Latest / The Spiritual Shitshow Podcast / Am I Too Much? | People-Pleasing, Self-Abandonment & the Freedom to Be Yourself

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Am I Too Much? | People-Pleasing, Self-Abandonment & the Freedom to Be Yourself · The Spiritual Shitshow Podcast

• 0:00
  Host: Yowza.
• 0:02
  Host: As I'm creating these podcasts, I'm just having these deep awarenesses and awakenings of like,"Fuck.
• 0:10
  Host: Fuck.
• 0:12
  Host: How much have I spent the past 10 years," which has been my coined spiritual shit show,"based off of survival?
• 0:22
  Host: Survival.
• 0:23
  Host: And have I used the spiritual lens To keep me in some sort of state of relevancy, survival, feeding this part of me that wants to be relevant and doesn't wanna drown.
• 0:45
  What I mean by that is 10 years ago, my experience with life as I knew it was gone.
• 0:53
  I was no longer a business owner.
• 0:56
  I also did not reap any benefits, not financial security, nothing, from being in business for 17 years.
• 1:05
  It was gone.
• 1:07
  All of it was gone.
• 1:08
  Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.
• 1:11
  And it's not like I had a reprieve where I was, you know, I had a buyout or anything.
• 1:16
  It was just literally everything was gone.
• 1:20
  And I can see now from that experience how much of, like, my, my being jumped into survival mode again, and protection mode again, and a feeling of, you know, what, what do I have to do now to stay relevant?
• 1:36
  What do I have to What do I, what do, what, what, what, what, what, what?
• 1:39
  How can I fix this problem for myself?
• 1:43
  This awareness that I'm having is huge, huge, huge'cause it's making me come back and look at all parts of my life, all of it, my work, my, what I, how I'm branding myself, which that's so dumb, but how I'm branding.
• 2:02
  You know?
• 2:03
  What, what am I putting out there and why?
• 2:05
  Is it really in alignment with what I wanna be doing with me, or is it all being created from this deeper requirement for survival in the social world, survival so I can be somebody because it's important to say,"This is who I am, and this is what I've built, and this is what I offer," in such big ways.
• 2:27
  I did a podcast about that a few podcasts back, of like the ooh and the ah of having an identity and a strong identity attached to your name.
• 2:37
  I come up against it all the time Once everybody hears that my husband is an actor, it's like,"Ooh, ah." Or I have friends who they'll name-drop.
• 2:46
  Ooh, ah.
• 2:49
  So over time I think I have leaned into I want to be an ooh-ah name.
• 2:55
  I want to feel what it feels like to, when I walk into a room and people say,"Ooh, she does that," or,"She was that," or,"She's this," because at one point in my life on a very small scale, I did.
• 3:07
  I was an owner of a very successful dance studio.
• 3:10
  And so when I was walking into dance spaces and people found out who I was it felt nice to have that,"Ooh, ah," and those accolades Having these things stripped away from you can feel so uncomfortable and so painful, and so...
• 3:33
  It's just hard, honestly.
• 3:36
  And I, I give a lot of credit to those who are willing to walk through their own fire, you know?
• 3:44
  And holding a deeper curiosity of who, who do I get to become when I don't have these things anymore?
• 3:50
  and when I am stripped down to literally the soul essence of myself, what does that feel like?
• 3:58
  This morning my husband shared an Instagram reel with me, and it was about Anthony Bourdain and his beautiful philosophy on life.
• 4:06
  It was this reel and he's saying like,"Get off the couch, go for a walk, travel as far as you can, eat the food, experience the world, be humble, be willing to have a bad meal because that's how you come to appreciate the magic of a really good one." And this reel made you have this sense of like awe and wonder and wanting to tap into freedom and life, and I loved it because isn't that what we're all craving?
• 4:33
  And I asked my husband, I was like,"Gosh, it feels like everybody is craving some sort of freedom, adventure, awe and wonder, and the freedom to experience this incredible life that we've been given." and it got my husband and me talking about what freedom actually means, and he said something that I was like,"Really?" He said,"I feel free every single day.
• 4:58
  I feel free to be myself every day." And I just looked at him like,"Wow, what does that feel like?" Because I don't, like at all.
• 5:12
  And I sat with that for a moment because here's this man, my husband, who literally moves through his world every single day feeling completely free to be himself.
• 5:25
  And here's me, a woman who teaches empowerment, embodiment, authenticity, and remembering who you are, and I do not feel free to be myself.
• 5:36
  What the actual fuck?
• 5:39
  Welcome to the spiritual shit show.
• 5:41
  This is where we're going today The more I sat with this conversation, the more I started to recognize something that I hear from women all the time, and I mean all the time We will leave a gathering, a dinner, a workshop, a conversation, a book club, and immediately start questioning ourselves.
• 6:00
  And I have women say,"I almost sent a text saying,'Did I talk too much?
• 6:03
  I didn't mean to...'" How many times have I walked away thinking,"Did I talk too much?
• 6:11
  Was I too loud?
• 6:11
  Did I share too much?
• 6:12
  Did I offend somebody?
• 6:14
  Should I have said that?
• 6:15
  Was I being annoying?
• 6:16
  Was I too much?
• 6:17
  Did I drink too much?" That's probably yes.
• 6:19
  And what I find fascinating is how familiar this conversation is among women, and it's almost though we've been conditioned to constantly monitor ourselves, to be aware of how we're being received, to make sure everyone is comfortable.
• 6:36
  And, you know, I don't know, and somewhere along the way, did we start confusing being considerate of others with abandoning ourselves and fitting in and being okay or just right?
• 6:53
  And where I am landing in this conversation is, ah, there's a difference between being aware of the people around you and constantly editing who you are to make sure nobody has a negative opinion of you I edit myself a lot.
• 7:15
  I conform, I tame myself down, I don't say everything I'm thinking, I don't always allow myself to be as playful, expressive, loud, curious, creative, and passionate as I actually am.
• 7:28
  And when I do give myself permission, there's a lot of guilt and shame and thought afterwards Also a fear of when I show up as my authentic self, it is immediately signaling somebody to press that abandonment button And then here comes the fucking shame, the guilt, the mental replay And what's interesting is that sometimes, well, most of the time I am sure, nobody has even said anything.
• 8:10
  I'm just doing it to myself.
• 8:12
  I'm anticipating rejection before rejection has even happened That's really humbling.
• 8:23
  How can I experience freedom when I am constantly policing myself.
• 8:31
  My husband doesn't police himself.
• 8:32
  He does what he damn well wants to, and he's definitely not apologizing ever I started thinking about the places in my life where I've learned to make myself smaller, and the first thing my mind went to naturally was to family, because isn't family often where most of these stories begin?
• 8:57
  In my biological family, there's been estrangement.
• 9:00
  And, you know, I grew up with the story that it's okay to disown family members.
• 9:05
  My grandfather disowned, I think, his daughter and his-- my, my grandfather would disown people all the time.
• 9:11
  So it was just kind of a natural story that we all kind of got into the flow with.
• 9:17
  And personally, I experienced estrangement.
• 9:20
  I'm estranged from, uh, my siblings.
• 9:22
  I don't really have a strong sense of family on my biological side.
• 9:27
  And for me, estrangement has touched some really deep feelings of abandonment, of not being wanted, of not being welcomed, of not being loved for who I am.
• 9:38
  And whether or not those stories are objectively true, they definitely are stories that my body carries.
• 9:45
  And then there's my husband's family.
• 9:47
  They have a different cultural upbringing and different expectations around family, elders, how people behave together, what table I should be sitting at, because now I'm at the elderly table, thank you very much.
• 10:00
  Uh, and I don't identify as an elder.
• 10:02
  But anyways, I wanna be clear that I am speaking about my experience within this particular family, and I'm not making a statement about an entire culture.
• 10:09
  But within that family dynamic, I am referred to as the free spirit.
• 10:14
  And I am.
• 10:15
  I love playing with kids.
• 10:16
  I love being messy.
• 10:17
  I love being silly.
• 10:18
  I love singing songs.
• 10:20
  I love being creative.
• 10:21
  I love laughing and dancing and rolling around on the ground and being unhinged because I think those are the ordinary moments that get to be made extraordinary.
• 10:31
  And often, when I'm expressing that part of myself, I am told to pipe it down.
• 10:38
  "Don't rile up the kids.
• 10:39
  Don't be so loud.
• 10:41
  Don't do too much." And I find myself entering that family dynamic as kind of like tiptoeing.
• 10:49
  You know, wanting to be a part of the family, but also knowing that I have to be quiet or I'm nervous about how they see me and, you know, do they trust me with their kids?
• 11:00
  And I understand that sometimes there's a time and a place for things.
• 11:05
  I get that.
• 11:06
  But when you've spent so much of your life questioning whether you're too much, it's the little comments or the pipe it down or the needing to fit into the format of a cultural understanding.
• 11:19
  It just kinda goes much deeper and Internally then I process that there's something inside of me that needs to be managed or controlled or contained I remember my business partner used to always tell me that I'm wacky and that nobody thinks like that, and nobody likes my ideas, and nobody wants the things that I desire And those types of things tend to stick, you know?
• 11:50
  And when you're around family and you're hushed or told not to do those things, you you learn how to just stay quiet And I think that's the part I'm beginning to recognize, that I've become really good at making myself smaller before anyone else has the opportunity to ask me to do it.
• 12:14
  What I've been really vocalizing in my marriage, though, is I want permission.
• 12:17
  I deserve for my needs to be met.
• 12:21
  You know, if I want good bougie drinking water, I want that.
• 12:25
  If I need to go for a walk because I need to get out of the house, I wanna do that without feeling guilty or like I should hang out with the family or all of those things.
• 12:38
  Um, we have a concert coming up, and I was telling my husband, like,"I just want permission to, like, if I need to step away and go up to the top at Red Rocks, that I wanna do that.
• 12:48
  And I'm just telling you now that I am giving myself permission to give myself a good time, and I don't need any guilt or shame around it." So it's just a really interesting dynamic of who gets to have the freedom to be themselves and who doesn't.
• 13:04
  And I feel like when I do give myself permission to do what I need to do And to be myself, it always comes at a cost And this led me to another realization, and I think this is one of the reasons why I like being alone.
• 13:25
  I like my solitude, and I used to think it was simply because I enjoyed my own company, which I totally do.
• 13:31
  But I think there's another layer here.
• 13:33
  And when I'm alone, I don't have to monitor myself.
• 13:37
  I don't have to wonder whether I'm too much or not doing enough.
• 13:41
  I don't have to worry about somebody judging me.
• 13:44
  I don't have to read the room.
• 13:46
  I don't have to be responsible for somebody else's comfort or discomfort.
• 13:50
  I can just be.
• 13:53
  And isn't that interesting, that sometimes the only place we feel completely free to be ourselves is when nobody else is around?
• 14:01
  Now, don't get me wrong.
• 14:03
  My husband and my daughter know me.
• 14:05
  I honestly think they're the only people in the world who know me because they get to see the real me, the goofy, playful, loud, passionate, creative, unhinged, emotional, sometimes completely ridiculous version of me, and I am so grateful for that.
• 14:20
  But outside of my home, I started to realize there's not really a lot of people who know who I really am And it's not because I'm intentionally hiding that version of me.
• 14:33
  It's just I've learned to protect her.
• 14:37
  And maybe what looks like conformity is sometimes just protection.
• 14:44
  What looks like being reserved is actually a nervous system that has learned it's safer not to be fully seen.
• 14:54
  And can I understand why that happened?
• 14:57
  I am doing that.
• 14:58
  I am understanding why that happened and why I do that And then the other question on the other side of that is, well is that how I wanna keep living?
• 15:12
  I had a beautiful conversation with a friend, and it was like,"If you could be your free, most powerful, unhinged self, what would your fucking life look like?" I'm gonna sit with that today and write about that because I don't know, but it feels fucking cool.
• 15:29
  It feels fun.
• 15:30
  It feels adventurous.
• 15:31
  It feels bold.
• 15:33
  But am I living that now?
• 15:36
  Am I living my unhinged, free, full life now?
• 15:41
  No Yesterday I started a Substack and I can't begin to tell you how good it feels to write again.
• 15:51
  And it's not because I'm an incredible writer.
• 15:53
  It is not, But in my 30s, I had a dating blog on WordPress, and I remember how exhilarating it felt to come home after work, eat dinner, grab a glass of wine, and I loved the sensation of sitting up in my bed and writing out my experience about what it's like to be a 30-something in the dating world And then I had a blog called Dance Teacher Diaries, again on WordPress, so we know how long ago this was.
• 16:23
  And I was writing about what it's like to be a dance teacher and all of the emotions and stories and highs and lows that go along with that.
• 16:32
  And then along the way, I began to listen to other people's ideas about my writing.
• 16:38
  You know, my husband said I write the way I think, and another person said I have too many run-on sentences and I should probably take a writing course.
• 16:46
  But I didn't fucking care about any of that.
• 16:48
  I just fucking loved it.
• 16:49
  I loved the feeling of sharing my ideas and sharing my story because it could land and help and support somebody else.
• 16:57
  It could give somebody else this like,"Me too." And then I thought about dance because my God, dance, something that's been a part of my life since I was a little girl.
• 17:06
  It's always brought me so much joy.
• 17:08
  It's helped shaped me and who I am.
• 17:10
  It's how I actually rest and move through my own nervous system.
• 17:15
  And I quit that too because I started to believe that my gifts weren't welcomed anymore, that I wasn't a good teacher, that my choreography wasn't cool enough, that people didn't want my services.
• 17:32
  And then I started to look at other areas of my life, creative ideas, offering projects, things that genuinely get me excited, and how often do I stop doing something because it wasn't receiving the response I thought it should?
• 17:46
  Not enough people signed up equates to I'm not enough.
• 17:49
  Not enough people liked it equating to I'm not enough.
• 17:53
  Not enough people are interested equating to I'm not enough.
• 17:56
  And suddenly something that once brought me joy became evidence that maybe I wasn't good enough And so I stop How many things have I abandoned that I genuinely love because somebody else didn't validate them?
• 18:17
  And then fucking holy shit, that's the question.
• 18:21
  Can I live this big, bold, free life and not need anyone to validate it or for it to make sense to anybody, but it just feels good and free to me?
• 18:37
  And I think there's something really important here because I don't believe there's anything wrong with wanting our work to be appreciated.
• 18:43
  Of course, we want people to enjoy what we create.
• 18:46
  Of course, we want people to show up.
• 18:47
  Of course, we want our gifts to be received.
• 18:52
  That's reciprocity.
• 18:53
  Reciprocity is important.
• 18:55
  Connection matters.
• 18:58
  Sharing stories matters.
• 18:59
  Having our ideas land somewhere in this physical reality is important.
• 19:05
  We want to see our ideas and thoughts and energy eventually bloom into something great.
• 19:12
  That is beautiful.
• 19:13
  That is valid How can we do so from this state of it just feels so exhilarating to be alive, it feels so exhilarating to create this, it just feels so exhilarating to experience this?
• 19:31
  So what does actual freedom feel like?
• 19:38
  The freedom to be fully yourself, to walk into a room and not immediately start adjusting your personality, to have a conversation and not spend the next three hours analyzing everything that you said and if you took up too much time or said too much or did you just turn somebody off?
• 19:55
  Did you sour somebody?
• 19:57
  Um, did you just ruin the relationship by showing up as yourself?
• 20:03
  And I do realize, listen, I don't know if I've said this on the podcast recently, but I definitely do have and recovering from complex PTSD.
• 20:11
  So a lot of this is tied to that.
• 20:17
  But can I dance just because I love dancing?
• 20:19
  And can I write because I love writing?
• 20:21
  Can I create something because I wanna create it?
• 20:25
  And can I play and be silly and be unhinged and not fear that there's gonna be any repercussions of it?
• 20:36
  And here's where I'm landing.
• 20:37
  What if I practice being too much?
• 20:39
  What if I gave myself permission to be a little louder, a little more expressive, a little more playful To create a thing, to give myself permission for what it is that I need, and then I don't fucking apologize for it.
• 21:01
  What does that feel like?
• 21:03
  If I allow myself to experience the discomfort that comes afterward without immediately assuming I've done something wrong.
• 21:14
  And that's the part that takes practice.
• 21:18
  It's one thing to say I'm gonna be myself, and it's another thing to actually be yourself and then sit with the fear or your own story that somebody may not like it How can we allow ourselves to be more expressive?
• 21:43
  deeply loved for all parts of yourself And I'll end the podcast here.
• 21:51
  I had a friend recently say, I love all parts of you and all parts of you are welcomed." Because I do have intuitive gifts, and so sometimes when I hear a story or somebody sharing something, I immediately get another impression.
• 22:07
  And so I shared with her, like,"I'm sorry, I'm trying not to give unsolicited spiritual, insight." And she said,"Are you kidding?
• 22:15
  That's what makes you, you.
• 22:16
  And I love you, and I love all parts of you, and all parts of you are welcomed here." Fuck Do I give myself permission to have all parts of myself show up all the time?
• 22:28
  Are all parts of myself welcomed?
• 22:33
  Is there freedom to fully be yourself?
• 22:39
  End Maybe today the practice is I am no longer willing to abandon myself in order to belong.
• 22:52
  I am no longer willing to abandon myself for fear of being disliked or too much or unhinged I am no longer willing to abandon myself, my dreams, my creative ideas, the way I want to experience the world Period.
• 23:14
  And that is gonna take some practice.
• 23:17
  Thank you for being here, and welcome to The Spiritual Shit Show