Latest / The Karen Kenney Show / HOW TO STOP ABANDONING YOURSELF

Transcript

HOW TO STOP ABANDONING YOURSELF · The Karen Kenney Show

0:01
Karen Kenney: Hey, you guys. Welcome to the Karen Kenney
0:04
Show. I'm so excited to be here with you today. And let's start
0:08
off with a little question or two. So, let me ask you this:
0:14
Have you ever said yes to something when, like, everything
0:18
in your body was going like, no, no, I don't really want to do
0:23
this, but out of guilt or shame or whatever weirdness is going
0:27
on inside of you, you say yes and you do the thing, okay? Or
0:31
how about, do you ever like suck it up and stuff it down like all
0:34
your feelings in order to keep the peace or not make other
0:36
people uncomfortable or to not seem like odd man out or
0:40
whatever, or do you ever just like continuously go above and
0:47
beyond, and you circus delay yourself into every kind of
0:50
position? You contort yourself, you show up for things, you do
0:54
everything for everybody else, you don't say no, you like
0:58
basically exhaust yourself in service to other people, but you
1:03
don't make your own needs a priority, because if that's the
1:07
case, you might be caught up in this self-abandoning kind of
1:12
behaviors, and I am no stranger to this myself, and I wanted to
1:17
talk to you about this, first of all, because I just think it's
1:20
important, and I think these kinds of behaviors, and I say
1:22
this kind of jokingly, but also I think there's an underlying
1:26
thing to this. This is the kind of shit that leads us to an
1:28
early grave, right? This is the kind of stuff that puts so much
1:32
stress on ourselves when we self-abandon, and we're going to
1:36
talk about this today, because of a couple of things that
1:38
happen. You know me, I love to do a little story time, story
1:41
time. So, two things happened that led me to wanting to talk
1:47
about this today, and the first thing that happened is I saw a
1:52
little story online, so I'm kind of fascinated, and I don't know
1:56
if it's because my mother was adopted as a baby, and she never
2:00
knew her mother. She never knew who her father was. She, you
2:04
know, she - her whole quote unquote, I would say, real
2:07
family. And we can, we can argue about blood relatives versus
2:10
whatever, but I mean her biological family - she didn't
2:13
know them, and this is always kind of struck me, in for
2:18
several different reasons, in several different ways. Is it
2:20
left a little ache in my heart for my mom, and I know on some
2:24
level it, it, it was distressing or bothered her too. We can get
2:29
into that another time, but just for the, for the point, I think
2:32
there's a tender, a tender spot in my heart for that. So I love
2:38
these shows when I see people getting reunited with their
2:41
family members, especially when they wanted to find each other,
2:46
right? Not like when it's awkward or weird, and then it's
2:48
like, but when people genuinely wanted to find their birth
2:52
parents or their siblings. I love that. So, it was a short
2:54
little clip, it was like three minutes long, and I saw this
2:58
story of a guy, and he's talking to the woman who runs the show,
3:01
who like finds the people and helps people reconnect, and this
3:05
one guy starts to find out that his mother is dead, that his
3:10
father is dead, but he comes to find out he has four biological
3:15
siblings that he didn't know anything about, and I assume
3:19
that he was like the first born. I'm like, okay, he must have
3:23
been the oldest, and maybe the mother or whoever gave him up
3:26
for adoption or sent him away, or whatever the thing was,
3:29
because I didn't have all the details yet. But come to find
3:32
out, here's the bottom line of this story. So, not only does
3:36
this guy find out that he had four siblings, but he finds out
3:40
that he had an older brother, and they're all biological, they
3:44
all have the same parents, so just think about what a trip
3:47
this is. So he finds out that is he has an older brother who's 10
3:51
years older than him. So apparently the mother and the
3:55
father had one kid and decided to keep this child, but then he
3:58
was the second born and he was given up.
4:02
Okay, so this is all we know at this point. He's given up, and
4:07
then he comes to find out he has two younger sisters. So, imagine
4:11
being this guy and finding out, okay, well, they chose to keep
4:14
my older brother. They went on to have two youngest siblings.
4:18
Why did they like get rid of me, and so you're watching this
4:22
story, and you find out from the host that his siblings want to
4:26
meet up with him, they want to get to know him, he's overcome
4:29
with emotion, the whole thing, like, I cry every time I watch
4:32
these things, he's like balling, right, oh my god, crying over
4:35
strangers, but that's my daily existence, so he ends up meeting
4:40
with the siblings, and it comes to find out, and I'm sure he had
4:45
so many questions about, like, why me, and there's a whole
4:49
story as to why, right? The father was in the army, and he
4:53
was gone a lot, but I guess the mother hid her pregnancy with
4:58
him, so the older brother. Never even knew that the mother was
5:01
pregnant, and supposedly, as the story goes, is she had the baby
5:06
in a public restroom somewhere, and then she took him and she
5:10
dropped him off. I don't know if it was at a fire station, but at
5:13
a public place. So he is what you considered being a
5:18
foundling. You are a baby that is given up anonymously. Nobody
5:23
knows who your parents are, and he was taken in by whoever,
5:28
like, ended up finding him or taking him into the fight of
5:31
whatever it was. So, when he's meeting with the siblings, and
5:36
the older brother says, I feel so guilty because I didn't know,
5:39
and I'm thinking, oh man, you were 10 years old, man. Your
5:41
mother could have just worn big dresses or hit her belly, or
5:44
what? Do you know? You know, and so this woman delivered this
5:47
baby, unbeknownst. And then the two young assemblings, the two
5:51
daughters, two young, you know, his sisters didn't know about
5:53
him. But when they're all talking about him, the older
5:55
brother says, "I feel really guilty. And one of the youngest
5:58
sisters just starts to cry, and she says, and when I found out
6:01
that you were a foundling, she's like, it just broke my heart,
6:05
and she started to cry, and I just kept thinking about this
6:10
idea of being a foundling. There's something that is.. I
6:13
don't know, maybe I'll write a story about it someday, but it
6:15
just really moved me, this concept of being a foundling,
6:19
and that made me think, and we're going to talk about
6:21
abandoning ourselves, but I want to set this up as to why it's on
6:24
my heart and my mind. So the very same day, and this is how
6:28
it works, right? My spiritual team always has, I always say
6:31
they have a wicked funny sense of humor. So the same day, my
6:34
sister sends me a video in, like, on Facebook in private
6:38
messages, and all she writes is maybe you are related to him
6:42
with a question mark, and I'm like, oh my god, I already
6:45
probably don't know where this is going, but the fact that she
6:48
sends me this video on the same day that I'm crying about this
6:51
guy being a foundling makes me laugh. So, in this video,
6:54
there's two - I wrote down the dialog back and forth between
6:57
these two younger brothers, so it's an older brother, I'd say
7:00
he's probably about 12, and a younger brother, I'd say he's
7:03
probably about like nine or 10 or something, and the older
7:06
brother's in the front seat, and he's looking back at the younger
7:09
brother, and the older brother says, We found you in a garbage
7:15
can, and whether you're an old assembly or a young assembly,
7:20
you might be able to relate to this, but in this scenario, I am
7:22
the youngest sibling, right? So he says, "We found you in a
7:25
garbage can, like dead serious. And the little boy in the back
7:28
seat goes, "I wasn't found in a garbage can. And then the boy in
7:33
the front seat says, "But you was adopted, and that's why you
7:37
don't look like none of us.
7:40
He says, "Somebody just left you on the front porch, and Mama
7:44
just took you in, and the little kid in the back seat goes, and
7:47
he goes, all right, just go ask, right? This is what the older
7:51
brother says, and I was just like, I was cracking up
7:53
laughing, although it wasn't that funny to me when I was a
7:56
kid, but when I was a little kid, my sister used to say to me
8:00
that I was found on the side of the road, that I was adopted,
8:05
that my mother found me on the side of the road, and they felt
8:08
bad for me, so they took me in. Then she would tell me that the
8:12
police were my real parents, that I didn't belong to this
8:15
family. The police were my parents, and they reached out to
8:18
my mother, and she felt bad for me, so she took me in, and while
8:22
you're denying it as a little, little kid, some part of you is
8:25
also like thinking, like, but is it true, it can't be true,
8:28
right? And the funny thing is, is that I have a biological
8:32
sister, my sister Kim, we have the same parents, but then I
8:35
have two half brothers, and we all have the same father, but we
8:39
have different mothers, right, except for my sister Kim and I,
8:42
we have the same exact parents, but BJ and Chris, they have the
8:47
same dad as me, but they have different mothers, right? And my
8:50
sister Chris, so it's like Kim, Chris, and BJ, they all have
8:54
what we jokingly say is like these pumpkin heads, they have
8:56
bigger heads, they have rounder heads than I do, and I have this
9:00
picture one time, of the four of us together, we were out
9:04
watching my sweetie play. This was years and years and years
9:06
ago, because my brother BJ lives in Illinois, and I like never
9:09
see him, so he was up visiting, or whatever, and we're all out
9:12
at this bar, like watching my sweetie gig, and there's a
9:15
picture of the three of us, and literally, when you see this
9:18
picture, you can just start singing that song from like
9:21
Sesame Street or Electric Company, it's just like one of
9:23
these things just doesn't belong here. One of these things just
9:30
doesn't belong. Yeah, it's me. I look different than them because
9:34
I have a lot of my mother's DNA, right? Like the adopted side of
9:38
the family DNA. It's this whole funny thing, so I start to think
9:42
about this, though, about how you know my sister told me this
9:48
story of me being abandoned as a child. I wasn't wanted by my
9:52
original family, but that I was taken in out of sympathy, or
9:55
whatever, but this idea of abandonment, of being a
9:58
foundling, like this. Stayed with me like throughout my whole
10:02
lifetime, and there have been so many times where I didn't feel
10:05
like I belonged or I didn't feel like I fit in, and that's a
10:08
story for another day, but I want to come back to this
10:10
concept of abandoning, because I think so many of us walk around
10:15
with like this wound of feeling abandoned, and whether it's
10:18
because your parents got divorced when you were a kid, or
10:22
you were adopted, or you were in the foster care system, like
10:25
literally abandoned, right, physically abandoned, or
10:29
emotionally abandoned, like your parents were not emotionally
10:32
intelligent, and they didn't know how to hold you tenderly,
10:36
they didn't know how to be compassionate, they didn't know
10:38
how to see you, and really care for you, and love you in the way
10:41
that you need it. There are ways that we are physically
10:44
abandoned, emotionally abandoned, mentally abandoned,
10:47
all of these things often because our earliest caregivers
10:50
and caretakers did not know how to love us and care for us and
10:55
nurture us and nourish us, but there's also a point where it
10:59
comes where we stop feeling right, it's not so much as
11:04
important about what the other people did growing up. It's
11:09
about the patterns that we keep perpetuating to ourselves as
11:14
adults, and I know when we think about this concept of
11:18
self-abandonment, it's like, well, what do you mean, K.K.
11:20
like I am with myself all the time, like, how can I abandon
11:25
myself? Like, I don't really get it.
11:28
But the thing is, is that when we start to do things, let me
11:32
give you an example. I'm going to give you a bunch of examples
11:35
of how we don't trust ourselves, but one of the biggest ones is
11:39
when we diminish or discount our own feelings because we think
11:44
they don't really matter, because that's kind of the
11:46
conditioning that we came up with, right. We especially, I
11:50
always say, like little mass hole kids, we like learn to suck
11:52
it up and stuff it down, right? What we wanted, what we felt,
11:56
our tender feelings, those those parts of us that were sensitive
12:01
in, you know, tender, and needed more mercy and compassion. They
12:05
were not nurtured and nourished, right? It was like, suck it up,
12:08
stuff it down, this is just how it is. I'll give you something
12:11
to cry about, stop your belly ache, and all that stuff, right?
12:14
Weren't allowed to feel our feelings. They were not welcome.
12:17
Nobody was asking us to sit down and express ourselves until,
12:20
tell them how what we thought and what we felt, right, like
12:23
that was not a big thing growing up, right, my generation, Gen X,
12:27
but also just in certain cultures, right, in Lawrence,
12:30
Mass, or Boston, wherever you grew up, right, I know a lot of
12:34
East Coast kids have had this experience, especially Northeast
12:37
Coast kids, you know, and I think about that song by Noah
12:40
Kahn, where he says, you know, like, please forgive me, I was
12:45
born in little light, or with little light, right? And I think
12:47
about that, it's like, yeah, that northeastern kind of
12:50
coldness and toughness, there's a beauty to it, don't get me
12:54
wrong, there's a beauty to our resilience and our strength and
12:57
our fortitude, our loyalty, these things, they were forged,
13:01
right, but there's also something where the sensitivity
13:05
gets lost, and we get lost to ourselves and our own needs. We
13:10
start to abandon them. So, here's some concepts, right. We
13:14
can abandon ourselves when we don't value ourselves. We can
13:18
abandon ourselves when we don't know how to comfort ourselves,
13:23
to support ourselves, to encourage ourselves. We can
13:26
abandon ourselves when we make choices that aren't actually in
13:30
our own best interest, because we become people pleasers,
13:34
because we want to serve other people, because other people's
13:37
needs have become more important than our own. So, here are some
13:40
examples. I have a list here, because I wanted to make sure I
13:43
like to make notes, just, you know, sometimes, so I can be
13:46
effective here, because I never, ever, ever want to waste your
13:49
time, and if you're listening to this, I want it to be helpful in
13:51
some way. Okay, when you don't speak up for yourself, when you
13:56
don't take a stand for yourself, when somebody is like saying
13:59
things about you that aren't true when somebody's being kind,
14:01
when somebody is, you know, just not making your needs a priority
14:07
at all in a relationship. So, when you don't ask for what you
14:09
need, when you let other people take advantage of you and your
14:14
kindness or your capacity, right? Like, some of us are able
14:17
to work long and hard hours, and so people will kind of just
14:21
start to go like, oh, she'll do it, she doesn't mind, or they'll
14:24
take care of it, because they always do it, because a pattern
14:27
has been established, right. So, when we let other people take
14:29
advantage of us, when we don't enforce healthy boundaries, good
14:34
boundaries, learning to say no, when we don't ask for what we
14:37
need, that not speaking up for ourselves is one of the ways
14:41
that we can abandon ourselves when we suppress our own
14:44
feelings, when we like suck it up and stuff it down, when we
14:48
don't allow ourselves to feel the uncomfortable feelings, or
14:51
the ones that we label bad, like anger or rage, or whatever. I
14:56
never want you to be inflicting that stuff on other people,
14:59
right, but to. Able to have a safe place to express our
15:02
feelings when we push them away, and we don't allow ourselves,
15:06
when we deny ourselves to, as I say, taste the rainbow of your
15:09
full emotional experience, right?
15:12
When we, you know, start to do like the drinking and the
15:16
drugging at extreme levels and stuff like that, when we start
15:19
to alter our mood out officially, because we don't
15:22
know how to express ourselves or take care of ourselves. When we
15:25
avoid feeling big feelings, all of these things are ways that we
15:29
can abandon ourselves when we don't acknowledge that our needs
15:33
matter too. Now I'm not saying you have to put yourself first
15:37
all the time. There are just times in relationships where
15:39
it's a give and take, but when you don't recognize that your
15:43
needs matter, that they're valid, that you're allowed to
15:46
have them. When you don't take good care of yourself, when
15:49
you're constantly maybe feeling not just that like you don't
15:54
deserve it, that you don't feel like you are worthy of self care
15:59
and caring for yourself and putting your needs first. These
16:02
are all signs, sometimes, of like maybe abandoning ourselves
16:07
when we do things. So, in the nest, we were just talking about
16:10
the big three, our core values, and how important our values are
16:15
when we find ourselves start to agreeing to things or doing
16:18
things that are not in alignment with our own values, when we do
16:23
things to please other people, but end up kind of injuring
16:26
ourselves. If it's going against your true beliefs and the things
16:30
that matter to you, that's a form of self abandonment. The
16:35
people pleasing we know about, right? That's when we just,
16:37
like, we're always trying to, like, seek validation outside of
16:42
ourselves, and we want to be good, and we want the reward of
16:45
them, like giving us attention, or whatever. It's like you, when
16:48
you, when you give up your own self interest, like to please
16:53
other people, that's a red flag. We want to look at that.
16:57
Sometimes perfectionism is a way that we abandon ourselves,
17:00
because we don't allow ourselves to be human, we don't allow
17:04
ourselves to have to have flaws, or we don't allow ourselves to
17:09
sometimes have character defects, and when we have those
17:11
character defects, of course, we want to work on them and stuff,
17:14
but you do not have to be perfect, it's not realistic, and
17:17
it sucks the joy out of life, and if we don't allow ourselves
17:22
to feel worthy, unless we're accomplishing certain things,
17:25
right, that can be a way of self-abandoning,
17:28
self-abandoning. When you put, I did an episode one time called A
17:33
You, a high ba jumper, where you don't ever let yourself see
17:39
yourself for what you've actually already done or
17:41
accomplished, when you set these really high expectations for
17:46
yourself, where you can never actually meet your own level of
17:49
expectation, so that's kind of that's not soothing, when you're
17:52
a wicked hat on yourselves, when you're wicked self-critical,
17:56
when you're highly over, like, judgmental, when you tear
17:59
yourself down, when you say what's self-deprecating things
18:05
to yourself constantly, like as a joke. When you say mean things
18:08
to yourself, when you don't ever just acknowledge yourself and
18:12
love yourself, and you abandon parts of yourself, right? Like,
18:15
we have these younger parts of ourselves that just want to know
18:18
that we made it, that we're now in our 30s, 40s, 50s. We
18:22
survived it. We're doing well. We have friends, we have people
18:25
who love us. We have these younger parts of ourselves that
18:27
have been burdened, they've been exiled. Right, it's just like
18:31
you are not allowed to show up here, you and your old stories,
18:34
and your pain, and your trauma, and your suffering. We just like
18:37
stuff it down into this corner until some illness, some
18:41
therapy, or some coaching, or mentoring, right? Like, happens
18:44
where we're allowed to let those exiled parts of ourselves have a
18:47
voice, but up until that, we can really self-abandon a lot of
18:51
different parts of ourselves, and we don't trust ourselves.
18:55
That's another form of self-abandonment, when we
18:57
overthink and we second guess everything, and we ruminate, and
19:01
we let other people tell us how we should live our lives, and we
19:05
ask them to make the decisions for us, because we don't trust
19:08
ourselves when we give away our own power, and when we assume
19:13
other people, everybody from your friends, your siblings,
19:16
your parents, doctors, whoever, right men, people outside of
19:20
you, you give them the authority, and you think that
19:23
they know what's better for you than you do. That's a way that
19:25
we self-abandon our own brilliance and our own
19:28
intuition, and stuff like that. And, like, sometimes we can hide
19:31
parts of ourselves. We start to feel like this is why I always
19:34
say, in the nest, like, all parts of you are welcome here.
19:37
You don't have to show up perfect. You don't have to show
19:40
up as a know-it-all. You don't have to show up like not having
19:42
any history or flaws. It's like all of your parts are welcome,
19:46
right? And when we feel like that's not true, we will hide
19:51
aspects of ourselves, and a lot of times, you know, I just want
19:54
you to hear this. Even though, as adults, we might still be
19:57
grappling with this, a lot of this behavior stuff. In
20:00
childhood, it starts when our parents, again, they didn't meet
20:03
our emotional needs, our mental needs, our physical needs. We
20:07
felt abandoned, and we learned, we learned at a young age that
20:12
we didn't feel worthy, we didn't feel lovable. And so then our
20:16
actions over time start to be a representation of the beliefs
20:20
that we have, and this is how we kind of create identity and all
20:22
this other stuff, because we tend to repeat the things that
20:26
we learned in childhood. This is why I often say that, as a
20:30
mentor and a coach, like, yeah, I work with adults, but really
20:33
I'm just working with little kids in adult bodies, because
20:36
we're just basically repeatedly repeating the patterns, and
20:40
sometimes those patterns turn out to be the relationships that
20:43
we also choose, right, because they're mimicking like what we
20:47
knew when we were little kids, and as we get older, it's like
20:50
we start to just do the things that other people did to us, but
20:54
we just start doing it to ourselves, we take on that role,
20:57
and it's a learned behavior, and this is wicked good news,
21:00
because anything that we learn we can also unlearn, because the
21:04
brain has neuroplasticity, and we can put like new neural
21:08
networks in place through repetition, through kindness,
21:11
and compassion repeatedly over time, right? So all those times
21:16
when we like make fun of ourselves, or ridicule, ridicule
21:20
ourselves, or put ourselves down, or we become chameleons. I
21:24
was a fantastic chameleon when I was younger. I could, like,
21:27
again start to slay myself into whatever I needed to be in
21:31
whatever situation, and I'm not saying that that sometimes isn't
21:35
a skill set that is beneficial, right? But we don't want to
21:38
abandon the truth of who we really are, and I'll often say,
21:43
what you see is what you get with me. You might see me on
21:46
stage, that's still me, or you might see me on a podcast, or
21:50
doing something. I'm like, that's still me. It's just my
21:52
personality is dialed up a little bit louder, or bigger, or
21:56
whatever, but the core of it is still me. I'm not interested in
22:00
circus laying myself or being a chameleon anymore. I like, I
22:03
know that there are times, like I talk about it, like with
22:06
swearing a lot, right? Like, I'm not gonna probably get in front
22:09
of your grandma and start dropping F bombs all the time,
22:11
you know? I try to be respectful, I'm not an idiot,
22:14
hashtag evolved mass hole, but if I'm just with like people in
22:18
my PS, I'm gonna be who I am. Do you know what I mean?
22:21
I try to like hashtag read the room, you know what I mean, but
22:24
we want to break out these out of these ideas that we aren't
22:27
deserving of love and compassion, because it can be
22:31
self-destructive, and it can contribute to all kinds of
22:34
things, like low self-esteem, right, not feeling like we're
22:38
enough, for some people it can, it can cause, or it contribute,
22:42
that's a better way to say, contribute to anxiety or
22:45
depression, or being choosing partners, or friendships, or
22:49
relationships, or jobs, or gigs that are just not in alignment,
22:53
and so it's not helpful to do the self-abandoning thing
22:57
anymore. So we're going to talk about, let's talk about some of
22:59
the ways that we can stop doing this, and I'm going to make
23:02
these pretty brief, right, but we start by starting to have a
23:07
better relationship with ourselves. And when I think
23:09
about what a relationship really needs, it needs trust, right? It
23:13
needs trust, it needs love, it needs compassion and kindness.
23:17
There needs to be room to grow, there needs to be room to make
23:20
mistakes, right, all the things that we might naturally extend
23:24
to other people, the freedom to express yourself, the freedom to
23:26
be who you are. You know, you got to start showing up for
23:29
yourself, and it's like, how do I do that? Like, one day at a
23:33
time, man, like, pick one thing, it might be you start to pay
23:37
attention to how you talk to yourself, and you're like, "Wow,
23:39
I'm really hashed towards myself, I don't want to do that
23:41
anymore, right? So you catch yourself, you allow yourself to
23:45
have feelings, and you allow yourself to have needs. It's not
23:48
selfish, it's not selfish for you to have feelings and needs.
23:51
It doesn't mean the whole world has to stop and fulfill those
23:55
needs, that they now become like, oh, well, let me, let me
23:58
wait on you hand and foot, right? No, it's like everything
24:01
with balance, everything with reason, like you know, be I'm
24:04
like be a reasonable adult and think about this, but you want
24:07
to listen to your feelings, you want to acknowledge that you
24:09
have them, then you want to try to meet them in a healthier and
24:12
happier way. All right, so just identify your feelings when
24:16
they're happening throughout the day. Oh, I noticed that I'm
24:18
feeling sad, I'm feeling excited, I'm feeling anxious. I
24:21
like anxious is visiting me, as I like to say sometimes. Right?
24:27
Treat yourself with compassion. Oh my god, please don't be so
24:31
hot on yourself. Everybody, everybody deserves to be seen
24:35
and heard, to be met with great care, to be met with, you know,
24:40
comfort when they're suffering. Just be kind to yourself, do
24:43
your best to do that. Don't judge or criticize yourself so
24:46
much. I wrote these down for myself. We weren't taught a lot
24:50
of times self-compassion. We were taught compassion for other
24:53
people, we were sometimes taught compassion for animals, but we
24:57
aren't, weren't a lot of times taught compassion towards
24:59
ourselves. Of except if you watched mr. Rogers and if you
25:03
watched Bob Ross, some of my heroes. So, here's the thing: we
25:08
want to, we want to be kind to ourselves and allow yourself to
25:11
be who you are, flaws and all, as they say, warts and all. You
25:15
get to be a full picture of a person, not like your mistakes
25:19
are not the total sum of you, so you get to be flawed, you get to
25:23
make mistakes, you get to make amends, you get to apologize,
25:26
you get to grow, and you get to be better, right? But don't be
25:29
beating yourself up all the time, okay? It's really
25:32
important. So, here's the thing: we got to be paying attention,
25:36
notice when we're struggling, notice when we need help, notice
25:40
our feelings, notice our bodily sensations. We got to stop
25:43
numbing things out and sucking them up and stuffing them down,
25:46
right? So start to notice these things. Be kind to yourself.
25:49
Recognize that everybody suffers, and you're one of them,
25:53
right? So you get to be kind and extend the compassion that you
25:56
would naturally extend towards others, also towards yourself.
26:00
Okay, learning how to have more self love and self trust.
26:04
Here's one of the big ones: having healthy boundaries, not
26:07
saying yes when you mean no, not doing things out of guilt and
26:11
shame and blame, doing them because you really want to do
26:13
them. So, not showing up out of resentment. You're going to get
26:16
there, you're going to do the thing you didn't want to do, and
26:18
then you're going to resent it, and then you're going to be
26:20
like, I abandon my own self, I abandon my own needs once again,
26:24
and I know we can be afraid, especially if you've been a
26:26
people pleaser for a wicked long time. We can be afraid to say no
26:30
to people or to offend them, or we're afraid, like, oh my god,
26:34
if why, if I do this, they're not going to love me anymore. So
26:37
we become a little doormatty, we kind of let people like walk all
26:42
over you a little bit. We don't want to do that. Other people's
26:45
needs matter too, but they don't have to be more important than
26:49
yours. We get to consider all paths. We get to say, like,
26:53
yeah, I'm willing to do this, but not on Wednesday. I'm able
26:56
to do it on Thursday. You don't have to keep abandoning yourself
27:00
to make other people happy, and if other people are going to
27:04
leave you or dump you or not want to be friends with you,
27:07
because you put some healthy boundaries in place, that's a
27:10
really good red flag, because you start to realize, oh, it was
27:13
only a good relationship for them when I kowtowed and did
27:16
everything for them and allowed them to take advantage of me,
27:19
and usually when you put a boundary in place with a person
27:22
who has been benefiting from your lack of boundaries, they
27:28
will not like it, and they'll be like, "You've changed your
27:32
moment. Yep, I have changed, because I'm having more
27:34
self-love and self-trust, and showing up for yourself,
27:38
prioritizing your needs, not saying you just, you know, make
27:43
yourself number one and become incredibly selfish and arrogant
27:45
and all that. I'm not saying that balance people, nuance,
27:49
nuance, here, you know what I mean. Use your smarty pants
27:52
brain, right? But can you comfort yourself? Can you take
27:55
good care of yourself? Can you stop abandoning those younger
27:58
parts of yourself, those parts that you've exiled, and give
28:01
them a voice, and give them a good listen. These are all of
28:04
the little ways that we can stop abandoning ourselves. We don't
28:09
want to pick up where people earlier in our life, like, left
28:13
off, right? And maybe you had, you know, your family again,
28:17
your father didn't show up when he was supposed to pick you up
28:20
for visitations when you're in a two, you know, divorced family,
28:23
or whatever. Maybe people let you down, maybe you again. We
28:27
get conditioned at a young age, but this is such an important
28:31
thing. I've always kind of loved this little quote: become the
28:34
adult that you needed when you were a child, and self-parent.
28:38
This is about re-parenting yourself and really learning
28:42
that you matter, what you feel matters, what you think matters,
28:45
your experience matters, and we want to stop abandoning
28:48
ourselves. You, like I always say, like foundlings, like let's
28:52
refined ourselves and let's take extra good care of ourselves,
28:56
going back to the beginning, right? I have a soft spot in my
28:59
heart for foundlings who, you know, get, get, get, get found.
29:04
First of all, and then are taking good care and go on to
29:07
lead beautiful lives. So, it's not too late for us. I always
29:09
say, if I'm above ground and I'm still conscious and I'm still
29:12
breathing, there's an opportunity for me to grow and
29:15
change and get better at loving myself and loving others and
29:18
loving the animals and stuff. So, don't give up on us yet,
29:22
guys. We're still in the fight, we're still in the race. So I
29:26
hope this was helpful to you in some way. I hope you have a
29:28
fantastic rest of your day. Thank you for listening. And you
29:31
guys, I have so many cool things going on right now. I'm doing a
29:35
three part series of it's called Podcast Summer School. I'm doing
29:40
it with Emily Aborn. It's happening in Concord at the 11th
29:43
letter. We're doing a workshop in June, July, and August, all
29:46
about starting a podcast.
29:48
And then the next one is about growing your podcast, and the
29:50
next one is about, do you want to be a better podcast guest and
29:53
host? I'm wicked excited. And, of course, we have Right Club
29:57
coming back also in June. It's Saturday. June, I think it's the
30:00
27th from one to 4pm That's also happening at the 11th Letter
30:05
Writing Gallery in Conchid. But if you want to find out about
30:08
all these things and get the podcast sent to you directly
30:11
into your inbox every Thursday morning, then you just go online
30:15
to Karen kenney.com/sign up one word, and you can get on my list
30:19
and find out when all the shenanigans are happening. All
30:23
the events you can find pretty much online, the Pad Podcast
30:27
Summer Series. If you want that direct link to sign up, just
30:30
shoot me an email or go to the contact page on my website,
30:33
Karen kenney.com/contact You'll find it all. I'm really easy to
30:38
find. Shoot me a message, send me a DM online, and I will get
30:42
you the link or links, all right. Thank you so much for
30:44
tuning in. Wherever you go, may you leave the animals and
30:50
yourself and the people around you and the planet and the
30:52
environment better than how you found it. Wherever you go, may
30:56
your energy, your love, your presence, and your good care
30:59
towards yourself. You're no longer abandoning yourself. That
31:03
energy you show up with when you are acting in that way, in a
31:06
loving way, towards yourself. May all of that be a blessing.
31:11
Bye bye.