Based on the fact that he was a public figure and had planned a jam-packed few days of in-person social and professional meetings, she had assumed (without realizing it) that her friend had recently tested for the virus, although she hadn’t confirmed that assumption.

They met on a chilly evening in New York City.  Without thinking, Petra grabbed a table inside the restaurant.  Her friend showed up wearing a mask and they elbow bumped a warm hello.  But then, her friend took off his mask, claiming that it wasn’t required because they would be eating.  For a moment, Petra also took off her mask, and the two dove into conversation.

After a few minutes, however, Petra was overcome with fear.  It suddenly dawned on her that her friend had been on an airplane the previous day.  Her friend had also (nonchalantly) mentioned that the last time he’d been tested was more than two weeks before the trip to New York.  As he went on talking, Petra found herself feeling increasingly afraid, and simultaneously, utterly trapped.

Petra made the decision to put her mask back on.  But what she didn’t do, and was so angry at herself about, was ask her friend to put his own mask back on.  She felt paralyzed, as if she had to stay in the seat and also had to stay silent.  Why hadn’t she asked her friend to be safe?  This was the question we explored the morning after.

What became clear was that Petra felt guilty about asking him to put his mask back on.  To ask felt unkind, particularly given how much pain he was in, and how happy he seemed to take it off.  Asking would have been a “bother,” and she certainly didn’t want to be that.  So too, it would suggest that he might be infected, which would be insulting, and a way of saying she didn’t trust him.  As if that weren’t enough, being honest about her concern would have made her a “buzz-kill,” difficult,” and “neurotic.”  Clearly, in Petra’s mind, there were huge risks associated with taking care of herself.

Petra was aware of her fear, and even the legitimacy of her fear, but nonetheless, could not bring herself to voice it.  No matter how she tried to rationalize what was happening, she knew she was putting herself at risk.  Still, she sat there like a “good girl,” quietly and empathically listening to her friend, watching the saliva droplets fly from his mouth.  Despite her discomfort and dread, she was not willing to stop what was happening.  She was not willing to risk being unpleasing.  In the end, Petra chose to protect her friend’s experience over protecting her own.

It can feel so hard, particularly for women, to not be what we imagine other people want us to be, to let other people down.  To please or not to please can feel like a life or death choice, like emotional survival.

Most of us have lived something similar to Petra’s experience, and also the regret, confusion, and anger that result from it.  What’s important is that we remember (and continue reminding ourselves of) these experiences, and how we felt in their wake.  These experiences are fundamental to our growth; we cannot change if we don’t recognize and deeply respect the power of our conditioned need to be what we imagine others want us to be.  Petra may or may not end up with COVID, but either way, she put herself at increased risk for it because she couldn’t risk not being what her friend wanted her to be. The threat of not being pleasing proved stronger than that of getting a potentially deadly virus.  If we resist the impulse to criticize ourselves for our choice, and instead use such experiences as teachers, they can lead us to change—and serve as fundamental turning points in life.

The need to people-please is a complicated topic about which I will write more in future posts.  But for now, here’s what I suggest.  First, start by paying close attention to your own experience.  Awareness is key; without awareness, we will continue acting out our habitual people-pleasing patterns.  Notice where you’re straying from your truth, where you’re “behaving” and becoming who you think is wanted.  If we don’t become conscious of our unconscious efforts to be pleasing, we cannot change them.

Furthermore, when you notice that you’ve slipped into pleasing mode, consider the possibility of pleasing yourself too.  If it helps, you can close your eyes, so as not to see the person you think you’re disappointing.  Now, say the words that are true.  Imagine saying them to yourself, but say them out loud.  And remember, everything can be said nicely.  In our re-written script for Petra, she said, “Hey, you just got off an airplane, I’d be more comfortable if you wore a mask.”  The ask is simple, direct, and honest.  It doesn’t seek to explain her feelings. What’s most important in these moments is that we own our own experience, without blaming or defending, and without indulging the story we have going in our own mind.

While some of you may see Petra’s choice as incomprehensible, something you would never do, in reality, most of us fall prey to the habit of people-pleasing, at our own expense, in one way or another.  Let me be clear: Taking care of others is not a bad thing and we’re not bad for doing it.  But we run into trouble when taking care of others comes at the expense of taking care of ourselves.

Remember too, each time we people-please, we strengthen the belief that it’s not safe to be who we really are, and that the only way to be accepted is to become who someone else wants.  This keeps us stuck in the same habitual patterns.  And worse, it can keep us feeling fundamentally unloved, and un-lovable, believing that our lovable-ness depends upon our willingness and ability to please.

We don’t become people-pleasers overnight and we don’t recover overnight.  It’s a process.  We start with small steps, practicing in what feel like low-risk situations.  Maybe we tell the waitress, nicely, that this isn’t what we ordered, or let a friend know that we don’t really want to take a walk in the cold, even though she needs some exercise.  Through practice, we build the muscle for taking care of ourselves. And, each time we practice, it gets a little easier and the muscle gets a little stronger.

The more we learn to express our needs, the more we feel we deserve to express our needs.  Each time we choose to be real, rather than to be pleasing, we experience a feeling of strength, self-respect, and groundedness.  Furthermore, we end up building relationships that are correspondingly grounded and real, based in the truth, and therefore, trustworthy.  Precisely what we’re trying to create by pleasing.  Most importantly, we build a relationship with ourselves that is self-loving and unshakably on our own side.

The post Are You A People-Pleaser at Your Own Expense? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

One friend, whom I’ve known for many years, simply doesn’t participate in this customary behavior. These normal symbols of acknowledgment don’t happen and never have. When I share thoughts or experiences with this friend, I don’t receive any clear signal that he’s receiving them, much less absorbing my experience in any meaningful way. I assume that he’s hearing me, given that he’s in the room and not deaf, and also because he will often allude to what I’ve shared in a later conversation. But in the actual interaction, there’s nothing to affirm the fact that I’m being listened to. And often it feels as if I’m speaking to no one.

In a recent conversation with this friend, I noticed that I was growing anxious and even low-grade frantic. In the absence of any acknowledging words or gestures, in the silence, I felt increasingly untethered, and off-center. I was losing connection with my own experience. The words that were coming out of my mouth were still telling the story I wanted to tell, but the one saying them (me) had left the scene. I was disconnected from what was important to me about what I was sharing. Imperceptible though it may have been externally, internally I was on a feverish chase, fixated on eliciting a response from him, on getting him to hear me, validate my experience, and ultimately, show me that I existed.

Regardless of what you or I might think about my friend’s behavior, or my choice to be in a relationship with him, the experience points us toward a larger issue. If we stop and check in with ourselves, take note of our internal state while in conversation with friends and significant others, frequently we find a background feeling of anxiety, struggle, or effort. Without being aware of it, we’re trying to get something from our listener, to elicit a certain response, and ultimately, make something feel better in ourselves.

Often, we need something from our listener that we’re not even aware of needing. We’re trying to get the other person to make us feel heard, to give us the feeling that our experience is understood, that we are understood. We award the other person with the power to fulfill or deny us this primal craving, the most basic of all human longings. And because this longing to be heard is so deep and profound, so painful when it doesn’t happen, giving it away to our conversation partner creates a sense of stress and even desperation in us. Without knowing it, we render ourselves powerless in the fulfillment of one of our most basic needs.

Sometimes, in addition to trying to be heard, we’re struggling to get support or validation, to get the other person to make us feel okay about something we said or did, to confirm our rightness. Sometimes we’re trying to elicit a response that will assuage our guilt, shame, or fear, and quiet our own negative thoughts. At other times, we’re trying to get the other person to see us in a particular light, as smart, impressive, good, or any other positive identity; we’re trying to elicit a response that will make us feel like we’re enough.

No matter what we’re trying to get from the other person—and usually, it’s something—we suffer if we don’t get it.

Trying to elicit a response is a normal part of every human interaction. But at a subtle and not so subtle level, this often hidden intention creates a background feeling of stress and struggle.

In order to free ourselves from this way of relating, we need awareness.

First, we need to become aware of when we’re internally caught in an interaction and being driven by the need to get something from our listener. We need to be able to stop right there, in that moment of caught-ness, and pull the lens back. Then we can observe our own internal condition.

We need to become conscious of what’s really driving us, what response we’re trying to get, and most importantly, what such a response would satisfy or ease in us.

With awareness, we can step out of the struggle, step back from the relentless effort. We can turn our attention away from the other and toward our own longings. Then we can begin feeding ourselves in ways that we can control. The heavy lifting required to get someone else to give us what we need can then melt into a compassionate presence within ourselves.

In a recent conversation with my aforementioned, non-responsive friend, my body alerted me to the fact that I was in a state of intense anxiety and distress. I became aware that my shoulders were up by my ears and my breathing was rapid. My voice was growing louder and there was a boulder-like tightness in my chest. As soon as I became aware of these physical sensations, I stopped the chase, unhooked from the conversation, from the trying to get him to hear me, and took a slow conscious breath. I paused and turned my attention from outward to inward. I literally and figuratively gathered up all the energy I was launching outward, at my friend, and brought it back into myself. Through this process of awareness, I was once again at the center of my own universe. I had stopped orbiting around his planet and settled back home on my own.

I then continued to tell the same story, but instead of telling it to and at him, I told it to myself. I began, not just to speak, but also to listen to and receive my own words. Rather than sending my energy out into the ether, giving away my words, hoping to get some signal back from space that would prove I existed, I consciously became my own destination and mirror.

What’s most important is that we stay in touch with ourselves, stay internally conscious and connected when interacting with others. At any moment, we can check in with ourselves and notice our state of being. Are we feeling anxious or disconnected? Are we chasing after something, trying to elicit a certain response from the other? Are we blindly striving to get some need fulfilled?

Whatever we discover can then be an opportunity, not for criticism or judgment, but to know ourselves better, to uncover what’s driving us and what we really need and want.

Such an inquiry is an invitation not just to become more self-aware, but also more self-compassionate. Through this process, we acknowledge our own struggle and the suffering that comes when our own needs go unmet.

We self-inflict suffering when we abandon ourselves and award others with the power to fulfill or deprive us of our deepest needs. Here’s the good news: We can change the way we experience basic human interactions. Awareness is the door to freedom.

The post Are You Having a Conversation or Seeking Validation? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

She tried to let it go, not wanting to create a conflict and upset the “good stretch” they were in. She was worried about how her husband would react to her insecurity. But after a few days, her hurt feelings were still weighing on her mind and heart. Worse, they were turning into resentment—a narrative about her husband that started with “How could he? How dare he?” She knew she had to say something when she found herself obsessively ruminating and snapping at him over small things.

A few days later, she decided to “risk it” and be honest. Over a nice dinner, Jill shared her feelings, saying that while she trusted that he wouldn’t cheat, nonetheless his being holed up with this other woman all evening in the corner of the room made her feel afraid and hurt. Most of all, it triggered her fear of abandonment and inadequacy, her sense of being “not pretty enough, not young enough, not cool enough, not anything enough.” Jill’s own father had left the family when she was young, something her husband was aware of and of which she reminded him. She spoke openly about how his choice to spend the evening enjoying this other woman triggered her deepest insecurity.

Sadly, her husband’s reaction wasn’t the warm reassurance she had hoped for and needed. Rather than saying the loving words she craved—that he cherished her and would never leave her—he angrily questioned her use of the terms “holed up,” “in the corner of the room,” and “enjoying this other woman.” He rejected her description of his actions and accused her of calling him unfaithful and assuming the worst about him. When she defended herself, he told her that she was “nuts.” He said she was overly sensitive and had to get her jealousy under control. Moreover, he said that he was sick and tired of being monitored.

The conversation (which was never really a conversation) ended with his saying, “Nothing I do is ever enough for you,” and the couple retreated to their separate rooms.

Some version of this scenario plays itself out in every relationship I’ve ever seen or experienced: One partner shares his or her experience, longing to feel less alone in his or her pain, to be reassured and comforted, and to move the relationship into something more real and connected. But the result is a further wounding experience. He or she ends up feeling misunderstood, and more alone. The other partner’s anger and criticism then obstruct and add to the original pain.

These kinds of tragic “misses” happen in every relationship. We open a conversation with the desire to feel understood and known. But before we know what’s happened, we’re in a huge fight, tangled up in a lifetime of suffering. Instead of feeling more connected, and we feel profoundly cut off. Instead of feeling understood, we feel rejected. We started out feeling hurt and ended up accused of doing the hurting. We are miles from the empathic embrace we were craving.

Emotional safety is a universal human longing. We yearn for someone with whom we can be completely open; we want to express our real thoughts and feelings without being criticized or blamed. Deep down, we ache to be known.

As a therapist, I hear this same longing from people of every age group, race, gender, and socioeconomic background. The longing is to not have to twist our truth into a pretzel so as to make it palatable, to not have to silence our experience to maintain the relationship and the other person’s ego. We long to be heard without judgment. And yet, even as we are denied this kind of openness, we also have difficulty offering it to our partner.

The Persian poet Rumi wrote, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing, and right-doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” That’s it, exactly. And yet, despite our longing and effort, again and again we find ourselves in the loneliest of places, feeling unloved and unknown. Worse, we feel unknowable. We question whether there is anywhere we can be received wholly, without judgment, and without having to fight vigilantly to get there. What we know is that we’re failing to gain entry into that union we crave, where egos fall away and the love is big enough to hold all our separate stories.article continues after advertisement

We long for the kind of love that can include everything. And yet, we get caught again and again in our humanness. We want unconditional love, but seem relentlessly stuck in the conditional.

A part of this pain is simply failing to accept the basic reality of being a human being. As human beings, we are condemned to live in separate bodies and separate minds, which makes for different thoughts, feelings, and experiences. We live in different realities, with different relative truths. We expect something different, especially in our closest relationships. We expect our partners to have an expansive understanding and acceptance of us, and then we experience great suffering when that expectation isn’t fulfilled.

When we are truly open, we are often denied the understanding we need. Our truth ends up bumping into our partner’s ego, their protective armor. Our experience signals a threat to our partner. They, too, feel misunderstood, expecting us to also have an expansive understanding and acceptance. The result is that our experience sounds like an accusation because it doesn’t reflect what they expect us to already have understood. And so they respond with anger and defensiveness. We end up in a life-or-death battle with our partner’s “me,” their wounds and storylines. Simultaneously, we’re trapped inside the claustrophobic separateness of our own little “me.” 

It’s important to realize that all people suffer to some degree in this inevitable form of isolation; it’s a core aspect of the human experience and a consequence of the terrible inadequacy of words and gestures to convey who we truly are, even to those to whom we are closest.

When we share our experience, we are sending an invitation to our partner to meet us beyond the words, in that expansive field of truth. It’s an attempt to bridge the divide between two people. Our truth is a path out of the isolation we all face as separate human beings. We offer our truth to our partner in search of love.

This attempt is profound. Furthermore, the awareness of what’s really being attempted changes the experience itself. At the same time, there are certain things we can do, and ways we can communicate, that will improve our chances of receiving the kind of acceptance and love we crave.

The post Why It’s So Hard to Be (Fully) Honest With Your Partner appeared first on Nancy Colier.