Latest / Toxic Girls Zone / I Kept Saving Everyone Else... Then the Bill Came Due

Transcript

I Kept Saving Everyone Else... Then the Bill Came Due · Toxic Girls Zone

0:03
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back. I'm glad you're here, I genuinely am,
0:07
Speaker 1: and I want you to get comfortable because today's a
0:09
Speaker 1: different kind of episode, right? Okay, so this past week
0:13
Speaker 1: was paperwork week in my apartment, and I'm telling you,
0:15
Speaker 1: nothing reveals your coping mechanisms faster than lease renewal forms.
0:19
Speaker 1: My partner sat down with a pen, calm as a
0:21
Speaker 1: morning with no notifications, and filled out every single form
0:24
Speaker 1: in about five minutes. I'm not exaggerating. Five minutes. Five minutes. Meanwhile,
0:28
Speaker 1: I had reorganized the entire junk drawer, alphabetized something that
0:31
Speaker 1: did not need alphabetizing, and stress-eaten a granola bar I
0:34
Speaker 1: didn't even want. There were stacks of paper on every surface,
0:37
Speaker 1: one of those forms needed a notary, and I was
0:39
Speaker 1: treating the notary situation like a geopolitical crisis. My partner
0:42
Speaker 1: just looked at me and said, I'll handle the notary.
0:45
Speaker 1: And I said, no, no, I've got it, and then
0:47
Speaker 1: spent 40 minutes googling notaries instead of just letting someone
0:50
Speaker 1: handle the notary. Right? Yeah, that's pretty much the whole
0:53
Speaker 1: episode in one scene. There's no outline today, no list
0:57
Speaker 1: of mistakes or steps, no roadmap, just a story and
0:59
Speaker 1: where it took me. And grab a coffee because this
1:02
Speaker 1: one is genuinely a lot. Storytime episodes are messier than
1:05
Speaker 1: the structured ones, and I think that's why they're truer.
1:07
Speaker 1: You can hear me thinking, you can hear me still
1:09
Speaker 1: working it out, and that feels more honest than me
1:11
Speaker 1: showing up with a bow on it. The dog is
1:13
Speaker 1: currently asleep on my feet, which is both adorable and
1:15
Speaker 1: a circulation problem. And I'm going to tell you something
1:17
Speaker 1: I'm still a little embarrassed about. Not scared of it anymore, just,
1:21
Speaker 1: you know, it's still a little pink when I press
1:23
Speaker 1: on it. Sound familiar? I want to tell you why
1:26
Speaker 1: I'm bringing this up now, specifically now. I kept postponing
1:29
Speaker 1: a decision for eight months. Not a dramatic one. No affair.
1:33
Speaker 1: No job quit. Nothing you'd put in a movie. Just
1:35
Speaker 1: a quiet thing I would not look at. And that postponing,
1:38
Speaker 1: when I finally turned around and looked at it, showed
1:40
Speaker 1: me the entire engine of my 20s. I used to
1:42
Speaker 1: believe I was a generous person who loved helping. I
1:45
Speaker 1: am a generous person who loves helping. That part is real.
1:47
Speaker 1: But I was also a person who never once, not once,
1:50
Speaker 1: asked for help. And the gap between those two things, right?
1:53
Speaker 1: That gap is this whole episode. So I've been going
1:56
Speaker 1: back through some old journals from my therapy years, the
1:58
Speaker 1: really earnest ones with the tabs and the highlighted sections,
2:01
Speaker 1: very committed to my own healing, very cute. And I
2:03
Speaker 1: found the same sentence written in three different notebooks. He
2:06
Speaker 1: needs me. Different handwriting each time because I had gone
2:08
Speaker 1: through a couple of pen phases, different man each time,
2:11
Speaker 1: completely identical feeling underneath. Three journals, three men, one sentence.
2:15
Speaker 1: I was basically a broken record with better highlights each year.
2:18
Speaker 1: And I mean highlights in both senses of that word.
2:20
Speaker 1: The hair was also different each time. That's how you
2:22
Speaker 1: know a lot of time has passed, right? Makes sense.
2:26
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, and I'm going to say it with
2:28
Speaker 1: love because I've lived every inch of this. I thought
2:30
Speaker 1: I was a woman who was good at love. I
2:32
Speaker 1: thought the fact that I gave so much meant I
2:34
Speaker 1: understood love. What I didn't understand was that giving can
2:37
Speaker 1: be a hiding place. You can be the most generous
2:39
Speaker 1: person in the room and still be hiding from something, right?
2:42
Speaker 1: And what I was hiding from was the terrifying, embarrassing,
2:44
Speaker 1: deeply inconvenient truth that I wanted someone to take care
2:47
Speaker 1: of me, and I had absolutely no idea how to
2:49
Speaker 1: let that happen. That's what the whole rescue thing was
2:51
Speaker 1: actually about. But let me back up. Early 20s, I
2:55
Speaker 1: had just moved to the city at 22. New apartment
2:57
Speaker 1: with genuinely bad lighting. One of those places where you
3:00
Speaker 1: look fine in your phone camera and then walk past
3:01
Speaker 1: a mirror and rethink everything. I had started the marketing job.
3:04
Speaker 1: I had a very specific energy that I can only
3:06
Speaker 1: describe as overconfident in the areas that didn't matter and
3:09
Speaker 1: completely oblivious in the areas that did. And I was
3:12
Speaker 1: absolutely certain I had figured out love. He was newer
3:14
Speaker 1: to the city than me, overwhelmed, not doing great at work,
3:17
Speaker 1: kind of adrift in that early 20s way where everything
3:19
Speaker 1: feels temporary. And I told myself, I see something in
3:23
Speaker 1: him that nobody else sees. That sentence, my loves, is
3:25
Speaker 1: the beginning of so many stories that end badly, right?
3:29
Speaker 1: I made myself indispensable. I cooked. I calmed him down.
3:33
Speaker 1: I researched options for his career situation. I texted first
3:36
Speaker 1: every single time I felt needed and I completely mistook
3:39
Speaker 1: needed for loved. Those are not the same thing. And
3:41
Speaker 1: I cannot stress that enough. There was a night he said,
3:43
Speaker 1: I don't know what I would do without you. And
3:45
Speaker 1: I felt something flood my chest that I now recognize
3:47
Speaker 1: was relief, not joy, relief, relief that the arrangement was working,
3:51
Speaker 1: that I had made myself too useful to leave. Then
3:53
Speaker 1: he left anyway, which in retrospect was the universe doing
3:56
Speaker 1: me an enormous favor that I was completely ungrateful for
3:59
Speaker 1: at the time. I had just started that marketing job
4:02
Speaker 1: and I already hated the weekly status meeting from week one,
4:04
Speaker 1: which I think says something about my relationship to authority
4:07
Speaker 1: that I've fully processed in therapy and won't unpack right now.
4:09
Speaker 1: He called me his anchor and I wrote it in
4:11
Speaker 1: the journal like it was a compliment. I underlined it.
4:14
Speaker 1: I probably put a little star next to it. Anchor, babe.
4:17
Speaker 1: He was telling me I was keeping him from drifting
4:19
Speaker 1: away and I heard, you are essential and beautiful and
4:21
Speaker 1: I choose you. I heard what I needed to hear, right? Yeah,
4:25
Speaker 1: we all do that. Okay, I want you to picture
4:28
Speaker 1: this because I think you might know this feeling. You
4:30
Speaker 1: find him at a low point, maybe a bad month
4:32
Speaker 1: at work, maybe a friendship that just fell apart. Maybe
4:34
Speaker 1: he's just arrived somewhere new and he doesn't have his
4:36
Speaker 1: footing yet. And you are attentive. You're resourceful. You send articles,
4:40
Speaker 1: you show up. You remember the thing he mentioned three
4:42
Speaker 1: weeks ago and you bring it up at exactly the
4:44
Speaker 1: right moment because you've been paying that close of attention.
4:46
Speaker 1: And it feels like love. It feels like you're finally
4:49
Speaker 1: doing love right. He says, I've never had anyone do
4:51
Speaker 1: this for me. And you feel chosen. Here's the thing though.
4:55
Speaker 1: You're not chosen yet. You're useful. And those two feelings
4:58
Speaker 1: can live in the same chest and feel identical until
5:00
Speaker 1: they don't. Right? My best friend was watching this from
5:04
Speaker 1: across a table at a birthday dinner. And she has
5:06
Speaker 1: this way of seeing things and waiting, just waiting, until
5:09
Speaker 1: she knows you're ready to actually hear it. She said,
5:11
Speaker 1: you light up more when he texts you a problem
5:13
Speaker 1: than when he texts you a compliment. I laughed it
5:15
Speaker 1: off at the time. I think I said something like,
5:17
Speaker 1: I just like being helpful. And she looked at me
5:19
Speaker 1: the way she looks at things she's decided not to
5:21
Speaker 1: argue about yet. She was not wrong. She's basically never wrong,
5:24
Speaker 1: which is both her best quality and occasionally genuinely annoying. okay?
5:29
Speaker 1: And then there was the Sunday call with my mom.
5:32
Speaker 1: She called mid-relationship, the way she always does, warm and
5:34
Speaker 1: a little unpredictable in her timing, and she asked how
5:36
Speaker 1: he was doing. I talked for 11 minutes about his situation,
5:40
Speaker 1: his work stress, his friendship stuff, what I thought he needed,
5:43
Speaker 1: what I was doing to help. 11 minutes. Then she said,
5:46
Speaker 1: and how are you doing, sweetheart? And I did not
5:47
Speaker 1: have an answer ready. I had to actually pause and
5:50
Speaker 1: search for one like I'd misplaced it. I found out
5:52
Speaker 1: later that pause was almost 30 seconds long. My mom
5:55
Speaker 1: let it sit there, She didn't fill it in. She
5:57
Speaker 1: just waited for me to locate myself. Right? I want
6:00
Speaker 1: you to picture another version of this scene because I
6:03
Speaker 1: think some of you are living it right now and
6:04
Speaker 1: maybe you don't have the words for it yet. You're
6:06
Speaker 1: on the phone with him at midnight, solving something that
6:08
Speaker 1: genuinely is not yours to solve. Your rescue dog is
6:11
Speaker 1: nudging your hand, wanting attention. Your balcony plants need water.
6:14
Speaker 1: There are three things you meant to do for yourself
6:16
Speaker 1: this week and none of them happened and your own
6:18
Speaker 1: life is slightly wilting at the edges. And you feel
6:20
Speaker 1: more alive in that midnight phone call than you have
6:22
Speaker 1: all week. That aliveness is real. I'm not going to
6:25
Speaker 1: take that away from you. But it's worth asking what
6:27
Speaker 1: it's feeding, right? I was watering his emotional garden with
6:30
Speaker 1: a full garden hose while my own balcony looked like
6:33
Speaker 1: an actual crime scene. I mean the plants. I'm mostly
6:36
Speaker 1: talking about the plants. Mostly. So here are eight signs
6:40
Speaker 1: I missed while I was busy being essential. And I
6:42
Speaker 1: missed them in real time, even though looking back they
6:44
Speaker 1: are extremely clear. First, I felt flat when things were
6:46
Speaker 1: going well for him. Not glad, flat, like something had
6:49
Speaker 1: been turned off. Second, the moment he seemed to not
6:52
Speaker 1: need me anymore, I would quietly manufacture a problem to solve.
6:55
Speaker 1: just to have something to do with my hands emotionally. Third,
6:57
Speaker 1: I told my best friend I wasn't sure if I
6:59
Speaker 1: even liked him as a person, then stayed another four months,
7:01
Speaker 1: which is both impressive and a little horrifying. Fourth, I
7:04
Speaker 1: started choosing men the way you pick a work project.
7:06
Speaker 1: What does he need? What can I build here? What's
7:08
Speaker 1: the timeline for improvement? Right? Fifth, I was genuinely more
7:11
Speaker 1: comfortable in his chaos than in the quiet of my
7:13
Speaker 1: own apartment, and my apartment was nice. I had good candles. Sixth,
7:18
Speaker 1: I got a promotion at the marketing job, a real one,
7:20
Speaker 1: the one I had actually worked for, and it was
7:22
Speaker 1: genuinely mine. And I told him first so I could
7:24
Speaker 1: watch him need me to explain what it meant, what
7:26
Speaker 1: it would mean for my schedule, what I was feeling
7:28
Speaker 1: about it. I made my own achievement into a context
7:31
Speaker 1: for his reaction. Which, when I say it out loud,
7:33
Speaker 1: is a lot. Seventh, when a kind, sorted, emotionally available
7:37
Speaker 1: man showed genuine interest in me, I found him boring
7:40
Speaker 1: within a week. Not mean, not distant, just, you know, boring.
7:44
Speaker 1: Nothing to fix. Nowhere to be needed. Eighth, I journaled
7:47
Speaker 1: about his growth more than I journaled about my own.
7:49
Speaker 1: My own journal was basically his progress report. Right? Makes
7:52
Speaker 1: sense now, yeah? Then there was the text I stared
7:56
Speaker 1: at for almost an hour. He wrote, I think I'm
7:59
Speaker 1: finally getting it together. And my stomach dropped. I'm not
8:02
Speaker 1: proud of that. I read it four times looking for
8:05
Speaker 1: the problem in it, looking for the place where he
8:07
Speaker 1: still needed something from me. There was no problem. He
8:09
Speaker 1: was doing well. And that right there, that was the problem.
8:12
Speaker 1: I was so calibrated for his need that his health
8:14
Speaker 1: felt like a loss. That is the moment I started
8:16
Speaker 1: to understand something was wrong. Not with him, with the
8:19
Speaker 1: whole setup I'd been running. You know? And picture this too,
8:23
Speaker 1: because this is the inner voice version of that moment.
8:25
Speaker 1: It says, he just needs a little more time, a
8:28
Speaker 1: little more support, a little more of you. You've been
8:30
Speaker 1: saying that for six months. The timeline keeps moving. Every
8:33
Speaker 1: time he gets closer to, okay, the goalpost shifts just
8:35
Speaker 1: far enough that you're still needed. And some part of you,
8:38
Speaker 1: the part we're going to talk about is the one
8:39
Speaker 1: moving the goalpost, right? I was basically a one woman
8:43
Speaker 1: renovation crew operating on men who had not listed themselves
8:45
Speaker 1: for sale. The audacity of me, honestly, I was out
8:48
Speaker 1: there handing out permits for emotional construction on properties that
8:51
Speaker 1: were not mine to develop. So that's where Act 1
8:54
Speaker 1: lands us. We've got the pattern, we've got the signs,
8:57
Speaker 1: we've got the journals, and the midnight calls, and the
8:59
Speaker 1: stomach drop when he said he was finally okay. And
9:01
Speaker 1: what I haven't told you yet is the moment the
9:03
Speaker 1: whole rescue fantasy cracked open, and what I found underneath
9:06
Speaker 1: it that I had never once let anyone see. That's
9:08
Speaker 1: coming up next, and I'm warning you, it got a
9:10
Speaker 1: little ugly before it got better. Okay, so here's what
9:14
Speaker 1: I found underneath it. And I'm going to need you
9:16
Speaker 1: to stay with me for this part, right? The decision
9:19
Speaker 1: I kept postponing for eight months was not about a job.
9:22
Speaker 1: It wasn't about moving. It wasn't about anything that would
9:24
Speaker 1: make a good dramatic story at a dinner party. It
9:26
Speaker 1: was this. Whether to tell my partner I was burning out.
9:29
Speaker 1: Not from work. From performing competence every single day of
9:32
Speaker 1: my life. I had been with my partner for two
9:34
Speaker 1: years at that point. Living together for almost one. And
9:37
Speaker 1: my partner is calm in a way that used to
9:38
Speaker 1: confuse me. Cooks every night without making it a thing.
9:42
Speaker 1: Leaves sticky notes on the coffee maker, little ones, that
9:44
Speaker 1: say stuff like you've got it today or I saved
9:46
Speaker 1: you the good mug. And I was terrified of all
9:48
Speaker 1: of it. Not because it was too much. Because it
9:51
Speaker 1: wasn't asking anything from me. My partner just wanted me there.
9:55
Speaker 1: Not useful, not essential, not solving anything. Just there. And
9:59
Speaker 1: I genuinely did. know what to do with that. So
10:01
Speaker 1: I started making small problems. I pushed back in conversations
10:04
Speaker 1: for no real reason. I left things undone that I
10:07
Speaker 1: normally handled so there would be something to fix. I
10:09
Speaker 1: was so uncomfortable being simply loved that I was quietly
10:12
Speaker 1: picking at the seams of the only relationship that I'd
10:14
Speaker 1: ever actually felt safe. Right? One night my partner made
10:18
Speaker 1: dinner and I sat at the table and couldn't eat
10:20
Speaker 1: and couldn't explain why. Couldn't say I'm tired, couldn't say
10:23
Speaker 1: I'm scared. Just sat there moving food around the plate
10:25
Speaker 1: like I was 12. And my partner put down a fork,
10:28
Speaker 1: looked at me and said, you know you're allowed to
10:30
Speaker 1: just be tired, right? That's it. No fixing, no follow-up question,
10:34
Speaker 1: no asking me to explain myself. Just that. I cried
10:37
Speaker 1: for 20 minutes and I still couldn't tell you exactly why,
10:40
Speaker 1: except that I think some part of me had never
10:41
Speaker 1: been given permission to be tired before. It had always
10:43
Speaker 1: been my job to be fine. Makes sense? I called
10:47
Speaker 1: my sister after she had just gotten engaged. She was
10:50
Speaker 1: absolutely glowing. She had that look people get when their
10:52
Speaker 1: life is clicking into place. And I told her what happened,
10:55
Speaker 1: the dinner, the crying, all of it. She listened. And
10:57
Speaker 1: then she said, why do you always wait until you're
10:59
Speaker 1: completely empty before you let anyone in? She said it
11:02
Speaker 1: the way she says everything. Like it's the most obvious
11:04
Speaker 1: thing in the world. And she genuinely cannot believe it
11:06
Speaker 1: took this long. Yeah. She's the younger one, by the way,
11:10
Speaker 1: she figured this out before I did that tracks and
11:14
Speaker 1: picture this because this one is important. You're in a
11:16
Speaker 1: good relationship. Maybe the best one you've had. Nothing is
11:19
Speaker 1: technically wrong. He's kind. He's present. He's not giving you
11:23
Speaker 1: anything real to worry about. And you feel strangely itchy.
11:26
Speaker 1: Like something is off, but you can't name it because
11:28
Speaker 1: there's no crisis to point at. You were calibrated for emergency.
11:31
Speaker 1: Peace feels like a malfunction. Your nervous system keeps sending
11:34
Speaker 1: up little flares, looking for the problem. And when it
11:37
Speaker 1: can't find one, it starts to wonder if maybe you
11:39
Speaker 1: should create one. Right? That's not you being difficult. That's
11:43
Speaker 1: you not knowing what to do when nobody needs rescuing.
11:46
Speaker 1: I want to tell you about the breakup at 26,
11:48
Speaker 1: because it connects here in a way I didn't understand
11:50
Speaker 1: until way later. I stayed a year past knowing it
11:53
Speaker 1: was over. A full year. Not because I was happy,
11:56
Speaker 1: not because I thought it would get better in some
11:57
Speaker 1: honest way, but because he was so clearly struggling and
12:00
Speaker 1: I had told myself I could not leave someone who
12:02
Speaker 1: needed me. That felt like loyalty. It felt like love.
12:05
Speaker 1: It was neither of those things, right? It was me
12:07
Speaker 1: using his need as a reason to avoid the terrifying
12:09
Speaker 1: act of choosing myself. I left eventually. And then I
12:13
Speaker 1: spent three months feeling guilty for surviving it. Three months.
12:16
Speaker 1: of guilt for leaving a relationship that was already over.
12:19
Speaker 1: My nervous system was so used to drama, it treated
12:22
Speaker 1: a calm Tuesday like a personal attack. I'm not even exaggerating.
12:25
Speaker 1: I would sit in my studio apartment in total quiet
12:27
Speaker 1: and feel vaguely wrong. Like I was forgetting something. I
12:30
Speaker 1: wasn't forgetting anything. I was just alone with myself and
12:33
Speaker 1: I had never really done that before. And picture this
12:36
Speaker 1: next part too, because you might recognize it. He finally
12:39
Speaker 1: has things together. He's doing well. He seems lighter, happier,
12:42
Speaker 1: more grounded. And you feel yourself pulling back, Finding little
12:45
Speaker 1: reasons to create distance, maybe starting a small argument you
12:48
Speaker 1: don't fully mean about something that doesn't actually matter to you.
12:51
Speaker 1: Your body is looking for the old dynamic, the one
12:53
Speaker 1: where he needed you and you provided. It doesn't find it,
12:56
Speaker 1: so it starts to build one, and you won't even
12:58
Speaker 1: fully realize you're doing it. It'll just feel like tension
13:01
Speaker 1: or incompatibility or suddenly wondering if you actually want this.
13:04
Speaker 1: Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so. So let me tell
13:08
Speaker 1: you about the story I was running, the inner voice
13:11
Speaker 1: line that started all of this. For years, I told myself,
13:14
Speaker 1: I'm just a caring person. I'm supportive. I give a
13:17
Speaker 1: lot of relationships. And all of that was true. I'm
13:20
Speaker 1: not going to sit here and take that away from
13:21
Speaker 1: my past self because she really did show up. But
13:23
Speaker 1: it was also incomplete, right? The other layer, the one underneath,
13:27
Speaker 1: the inner voice version was this. He needs me, which
13:29
Speaker 1: means I matter, which means I'm safe. Caring was real.
13:33
Speaker 1: And it was also a cover story. If I'm useful enough,
13:36
Speaker 1: lovable enough, essential enough, then nobody looks too closely at
13:39
Speaker 1: me and finds something lacking. The rescue fantasy was never
13:42
Speaker 1: actually about him. It was about proving I deserved a
13:45
Speaker 1: place at the table. Caring person? Sure. Also running a
13:49
Speaker 1: full background check on every man I dated to see
13:51
Speaker 1: if his particular damage matched my specific toolkit. I've done
13:54
Speaker 1: this more times than I'm comfortable admitting. It's embarrassing. And honestly,
13:58
Speaker 1: a little impressive in the worst way. Write this down, okay?
14:03
Speaker 1: I want you to actually do this. Write down, what
14:05
Speaker 1: am I afraid would happen if I needed something and
14:07
Speaker 1: no one came? Don't answer it in your head. Put
14:10
Speaker 1: it somewhere real. Because the answer to that question is
14:12
Speaker 1: usually the whole map. That's where the rescue projector lives.
14:16
Speaker 1: Not in your feelings about him and your feelings about
14:18
Speaker 1: what happens when you put your hand out and the
14:20
Speaker 1: room goes quiet. My partner said it on a Saturday morning. Calm,
14:24
Speaker 1: not as a fight, not as an accusation. Just sitting
14:26
Speaker 1: with coffee and there was still a sticky note stuck
14:28
Speaker 1: to the mug from earlier in the week. My partner said,
14:31
Speaker 1: I want to take care of you sometimes. Do you
14:32
Speaker 1: know you make that really hard? I sat with that
14:35
Speaker 1: sentence for a long time. My partner wasn't criticizing me.
14:38
Speaker 1: My partner was describing a wall I had built over
14:40
Speaker 1: 32 years and painted to look like generosity. Right? A
14:42
Speaker 1: wall I was proud of. A wall I maintained. A
14:45
Speaker 1: wall that said, look how much I give while it
14:47
Speaker 1: quietly kept everyone from giving anything back. And picture this one,
14:51
Speaker 1: because I think you've done this too. Your partner reaches
14:53
Speaker 1: toward you when you're upset, really reaches, not to fix it,
14:56
Speaker 1: just to be there. And you immediately pivot to fine.
14:59
Speaker 1: You explain the feeling away before he can even respond
15:01
Speaker 1: to it. You redirect to his problem or to something
15:04
Speaker 1: practical or to making sure he's okay. You are already
15:07
Speaker 1: solving something before he's even finished moving towards you. He says,
15:10
Speaker 1: I just wanted to sit with you. You say, I'm okay.
15:12
Speaker 1: You are not okay. And the wild part is, you
15:14
Speaker 1: know you're not okay. You just can't let him see
15:16
Speaker 1: that without feeling like you failed some test you set
15:18
Speaker 1: for yourself. Yeah, that one lands, doesn't it? It's not
15:23
Speaker 1: that you want to save him. It's that you're terrified
15:26
Speaker 1: to ask to be saved. The stickiest sticky note my
15:29
Speaker 1: partner ever left wasn't on the coffee maker. It was
15:31
Speaker 1: that Saturday morning sentence. And unlike the junk drawer, I
15:34
Speaker 1: could not reorganize my way out of it. I'm not okay.
15:37
Speaker 1: I genuinely sat there looking at this person who loves me,
15:39
Speaker 1: who just said they want to take care of me,
15:41
Speaker 1: and I felt something close to panic. Not gratitude. Panic.
15:44
Speaker 1: Because gratitude would require softening. And softening would require trusting.
15:48
Speaker 1: And trusting meant risking the thing I had been avoiding
15:50
Speaker 1: since I was a kid. Being a person who needed
15:52
Speaker 1: something and not knowing if it would come. So here
15:55
Speaker 1: is the decision. The one I kept postponing for eight months.
15:58
Speaker 1: I needed to say out loud, to my partner, I
16:00
Speaker 1: am exhausted. And I do not know how to let
16:02
Speaker 1: you help me. That's the whole sentence. Eight months of
16:05
Speaker 1: postponing those 18 words. The feeling in my body before
16:08
Speaker 1: I said it. A tightening in the chest. The kind
16:10
Speaker 1: you get right before you confess something. Like whatever comes
16:13
Speaker 1: out of your mouth next is going to change something
16:14
Speaker 1: and you're not sure you're ready. As if needing help
16:17
Speaker 1: was a character flaw. As if asking to be held
16:19
Speaker 1: was the same as admitting I was broken. I finally
16:21
Speaker 1: said it on a Wednesday night. My partner had made soup,
16:24
Speaker 1: the real kind, because it was cold and that's just
16:26
Speaker 1: what my partner does. I sat down and I said,
16:29
Speaker 1: I need you to take care of me tonight and
16:30
Speaker 1: I don't know how to ask for that without feeling pathetic.
16:33
Speaker 1: My partner said nothing. Just push the soup across the table.
16:36
Speaker 1: The soup did more emotional labor in that moment than
16:38
Speaker 1: I had done in eight months of journaling. I'm being serious.
16:42
Speaker 1: It's embarrassing how much that bowl of soup meant to me.
16:46
Speaker 1: Here's what I know about where that came from. My
16:48
Speaker 1: dad worked long hours. He was kind when he was home.
16:51
Speaker 1: Genuinely kind. I want to be clear about that. But
16:54
Speaker 1: he was hard to reach in the ways that mattered.
16:56
Speaker 1: The quiet, emotional ways. The ways where you need someone
16:58
Speaker 1: to just be available for a minute. Asking for things
17:01
Speaker 1: felt like bothering someone who was already stretched. So I
17:03
Speaker 1: stopped asking. I started doing. Doing felt safer than asking
17:07
Speaker 1: because doing was something I could control. And doing kept
17:09
Speaker 1: people from having the chance to say no, which meant
17:12
Speaker 1: I never had to feel the specific pain of putting
17:14
Speaker 1: my hand out into empty air. Right? I built a
17:16
Speaker 1: whole personality around never needing to do that. Which is,
17:19
Speaker 1: it turns out, exhausting. And also not that great for relationships.
17:24
Speaker 1: Ten years. That's how long I ran the rescue projector
17:26
Speaker 1: before I had a name for it. From 17 to 27,
17:29
Speaker 1: first boyfriend to therapy, I built my lovability entirely around
17:32
Speaker 1: being useful. And the ego death was not dramatic. There
17:35
Speaker 1: was no single moment where everything cracked and I wept
17:37
Speaker 1: and understood. It was just quiet. It was rereading an
17:40
Speaker 1: old journal in therapy and seeing the pattern. It was
17:42
Speaker 1: realizing the version of me I had been so proud of.
17:45
Speaker 1: The one who gives so much, who shows up, who
17:47
Speaker 1: handles it, was partly real and partly a performance built
17:50
Speaker 1: to avoid ever being the one who needed handling. And
17:52
Speaker 1: that's not a flaw, right? That is a wound. Wounds
17:55
Speaker 1: don't need more pride. They need air. I had a
17:58
Speaker 1: whole shelf of self-help books about not losing yourself in
18:00
Speaker 1: relationships and not a single one about how to let
18:02
Speaker 1: someone find you. The audacity of my shelf, honestly. And
18:07
Speaker 1: I want to say this clearly because it matters. If
18:09
Speaker 1: the idea of someone taking care of you, really taking
18:11
Speaker 1: care of you, sends you into a full body shutdown,
18:14
Speaker 1: a tightening, a pivot, and I'm fine that comes out
18:16
Speaker 1: before you've even decided to say it, please talk to
18:18
Speaker 1: a therapist. That is too much to carry alone and
18:21
Speaker 1: untangle alone. I spent three years in therapy for a reason.
18:24
Speaker 1: Not because I was broken. because I had been running
18:26
Speaker 1: a pattern that felt like love and was partly fear,
18:29
Speaker 1: and I needed someone in the room with me while
18:30
Speaker 1: I looked at it. Make sense? Okay, so coming up,
18:34
Speaker 1: what projection actually means in plain everyday words, what this
18:37
Speaker 1: pattern is really showing about your relationship with need, and
18:40
Speaker 1: what I'm actually doing differently now. Because there are some
18:42
Speaker 1: changes I made. None of them are grand. One of
18:45
Speaker 1: them involves soup, which we've already covered, but there's more.
18:47
Speaker 1: Stay with me. Okay, so here's the thing about projection,
18:51
Speaker 1: and I mean, in plain everyday words, None of the
18:54
Speaker 1: therapy jargon, just what it actually is. Projection is when
18:57
Speaker 1: you take a feeling that belongs to you and you
18:59
Speaker 1: place it onto someone else so you don't have to
19:00
Speaker 1: feel it directly, right? The part of me that was
19:03
Speaker 1: desperate to be rescued, that was too frightening to own.
19:07
Speaker 1: So I found it somewhere else. I found men who
19:09
Speaker 1: were clearly struggling and I saved them. And in saving them,
19:11
Speaker 1: I got to feel the rescue without ever having to
19:13
Speaker 1: say out loud that I was the one who needed it.
19:15
Speaker 1: Picture that reality dating show, the one where the couple
19:18
Speaker 1: agrees to stay together in total silence for a full week.
19:21
Speaker 1: There is always one person who spends the whole time
19:23
Speaker 1: adjusting the other one's pillow, fussing with the thermostat, checking
19:26
Speaker 1: in constantly, anything to avoid just sitting still with themselves.
19:29
Speaker 1: That was me, every single time. I was the world's
19:32
Speaker 1: most dedicated pillow adjuster. So projection, in the simplest possible terms,
19:37
Speaker 1: is outsourcing your emotional needs to someone who did not
19:39
Speaker 1: apply for the job. Yeah. You hand them the project,
19:42
Speaker 1: you manage the project, and you call it love. And
19:45
Speaker 1: the reason it works so well for so long is
19:46
Speaker 1: that it feels generous. It looks like love from the outside.
19:50
Speaker 1: Your friends see you giving so much. Your mom sees
19:52
Speaker 1: you so devoted. Nobody sees the part where you are
19:55
Speaker 1: terrified of being still long enough to notice what you
19:57
Speaker 1: actually need. The problem is that when you place your
19:59
Speaker 1: need onto someone else, you also lose access to it yourself.
20:02
Speaker 1: You can't ask for what you don't acknowledge you have.
20:04
Speaker 1: Make sense? And here's what I want you to really
20:08
Speaker 1: sit with. You choose him because he is a project.
20:11
Speaker 1: And projects have timelines, progress, measurable outcomes. You are excellent
20:16
Speaker 1: at outcomes, right? You know how to track progress. What
20:18
Speaker 1: you are not excellent at, what I was definitely not
20:21
Speaker 1: excellent at, is sitting in the middle of your own
20:22
Speaker 1: need with no plan and no deliverable and no clear
20:25
Speaker 1: finish line. That is the skill that nobody teaches you.
20:29
Speaker 1: That is the one that costs you the most. And
20:31
Speaker 1: it's not that you want to save him. It's that
20:32
Speaker 1: you're terrified to ask to be saved. I want to
20:35
Speaker 1: tell you something about the two years I spent alone
20:37
Speaker 1: in the studio apartment. Because I thought I was healing.
20:39
Speaker 1: I genuinely thought I was. There was no one to rescue,
20:42
Speaker 1: so the pattern went quiet, and I took quiet to
20:44
Speaker 1: mean gone. I read the books, did the therapy, made
20:47
Speaker 1: the playlists, bought the houseplants, most of which also did
20:50
Speaker 1: not survive. Look, I'm doing my best. I thought I
20:52
Speaker 1: had actually fixed something. Then I met my partner, and
20:55
Speaker 1: someone steady and calm showed up, and my nervous system went, okay,
20:58
Speaker 1: but where's the project? Where's the emergency? What am I
21:01
Speaker 1: supposed to do with all this? The pattern was not gone.
21:04
Speaker 1: It was just waiting for the next person who looked
21:05
Speaker 1: like a construction site. Sound familiar? So what am I
21:10
Speaker 1: actually doing differently now? Three things, none of them dramatic,
21:13
Speaker 1: all of them genuinely hard for me. First, I stopped
21:16
Speaker 1: being the one with all the answers in every conversation
21:17
Speaker 1: with my partner. I used to fill every silence with
21:20
Speaker 1: a solution. Someone says something hard and I'm already problem
21:23
Speaker 1: solving before they finish the sentence. Now I let the
21:25
Speaker 1: silence exist. I sit in it even when it makes
21:27
Speaker 1: me itchy, right? It is uncomfortable and I'm still practicing. Second,
21:31
Speaker 1: I started naming what I needed before I needed it badly.
21:33
Speaker 1: Not during a crisis, just in an ordinary Tuesday, I
21:36
Speaker 1: would say, I'm feeling really thin this week. Can we
21:38
Speaker 1: just stay home tonight? That is it. That is the
21:40
Speaker 1: whole thing. Ordinary and enormous at the same time. Third,
21:44
Speaker 1: I went back to therapy for four months, not because
21:47
Speaker 1: everything had fallen apart, because I had a whole shelf
21:49
Speaker 1: of knowledge and almost zero practice actually receiving anything from anyone.
21:54
Speaker 1: And I'm going to be honest, that is a very
21:55
Speaker 1: specific kind of hard to sit with in a therapy chair.
21:58
Speaker 1: My therapist looked at me at one point and said,
22:00
Speaker 1: you know a lot about this pattern. I said, yes.
22:02
Speaker 1: She said, knowing isn't the same as feeling it. And
22:05
Speaker 1: I had nothing smart to say back. That one landed. Also,
22:08
Speaker 1: I want you to try something this week. A dare, really.
22:11
Speaker 1: Let someone do one thing for you without redirecting, without deflecting,
22:14
Speaker 1: without the automatic I'm fine that comes out before you've
22:16
Speaker 1: even checked if you are. Just one thing. That is
22:18
Speaker 1: the whole dare. My best friend called me after I
22:22
Speaker 1: told her about the soup moment. You know, my best friend,
22:25
Speaker 1: the one who stopped responding to my texts about men
22:26
Speaker 1: on purpose years ago to make a point, which accurate.
22:30
Speaker 1: She called and she said, took you long enough. And
22:32
Speaker 1: she said it was so much warmth that I laughed
22:34
Speaker 1: for a full minute straight. Then she said, you know,
22:37
Speaker 1: I've been trying to take care of you for years
22:38
Speaker 1: and you always have somewhere to be. I had no idea.
22:41
Speaker 1: I thought I was the one taking care of everyone.
22:43
Speaker 1: I didn't even register what she'd been offering. Three years
22:46
Speaker 1: of therapy and my biggest breakthrough was soup and a
22:48
Speaker 1: phone call. I paid so much for that insight. It's
22:50
Speaker 1: genuinely embarrassing. So the question I want to leave with you,
22:54
Speaker 1: the real one, is not whether you've ever wanted to
22:56
Speaker 1: be rescued. Everyone has. The question is whether you've made
22:59
Speaker 1: yourself so useful, so capable, so endlessly available to everyone
23:03
Speaker 1: else's crisis that nobody in your life even thinks to offer.
23:06
Speaker 1: And whether you deliberately chose people who needed so much
23:08
Speaker 1: from you that your own need got quietly buried under theirs. Right?
23:12
Speaker 1: That is the mechanism. That is the whole engine. When
23:14
Speaker 1: you imagine being truly held, not fixed, not advised, not managed,
23:18
Speaker 1: just held, What is it you'd finally be allowed to
23:20
Speaker 1: stop doing? Sit with that. Don't answer it fast. The
23:23
Speaker 1: fast answer is always nothing. I'm fine. The real answer
23:26
Speaker 1: is usually everything. Picture this. You're in bed. It's late,
23:31
Speaker 1: maybe two in the morning, and for once you're not
23:32
Speaker 1: running anxious thoughts about him. You're just aware of how
23:35
Speaker 1: tired you actually are. The dog is at your feet,
23:37
Speaker 1: stealing the corner of the blanket as usual. The apartment
23:40
Speaker 1: is quiet, and you realize you have not asked for
23:41
Speaker 1: a single thing in months. Not because no one would
23:44
Speaker 1: give it. Because somewhere along the way you forgot you
23:46
Speaker 1: were allowed. That's the moment I want you to catch.
23:49
Speaker 1: That's the moment where the pattern lives. You know that feeling? Yeah,
23:53
Speaker 1: I thought you might. I am still learning this and
23:56
Speaker 1: I want to be honest about that because I think
23:57
Speaker 1: clean endings are a lie. I still feel the old
24:00
Speaker 1: pull when someone I care about has a crisis. The
24:02
Speaker 1: alertness switches on, the confidence kicks in, and there is
24:05
Speaker 1: this little hit of relief at having a role again.
24:07
Speaker 1: I notice it now. That is different from being free
24:09
Speaker 1: of it. I notice it and I ask myself, whose
24:12
Speaker 1: need am I actually solving right now? Sometimes the answer
24:14
Speaker 1: is mine. My partner still cooks most nights. I still
24:17
Speaker 1: talk to the rescue dog like she's a co-worker with
24:19
Speaker 1: very questionable work ethic. She steals my socks every single morning.
24:22
Speaker 1: Same socks, different day. I have no idea where they go.
24:25
Speaker 1: The balcony plants are mostly surviving. Some things are not fixed.
24:28
Speaker 1: They are just seen. And seeing is not nothing, right?
24:31
Speaker 1: Seeing is actually where it starts. This past week, we
24:35
Speaker 1: watched a movie, my partner and I, an ordinary Wednesday,
24:38
Speaker 1: and my partner fell asleep 10 minutes in. Again, which
24:41
Speaker 1: is a whole thing. And I just sat there in
24:43
Speaker 1: the quiet and I did not pick up my phone
24:45
Speaker 1: to check on anyone. I did not text anyone with
24:47
Speaker 1: a problem I could help with. I just sat there
24:49
Speaker 1: in the dark with the movie going and the dog
24:51
Speaker 1: asleep and my partner asleep. And I was just there,
24:54
Speaker 1: just present, just existing without a purpose. It felt strange.
24:57
Speaker 1: Then it felt okay. That was new. I saved one
25:00
Speaker 1: other life in this apartment, by the way. The spider
25:02
Speaker 1: plant on the balcony. It is thriving. Big, full, a
25:05
Speaker 1: little dramatic about sunlight. Honestly, my spirit animal. That counts
25:08
Speaker 1: as a win. I'm taking it. Every time you find
25:12
Speaker 1: another person to rescue, you are making a choice. You're
25:15
Speaker 1: choosing the one who needs you over the life that
25:17
Speaker 1: could actually hold you. You're choosing to be essential over
25:19
Speaker 1: being known. And I get it. I really do. Because
25:22
Speaker 1: being essential feels like security and being known feels like risk.
25:26
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. The life that could hold you
25:28
Speaker 1: is already there. It's just waiting for you to stop
25:30
Speaker 1: managing long enough to fall into it. You're not going
25:33
Speaker 1: to get there by rescuing one more person. You're going
25:35
Speaker 1: to get there by saying the thing you've been postponing.
25:37
Speaker 1: It's not that you want to save him. It's that
25:39
Speaker 1: you're terrified to ask to be saved. Whatever you have
25:42
Speaker 1: been postponing asking for, ask this week. You do not
25:45
Speaker 1: have to earn it first. You don't have to be
25:47
Speaker 1: in crisis. You don't have to wait until you're completely empty.
25:50
Speaker 1: You can just say, I need this on an ordinary
25:52
Speaker 1: Wednesday with soup on the table and a dog at
25:54
Speaker 1: your feet and someone who actually wants to know how
25:56
Speaker 1: you are. No grand moment required. No sticky note necessary,
25:59
Speaker 1: though honestly, it does help. The question I want you
26:02
Speaker 1: to sit with, the one I keep coming back to myself,
26:04
Speaker 1: is this. When you imagine being truly rescued, held, not fixed,
26:08
Speaker 1: just held, what is it you'd finally be allowed to
26:11
Speaker 1: stop doing? Share that with someone you trust this week.
26:14
Speaker 1: Send this episode to the friend who is always the
26:15
Speaker 1: one doing the saving and has never once let anyone
26:18
Speaker 1: save her back. She knows who she is. You know
26:20
Speaker 1: who she is. Take care of yourself. I'll talk to
26:23
Speaker 1: you soon. This show is made by Able Media.