What if the real reason you show up as the peacekeeper,
The dependable one,
The one who holds it all together,
Is not based out of virtue?
But actually because you don't feel safe enough to choose yourself.
In this episode,
I'm gonna show you exactly why that pattern exists.
And how you can start to show up in a way that doesn't require you to abandon yourself in order to keep the peace and connection with others.
If we haven't met before,
My name is Dr.
Kelly Kessler.
I'm a doctor of physical therapy,
A transformation coach,
And I help high-achieving women move from self-abandonment to self-loyalty.
And that is exactly what we're talking about today.
Not just the patterns,
But what's going on beneath the surface that keeps you in these patterns of self-abandonment.
Now imagine for a moment that you are at a crossroads.
You're at the fork in the road,
And you've likely been at this fork many times in your life.
To One Direction,
That is making sure that everybody is comfortable,
That you are meeting the expectations of others,
And you are filling the role that you've become accustomed to fill,
Including the good daughter,
The good employee,
The good partner.
Those roles are that path and you've gotten very good at playing those roles and doing and saying and behaving in a way that keeps those roles functioning and comfortable.
Now imagine for a moment the other way on that path is you choosing yourself.
And the minute you go down that path,
There is something that you experience very viscerally.
In that you feel this constriction as if you're doing something wrong.
This shows up as fear.
This shows up as guilt.
This shows up as self-doubt.
And that is what continues to keep you on that path of filling the roles,
Meeting the expectations,
And making sure the harmony is kept in the roles outside yourself.
That is the fork in the road that your body is running beneath the surface.
This is not something you consciously choose.
You don't choose to make sure everybody else is okay so that you can sacrifice yourself.
You don't consciously choose to make sure that you are being the person they all expect you to be.
These things are all subconsciously decided.
And that is truly what's running your life.
Until you see the pattern.
But to go even deeper into this.
Beyond the beliefs.
Is what's going on in the body that's telling you it's not safe to choose yourself.
No,
I want you to think for a minute.
That you're in your house and the smoke alarms are going off.
I just had this happen to me many times this past weekend.
We had really a lot of humidity here,
And we had all the windows open,
And the smoke alarms kept going off.
They kept firing,
And I'm outside.
I hear them going off.
I run inside,
Make sure everything's okay.
There's no fire,
But they keep going off.
So,
Of course,
I turn off all the alarms,
I go back outside,
And a few minutes later,
They're going back off again.
Again,
There's no fire,
But the alarms continue to go off.
And I keep on attending to it as if it's real.
And that's exactly what happens the minute you choose yourself.
Your body reacts as if it is a true threat.
And what do you do to make sure that you can move on with that?
You turn off the alarms.
And that's exactly what happens every single time you say no,
When you feel like you should have said yes.
That's what happens every time you quiet down your needs to make sure somebody else's needs are taken care of.
That's what happens every single time you set a boundary and then soften it or apologize for it.
The alarms go off.
As if there is a true threat there.
And when you experience those alarms,
It's uncomfortable.
It makes you feel like something's wrong.
There has to be a fire somewhere.
I have to tend to this.
And instead of recognizing that the threat is not actually real,
There's no real fire there,
You keep turning the alarms off.
But what that looks like is going back into those old patterns.
Checking in with everybody,
Making sure that everybody is okay,
Even if it means that you're not okay.
It means going along with what other people's needs,
Wants,
And desires are,
Even if you ignore your own.
And this is how that cycle of self-abandonment gets perpetuated.
Because your body does not feel safe enough.
To actually stay with yourself in those moments.
So when you walk into a room and you notice disagreement or disapproval or that there's this tension in the air.
You take it on as your own.
And you feel like you have that need to fix it.
That's the smoke alarm going off and you feel like you have to turn it off because it's too uncomfortable to sit in.
And that's why you continue to go back into those patterns of taking on the burden of making sure everybody else is emotionally okay.
Taking on the burden that everything else is taken care of.
And taking on the burden that your needs are not nearly as important as someone else's.
Because you can't stand to sit in there with these smoke alarms going off,
Threatening,
As if it's a real threat to your system.
Your body does not feel safe enough to choose yourself.
So the perceived threat of someone else's disapproval or someone else's unmet expectations or someone else's anger because you're not showing up in a certain way is too much to sit with.
So instead of realizing that there is no real fire,
You turn off the alarms and you go back into the old patterns of pleasing and appeasing,
Staying small and making sure everybody else is comfortable,
Even if it means that you're not.
And even if it means that you're sacrificing yourself,
Even if it means that you don't get to choose yourself another time.
And even if it means you override yourself.
And when you look back,
You look back at where did this stem from?
We don't consciously come here choosing to put ourselves last.
We don't consciously come here thinking today is going to be the day that I'm going to listen to everybody else and not.
Honor my own needs,
Desires.
And dreams.
We don't consciously do that.
It comes from patterns that we learn.
It comes from conditioning.
It comes from the moment that maybe you were a little girl and you noticed that there was disagreement in your caretakers or someone of authority.
And instead of saying,
Oh,
That's their stuff.
You took it on as your own.
And in order to maintain that connection with them,
In order to feel like you had a sense of safety,
You learned very quickly that you had to do,
Say,
And be whatever you needed to do to keep the peace in those dynamics.
You may have used humor.
You may have been the good girl and just did whatever you needed to do just to keep the peace in that situation.
You may have not spoken up for something you needed because you didn't want to add fuel to the fire of that dynamic.
You learn very quickly that pleasing,
Appeasing,
Staying quiet,
Staying small,
Not vocalizing your needs.
Was how the harmony was kept in the dynamics outside yourself.
And if the harmony was kept outside yourself,
Then you felt there was still a connection with those dynamics.
You still felt a sense of safety.
And you learn very quickly that safety was outsourced.
And that in order to feel safe,
Everything outside yourself had to be harmonious.
And it was up to you to bear the burden emotionally,
Mentally,
Physically,
To keep that together.
And this is how it translates to your life today.
You may be the one that has a really difficult time receiving because you feel that.
This is an obligation now that you have to make up for this,
That you owe someone.
You may show up as a person who's always the one who holds it together and you're dependable because that's how you learn to be.
So then you go to work,
You take on the extra roles,
You say yes,
You made sure that your boss is always happy with how you're performing,
Because that's a sense of safety and stability.
You do this in relationship.
You make sure that the other person is taken care of.
You're very aware of their needs.
You become very hypervigilant,
Making sure that they're approving of you,
Because that's how you establish your safety within yourself.
And the minute you.
Change those patterns and you start to choose yourself.
And the minute you perceive that there could possibly be some disapproval,
Some invalidation,
Some disagreement,
Some disappointment in someone else.
Your smoke alarms go off.
And that is how your body starts speaking.
That is the signal from your body saying,
This is a threat,
We need to change things.
And I'm sure you've experienced this in your life.
That the minute you say no,
Or you set a boundary,
Or you notice that somebody does not agree with how you're showing up now,
You feel it in your body,
Your heart is pounding.
You feel like you can't get a deep breath or you feel like your breath is shallow and quicker.
You feel your jaw clenching.
You may feel like your shoulders are up by your ears.
Your eyes feel strained,
You have a headache.
You can't think straight.
You feel tension or heaviness in your legs and your body,
Chest pain.
These are all the signals of your body speaking.
Perceiving that that threat is real because somebody else is disapproving of your choices for choosing yourself.
And this is the minute that self-abandonment actually occurred.
Most people think that self-abandonment happens when you say yes,
But you really mean no,
Or you don't set the boundary,
Or you don't speak up for yourself.
And while those can be some evidence of self-abandonment,
The real reason that you're self-abandoning is because you're overriding the signals from your body.
You have stopped listening to your internal.
Signals,
You've stopped listening to yourself.
You've turned it down so much,
You've become so disconnected from yourself,
You don't even know what your wants,
Needs,
And desires are anymore.
Because they become blurred in everybody else's.
And that is a true signal of self-abandonment.
And when you do this for days,
Weeks,
Months,
Years,
Decades,
Your brain learns very quickly,
This is how I show up in the world.
This is a sense of certainty for me.
This is a sense of familiarity for me.
And I know exactly what to expect by showing up this way.
And that is what your nervous system has learned is safe.
So the minute you now all of a sudden change and flip the script and you want to show up for yourself and choose yourself,
That sets off the alarms.
Because it's uncomfortable.
It's not familiar.
There isn't a sense of certainty.
Your body literally views being loyal to yourself as a threat.
Because it has learned that self-abandonment means safety.
And that is why it's not easy enough to just say,
Choose yourself and you do it.
You have to actually teach your body it's safe enough to choose yourself.
And these patterns have become very worn in you.
Think about a dirt trail.
You walk the dirt trail.
You keep going down that trail more and more and more and becomes more ingrained.
It becomes clearer.
It becomes more.
Much more of a direct route.
And then you use that trail so much,
You pave it,
And now it's even quicker to get through it.
You use the trail so much,
It becomes a road,
And now it's even quicker and more efficient.
This is what happens when you create those patterns in your brain.
You learn certain ways of being,
And the signals happen much quicker.
And this is how that plasticity happens in your brain,
Where the way you've shown up for so long is the only way that you know.
And anything that's outside of that feels very foreign,
Very uncomfortable.
And it can also feel like you're doing something wrong.
And this is what I find in so many women that I work with,
That the guilt comes up,
The fear,
The self-doubt.
Because it's all ways that your system is trying to protect you to keep you on the path of familiarity.
It does not mean that you're doing something wrong.
It just means that it wants you to be in a predictable path where it knows exactly the outcome and that safety outside yourself in the form of harmony and relationship.
Is what allows you to feel some safety within yourself.
And this is why self-abandonment gets perpetuated,
Gets continued,
And choosing yourself feels so,
So threatening to your system.
And so.
When you can interrupt that pattern and you can start to recognize that pattern in yourself and you can start to realize that guilt doesn't mean you're doing something wrong,
Fear doesn't mean that you're making your wrong choice,
And self-doubt doesn't mean that you can't trust yourself.
While it may feel like those are all signals that you're doing something wrong,
When you can start to realize that it's not a signal that something's wrong,
It's a signal that something is unfamiliar.
And when you can start to establish that safety within yourself,
You can teach your body,
It's okay to stay with me.
In those really hard moments,
Even when someone's disapproving of you or disappointed in you.
They are allowed to feel what they're feeling,
And you're also allowed to be with you in that moment.
It's through those tiny moments that actually start to rewire the brain to understand that self-loyalty can be safe.
And that's how you start to insource your safety rather than outsourcing it to the relationships,
Expectations,
And rules outside yourself.
And when you start to do that.
You start to create more of those pathways that feel direct,
And you start to learn that truly self-loyalty is safe.
It's okay to stay with you.
It's okay to express your needs,
Wants,
And desires.
It's okay to choose yourself even if somebody is disappointed.
That is when you start to realize.
That safety is not created by conformity.
Safety is created by the courage to stay with yourself.
Even when there is disappointment,
Disapproval,
And disagreement outside yourself.
That is the moment that you get to be.
Connected with yourself.
And you get to realize that you are safe enough to be with yourself.
Even if it means disrupting the patterns that you've lived in for years.
So every time you choose yourself.
Every time you live through a moment that someone disagrees or you notice the disapproval,
And you stay with yourself,
You put your hand on your heart and you say,
I'm with me.
It's okay.
Take that deep breath.
And you say,
I've got you.
I'm with you.
It's OK.
That tiny little moment makes all the difference.
It may not feel like much.
It may seem silly,
Especially if you're not used to doing this.
But it's in those little moments of being with yourself.
That you start to teach your system,
I'm safe.
It's okay,
I'm with me.
I'm safe.
You start to teach that little girl that learned the conditioning that she's safe to.
And that's when everything starts to change.
And if you can allow yourself the opportunity.
And continue to interrupt the pattern that you've learned to live in.
That's when everything transforms.
There's a quote and I'm probably going to screw it up right now,
But if you want to learn how to navigate a path.
Ask the people who are coming back.
And I have lived this journey.
This is not something that is philosophical for me.
This is lived experience.
I have had this experience in my life where.
I had to learn to stay with myself even in the most challenging,
Difficult,
Complex situations.
And when you realize how much self-abandonment is costing you and how liberating being loyal to yourself is.
Everything in your life changes.
You see yourself differently.
You connect with yourself differently.
Be sure to check out my other videos if this has spoken to you,
And I hope today becomes the catalyst for you transforming your life one little step at a time.
Have a great day.
