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Why Losing Yourself In A Relationship Feels So Familiar · Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate, a podcast covering all things relationships, separation, and divorce.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: How to create healthy, happy, fulfilling relationships without sacrificing any part of yourself.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Supporting anyone feeling challenged in their relationship or marriage.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: These are confidential conversations for you if you're navigating separation, divorce, or reorganising life afterwards.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Decide whether to stay or leave a relationship or marriage, divorce with less drama, and consciously choose what's next for you.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the Warundry people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I acknowledge them as the original storytellers of this land.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to this week's episode of Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Why losing yourself in a relationship feels so familiar?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And how to reclaim you.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Why does losing yourself in a relationship feel familiar?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: For many, especially but not only women, that experience of losing themselves in a relationship feels like, or is in fact, less a deliberate choice and more something that just happens insidiously, like slipping into an old familiar pattern that is probably shaped by years of conditioning, years of expectation, years of learned behaviour.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Often it's a pattern that begins very early in life.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Society, culture, family dynamics, and our upbringing, our lived experience reinforce the idea of a woman's value being tied to how well she tends to or nurtures or sacrifices for or supports others in her world.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: From a very young age, girls and women are taught to watch, to fix, to serve, to help, to care for and nurture and make sure everyone else is okay, but rarely taught to do that for themselves.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, this messaging, this learned behavior, this reinforced behaviour becomes an almost automatic tendency to look out for, to prioritize the needs, the desires, the emotions, the well-being of others, our partners, our children, our family, and to do that all above our own wants, needs, desires, emotions, well-being.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: It runs so deep that it becomes a core part of who they are.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes the story that they tell themselves.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes a character almost that they play.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes a core part of who they are, who they are.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And self-worth can become really enmeshed and entwined with how much they give, how accommodating they are, or how well they meet the needs of others, how well they tend to care for and look after others, pinning their self-worth on that.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it happens so quietly, so gradually, that it does feel perfectly natural, like second nature, and it's reinforced by deeper narratives.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the belief that love and harmony, acceptance, belonging, being chosen is achieved and maintained, stability is maintained by putting others first, no matter what the personal cost, no matter what it costs us.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Challenging that patterning, challenging that conditioning, rocking that particular boat can feel risky.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So many people in relationships, particularly women, suppress or sacrifice parts of themselves to avoid conflict, to maintain peace, and to ensure the happiness of the others in that relationship or that community or that group.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: They may even feel like, well, in fact, they are rewarded for this self-sacrifice through the main maintenance of the relationship, the maintenance of harmony, the maintenance of peace, happy partners, happy children, content siblings, and content parents.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: But eventually, eventually the cracks begin to show.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: You may wake up one day feeling resentful, disconnected, unseen, unappreciated, or you may just feel some deep niggle, some gnawing that this is not quite right.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you start to question who you really are.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Do you really fit in this container, this relationship, this family, realizing on some deep level that you've actually lost touch with yourself, you've lost yourself, you've lost parts of yourself.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps you actively choose to stop.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: You choose to stop this overgiving, this tending, this caring.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if you choose that path, the reactions from others can be really strong, really jarring.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they might respond with disbelief or confusion or disappointment, resentment, even anger.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how dare you stop doing this?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: How dare you stop giving this or doing this, giving this to me or doing this for me?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they might think or even say to you, you're being selfish or being mean, but that's not true.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: You're simply resetting a boundary that you had allowed stretched too far.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the boundary reset feels uncomfortable, perhaps even unfair, to those who've previously benefited from you losing yourself in relationship, from from benefited from your overgiving.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: But their discomfort, their response, their reaction is not your responsibility.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a natural response to change, yes, but it doesn't mean or make you wrong for resetting that boundary, for honouring yourself, for raising yourself up out of that lostness.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's an opportunity for a conversation about a more even giving, taking, reciprocal relationship.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's an opportunity to open a conversation about balance and reciprocity.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Losing yourself in relationships is often a gradual process of compromises, small at first, and then they get bigger and bigger.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's silencing your voice.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is countless small choices to prioritize others and peace, harmony, whatever it is for you, over what you want and what you need.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And often these choices are driven by or reinforced by fears.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Fear of rejection, fear of conflict, fear as being seen as too much or selfish, and the small choices add up to become a deeply ingrained pattern of let's call it what it is, self-abandonment, where your own values, needs, hopes, dreams, desires, emotional well-being are ignored not only by others, but most importantly by you.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Losing yourself in relationship feels normal.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: It feels familiar because it's so deeply ingrained and it's all you've ever known.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe these patterns started in childhood for really good reasons, but just because it's familiar doesn't make it healthy, doesn't make it right.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: The truth is no matter how much you love and care for someone, a relationship should never ask that you disappear, minimize, make small, erode parts of who you are.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: There should be absolutely room for both people to show up fully with all their hopes, dreams, desires, needs honored and met.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Even those shadow darker parts seen, heard, held, aloud, all of you.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Healing this pattern, healing from losing yourself in relationship begins with understanding, acknowledging, and embodying, really deeply knowing that all of the love and the respect and the care that you offer and give others needs also to be extended to yourself.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: By you.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, by others, but firstly by you.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: All that love tending, loving, tending, caring attention that you offer others.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: How would it feel to offer that to yourself?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Healing from losing yourself in relationship self-abandonment means getting really clear and reconnecting with you, with your values, your desires, and choosing a life and a way of moving through the world that honours all of that.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: It feels familiar because of cultural and familial conditioning.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Women are socialized to prioritize others' needs over their own.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Selflessness seen as a virtue.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we get so many insidious messages about being a good girl, a good wife, how a good mother or a good partner should act.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: The messages are pervasive and subtle and ingrained from a really, really young age.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we often, as women, internalize the idea that our worth, our value in the world is tied to our caring, our nurturing, our mothering, our tending, how well we care for accommodate others and make these stories, these internalized stories, make self-sacrifice feel normal.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's expected, it's normal.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it feels familiar, it's known, it's learned, it feels really safe, it feels familiar, it feels like home.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Suppressing needs, opinions, ideas, suppressing or not voicing wants, needs, desires can feel safer, especially in relationships where there's a power imbalance.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: It enables us to avoid conflict, and conflict avoiding becomes a default way to maintain peace.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And in doing that, we lose ourselves.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's also fear of rejection, right?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: As human beings, we are hardwired for connection and belonging, and that can drive us.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: The fear of not having that connection, not having that belonging, can drive us to self-silencing, minimizing, making ourselves small, losing ourselves in relationship.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: We sacrifice our voice, our hopes, our wants, our needs, our desires to avoid being rejected, to make sure and ensure we are chosen and belong and have connection.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And self-worth is a part of it too, right?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of the story.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: We believe, or we have been conditioned to believe, that our worthiness is dependent on what we give, on being in relationship, on being chosen, and we carry the internalized beliefs that tie our value to being in relationship, to pleasing or supporting others, and reinforcing that self-abandonment, self-neglect, reinforcing losing ourselves in relationship because we opin our self-worth on how much we give and what we share with others, what we give.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: It can also, of course, be a trauma response, a big T or small t trauma, fawning or people pleasing often develops as a survival mechanism.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: So that I touched on that earlier, you know, early childhood responses to keep ourselves safe.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: So losing yourself in relationship can be in response to past emotional or relational trauma.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's the case, deep healing work needs to be done to be able to hold emotional safety for yourself and create emotional safety in relationships so that you are safe to bring all of you to the relationship.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And as I touched on just earlier, you know, really we are hardwired as humans for connection and belonging, and many of us equate self-sacrifice, serving others with love, right?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Love is self-serving, love is self-sacrificing, believing it'll sustain the relationship and keep us close to those we care about.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: But this deep-seated belief reinforces self-abandonment, reinforces our pattern of prioritizing others at our own expense, and that comes back to bite.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: At some point, that comes back to bite us.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's also the good girl, I mentioned before, the good girl, the good wife, the people pleaser.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: People pleasing starts as a way to avoid our own discomfort, to avoid conflict, or to earn love, but can develop into that deeply ingrained habits where we put others ahead of ourselves, we lose ourselves in relationship.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, there's codependent dynamics.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: When your identity becomes so entwined, enmeshed with your partners, you either feel responsible for their happiness, their success, their stability, or you only feel happy when the relationship is steady and going well.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Your happiness depends entirely on the other person.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And codependence in a relationship is another way that we lose ourselves.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's an unhealthy emotional reliance on a partner where your sense of happiness, self-worth becomes entirely tied to the state of relationship, of the relationship, and you lose sense and sight of yourself.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think too, there's also something in we've talked a bit about avoiding discomfort, but avoiding discomfort or the fear of being fully seen.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not loving ourself enough to allow our entire self, shadow and all, to be fully seen.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Avoiding discomfort or the fear of being fully seen, fear of being vulnerable often keeps us small, silent, lost within relationship.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: That act of really looking inward, acknowledging our wants, needs, desires, being able to set clear boundaries or express what we want, express our desires, can feel deeply vulnerable and unsettling.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's easier to avoid that discomfort and shift focus outward onto others, seek external validation, avoid situations that require openness, avoid the honesty or vulnerability that we need to bring to allow our whole self to be seen.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: This also comes back to bias.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: It allows temporary short to medium term, even long-term relief from that discomfort, but it does lead to disconnection from our own values, our own desires, our own wants, our own needs, and eventually that rises up.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually it shows up, eventually the cracks appear.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Whether that's disconnection from your partner, disconnection from yourself, physical symptoms and ill health affecting your sleep, your stress levels, or it's just that niggling inner resentment, frustration, whatever it is.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Losing yourself in relationship will eventually show up.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes it rises up subtly.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: The realization that that's what's happening rises up gently, subtly.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes though it blows up like a volcano.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: I guess the former being preferable, it allows you to open conversations and challenge your thinking, challenge the other people you are in relationship with and create new boundaries, new pathways, new behaviors, new ways of moving forward in relationship.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Losing yourself in relationship, healing relationship patterns, creating new ways of moving forward is something I work on a lot with my one-to-one clients.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if you would like to join me in a live-free masterclass on healing your relationship patterns, there's a link in the show notes to sign up for that.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to share that with you.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you have lost yourself in relationship or you're healing from that experience, next week's episode is more the practical strategies of the how-to, how to break free from that familiar pattern of self-abandonment and start reclaiming you.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're navigating a current relationship or healing from a past one, I can guide you on how to set boundaries, express your needs, and show up fully in your own life.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: How to bring and be and allow all of you space in your life, in your relationships.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you would like to join me in my free online masterclass upcoming, there's a link in the show notes to sign up for that.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: The one thing you can do to heal your relationship pattern, a great gift that you can give yourself and gift your future self and your future relationships.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I would love you to join me.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Link in the show notes.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: As always, thanks for being here.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Bye for now.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sally Ann Hartnell, divorce coach and strategist, and you've been listening to Reflect, Reclaim, and Liberate.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can follow me on Instagram at Reflect Coaching, and if you can think of anyone who would love or benefit from listening to this episode, please share it with them.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also be so grateful if you would follow and review the podcast so we can get it in the ears of a whole lot more people just like you who are ready to reclaim and liberate themselves in life and love.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll join me next week for another episode of Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Until then