that? How could I have said it differently? What do I do different next time? And some call it reflection. I call it self-punishment. But each to their own. You call it whatever you want to call it, But I'm just saying. So you stay quiet because you're afraid of blame or shame, Or you might be afraid of losing love. I hear that particularly in relationship consultations when I have a couple that they don't speak up because they are afraid to hurt the other person. And if I hurt the other person, The other person might not love me as much anymore, Or they might disrespect me, Or they might disconnect, Or they might be angry. And that leads to less love. Or it could be that you can't be asked anymore. Yeah, You don't speak up because. . . Can't be asked to justify yourself anymore. It's the other side of staying quiet, That you know if you say something, Then you get all that da-da-da-da, Why did you do this, Why didn't you do that, What have you done all day, And you just can't be asked to justify. So you don't say anything. Or just give maybe an answer. Here's my list. Off you go. Be happy with it. Or you might carry guilt and shame with you. I did that. Like the story with the nail polish remover, I carried a lot of shame and guilt. And on top of that, On top of that shame and guilt and that nail polish remover story there was also there were these times because I was working very, Very little and My partner gave me money and I had this amount of money. And I felt okay to buy the groceries, To buy stuff for the dogs, To buy stuff, Cleaning products for the aid, Whatever. Totally fine, No problem. But when it came to buying things for me. . . May it be a dress. Shoes. Makeup. It wasn't even the money, Even though I looked, Because I looked that it's cheap. So if he would see it and ask me, I could say, Look how cheap it is. And I bought some hideous. Close. Because they were cheap, Because that somehow made my shame and guilt less, Because I could say I didn't spend that much. But I also hit packages when, Because we have here, We have Taobao here in China, And it's a bit like Amazon, But bit different anyway so and the package guy bring the packages here in front of the door and sometimes there would be five or six packages It would seem like, What did you buy? And I was like. . . Oh, My God. Oh, My God. And I was like, Oh, It's not important. But it's probably just something for the kitchen. Did it. I just. Try to. Get it out of his mind. So that I wouldn't be confronted. Again, I got to that point where I thought, I got it. Want to feel like this anymore. And then I unpack them. And then I, With everyone, Every single item, I said, Look, This is only 120 kuai. I saved money and he just said, Why are you buying such cheap stuff? It won't last long. Like, Oh, Yeah, I wasn't ready to talk. But never mind. That's where we are when we are there. And a client of mine, She told me the story that she cooks three meals, Three different type of dinner almost every day for her husband and then something for her children. She has three children. One of them eats differently or doesn't like stuff that the other one So she does three different types. She doesn't cook anything for herself, But she cooks three different types of dinner. And I've written down here, She planned herself into the work, But not to the mail. She planned to do it and she does that because she feels guilty. She feels guilty if they don't like it, If they are disappointed that they don't get what they like. That she loses their love. These are all interconnected. These are not individual examples that you can just like this or this. They are interconnected, They happen, Maybe one is stronger, One is less strong, Then one is more often, The other one is less often. And sometimes people might say, Or you might say, A sentence like, I'll be fine. Others have it worse. Well, Don't worry about me. I hear my clients say that at the beginning quite a lot. Others have it worse. This comparison with someone else and saying they have it worse. So I should be happy with what I have. Yeah, We come back to that. I should be happy. Disconnect. I'm not happy. Okay. But you're minimizing yourself. You're putting yourself in the back on. 11th place, Yeah, Everything else, Everyone else is up there because you're disconnected to yourself and that stems Not always. Not always. Sometimes it's because you want to feel loved, Sometimes you want attention, Sometimes you want to be part of it, Sometimes you want to be in the middle, Not left alone, Not abandoned, But you abandon yourself. That's the interesting part. We don't want to abandon anyone else or be abandoned by others, But it's okay that we abandon ourselves. Because at least I learned that that is normal. That is what you do. You're not selfish. You need to be selfless. But I did a presentation once where I just talked about these two words, Selfish and selfless. So none of it is self, None of it is you. You're just playing a part. Because selfish is not selfish in that sense, When you're thinking about yourself and looking that your cup is full. You can go out and you can give so much more love and joy to others. Than if your cup would be empty. And selfless is often that you give less of self because your cup is empty because you give so much to others. But that's a different topic for a different time. And of course, When you're in that, Having lost yourself, Having disconnected to yourself, Not knowing who you are anymore. Usually that happens over years or you're in it for years, Maybe even decades. And now here comes the paradox. It feels familiar and safe. It feels like you. You doing that feel safe, Not in the sense that it's amazing safe, But it feels safe. It's your comfort zone, It's your safety zone and it's a safety mechanism. You are acting. To protect yourself from emotional harm. That's what the inner critic does. That's what he drives us or it drives us to. Yeah. And that's where we feel safe. So that's why you do it. Written down here that it goes from the belief, This is who you are, Or I need to behave like this, I need to do, I need to perform, I need to be That's a belief and that's deep down and everything you believe. When thoughts get created, It goes through that belief system with your experiences, With your wishes, Your hopes, Your fears. With everything that you have encountered in your life. It goes through that and then it comes out as thoughts and then your thoughts are often according to to why did you do that? No, You can't sit down and relax. You need to do something to give yourself then the permission. You need to achieve to get the rewards. These are the thoughts and out of that thought you create your feelings. And I feel safe. It feels familiar. It feels like me. And then out of the feeling, You create your action. And now the paradox is, It feels safe. On some level, Even though. There is tension in your body. You might have problems with it. Back tension, Back problems. I have a couple of clients who have, Who go to the physiotherapist after we have our one-on-one, They go then to the physiotherapist because They have so much tension in their body from bracing themselves, From holding back, From holding in. From not saying. Or they might say that. There is a sadness in my heart. It's like. . . One lady said it's like this. Heaviness in my heart. And I had this feeling while I was going through my self-loss. It was like someone had put this hug me jacket, You know, When you go in earlier times, I don't know if they still do it. I think they do it when you're going to a. . . Psychiatric institution and you get this jacket, This white jacket that where you hug yourself. And it felt like I was hugging myself. Like this feels safe, But I want out and I can't. Like I was restricted, I was holding myself back by feeling comfortable, But that's not the comfortable I wanted. So that's how it felt to me. So that's your emotion that's in your body. Or maybe then how it shows up. In your body or in your actions is you might be permanently exhausted. Because imagine. The mind, What's going on in your mind over all these years, Decades, It takes a lot of mind space, It takes a lot of thinking how to behave, What to say, What not to say. What to do, How to explain yourself. It's exhausting and when you do that every day, All day long. Explaining yourself to yourself and to others. Not allowing yourself to be, To enjoy. It's exhausting. So no wonder you would love to have that coffee for two hours in the morning to just relax and enjoy it. But even then you put that tension, That pressure on yourself. And that's exhausting. Or you might refer to drinks or drugs. It doesn't happen. That seldomly. It happens quite often because that's when you can quieten your mind. It's a distraction. That's what you do. I did that. I didn't know how to deal with my grief and I didn't know how to deal with all of that. I drank a lot. It helps me to be away. It helps me to shut down, To be numb. You do that, We do that. Or you might fall into actionism, So you need to do stuff all the time, You need to have plans all the time, You need to have a to-do list all the time. I have one client and she said the other day, My to-do list is getting longer and longer, Even though I'm doing constantly something, It's still getting longer because more and more things pop into my head that I should do. Or I could too. So which one of these things is for you? None of it. None of it. But doing is distraction. It helps. You might struggle to feel joy. To just appreciate the little things like a beautiful sunset. A beautiful butterfly. At night just doesn't. . . Cry to you. You see it, But you don't recognize it. You don't pay attention. You're not aware of it. Could be, Or you're angry. One of my clients, She says, I'm angry all the time. I shout. I scream. I could punch. The wall. I'm angry all the time. And it turned out that she's very unhappy with who she is because in her head, She's going through all of that exhaustion, Blaming, Shaming herself, Finding ways to improve. Why haven't I improved? Why am I not better? That's this connection. That's These are some reasons. You don't know who you are anymore. This is how it happens. And now the big question is, What do you do? What can you do about it? What I want you to do is I want you to download my free self-rescue blueprint. For two reasons. First of all, It's amazing. And secondly, Because it gives you a three-step guide. To reconnect with yourself. And it's. It's good to listen to this. It's good to listen to the next episodes and the upcoming episodes. That's all amazing. But having something written down. That you can come back to, That you work through. Penetrates deeply or deeper at least. And the most amazing thing about this blueprint is there is an energy clearing that I created and it will help you to feel more grounded and to build on that self-trust that you probably Haven't lost. It's somewhere. It's still there. It's not gone forever and completely. And now you have to create it. No, But you forgot about it. You forgot about trusting yourself and that energy clearing, You listen to it every day. It's just not even 10 minutes long, But you listen to it and it will help you to ground and trust yourself. And that's why I want you to do that. That's why I want you to download that free blueprint. You get that red flag decoder to get even more examples of, Is this me? Is this not me? Maybe this is my friend. Then you give it to your friend. There can't be enough people who reconnect with themselves. Because if we do that, The world becomes a better place. And with that. Thank you for your time. And this has brought me to the end of my lecture today.