Showing up for others, while still showing up for you
Over my adult life my relationship with my mom has required various degrees of my care and attention. My mom got sick in 2016, and we’ve been down what seems like an endless route of undiagnosed health issues, as it seemed doctors were taking educated guesses at best at what was causing her severe physical flare ups. When we finally got a diagnosis of Lupus it felt like a huge wave of unimaginable grief, but also a relief. Bittersweet is the feeling, we could all finally breathe and cry again. But I didn’t know that would only be the beginning of long and hard journey of balancing my care, and my mother’s care.
Do you really need to give up your life to show up?
You maybe have been here, in some other way, in some other relationship, maybe even with your career. When you care deeply about something, you want to be there, but sometimes it requires you to give up pieces of yourself that you really value. Maybe it asks you to give up your time, your freedom, or even your dreams. And as you watch parts of your life slip away, and your happiness fade, you begin asking yourself at what cost am I willing to sacrifice all of these pieces of myself.
How do we find the balance between other’s needs and ours? Giving up your life is not the answer.
I’ve found the answer simplest answer requires a willingness to show up for yourself, and finding the courage to ask others for help and support. It sounds easy, but it’s something most of us find really difficult to do. How can you start doing this?
Start considering yourself as a person who also needs care.
All to often, as we think of showing up for others it feels natural, and obvious. “Of course I’ll show up for my mom, my boss who emails me 1am, the needs of my group chat..” and it goes on. But rarely, if ever do we put ourselves on that list. Take a minute to think about the last time you considered yourself to also be a person who needs care and attention. And then think about the last time you actually gave it to yourself. My guess is you at best, do it for a little bit, but then the pangs of guilt hit and you start tending to others again.
Learn to listen to yourself. Your needs show up in your body, your mood, and your thoughts.
We all know how to listen to our hunger pangs, or our thirst. Sometimes we follow through on feeding and quenching it, and sometimes we bury our heads in work and ignore the feeling until the very moment we are at the edge of feeling faint. That is where ignoring our needs always leads us, to a tipping point. When we ignore our needs we will often feel it in our bodies. Maybe our shoulders get tight, or our stomach gets upset, or our face gets hot. That is because emotions always manifest in our bodies, they are signaling to us that something needs our attention. The thing about our needs is we can’t just will them away, they will just compound until we start listening to them, and tending to them.
Sometimes we are very used to ignoring our needs so listening to them has to be a very intentional act.
Listening Exercise:
Practice listening by doing this intentional exercise at night. Start by asking yourself what you’re feeling. It’s helpful sometimes to start with noticing the actual physical sensations in the body. The tense muscles, or the knots in the stomach. Then once you notice those, start getting really quiet and asking the points of tension or pain what they need. You can literally ask, “what do you need right now?” Your body is extremely smart and will respond to you. Maybe it will say “rest,” or “I need you to take action,” or “I need you to ask for help.” Whatever it says take it seriously, trust it - because our bodies have an intelligence that our mind can’t always catch up with. Then make a promise to it, that you will deliver and give it what it needs.
Getting support from others.
We, as a society really feel like we need to do it all ourselves, I think because we live such busy lives we think asking others for help will just be a burden. However, asking for help is often what we actually need to get something done without let everything crash and burn. At work, if you’re taking on all of the work doing other’s peoples work for them, maybe it’s talking to your manager about a strategy to spread out the tasks. Or if you are needing to care take, maybe it’s asking for help from your family, community, or a care team. Maybe it doesn’t mean you have to move to new state, but finding ways to still show up without needing to rearrange your entire life.
Finding the amount of giving that makes you feel good, and not frustrated or burnt out.
Like I said, often caring for others or something else outside of ourselves doesn’t have to mean abandonment on either end. It can just look like finding what type of giving makes you feel good, and makes you feel as if you’re contributing something meaningful to something or someone you care about without feeling angry or resentful.
As with everything, there is a balance. There is a way to extend love, and continue loving yourself.
Visualization Exercise:
Prep: Get really still and put on some calming music. Start taking deep cycles of breath in through your stomach. Inhale of 3, and exhale of 5.
As you start clearing your mind, start focusing on softening any areas of tension. Start from the top of your head moving through your upper body, down to your torso, legs, and feet. Let go of everything you are holding in your body for a moment. And as you allow it to rest, start imagining yourself walking through a door and into your dream scenario as it pertains to the current challenges you are facing. With that fresh new perspective, look around at what you can see and feel. How do you see this scenario play out if it could go the way you’d like, with no barriers. Imagine it, feel it physically. What sensations are present? Start grounding yourself in the idea of “I am allowed to want this.” “I am allowed to feel this peace or this freedom (or whatever is coming up for you.) Allow yourself to bask in the feeling of no longer having to do it all, and keeping pieces of you in tact. Sit with it for as long as you need. To close thank yourself for allowing you to go there, and for showing up. Then gently come back into the room, and either ask yourself out loud or jot down how you feel.