Do you need help finding a way to balance your important relationships and self care needs?
Are you so focused on helping everyone else that you don’t have time for yourself?
Do you have trouble asking for help?
Is it hard to set boundaries on your time and energy?
Do you ignore your own needs in order to avoid confrontation?
People may rely on you for all kinds of support and as a people-pleaser, you might be someone who is happy to help. But perhaps you have found you’re no longer able to say no, set limits, or find time for yourself. The stress of your responsibilities at work, home, and in your various relationships might be piling up which, I can imagine, makes you feel overwhelmed and tense. I’m guessing you haven’t stopped to think about what you need in a long time?
Do you want to learn how to become more assertive and take better care of yourself while still maintaining close connections to the people you care about?
As human beings, we are naturally social creatures and we crave connection.
How do we do this while still maintaining a healthy dose of independence?
When you hear other people’s pain, you often have a desire to help. Your high degree of empathy is a gift that has built you a wealth of close connections and relationships. People often feel understood and cared for by you. It’s probably not a coincidence that your social calendar is often booked with social and family obligations. On your best days, you are buzzing from one engagement to another and feeling good about the connections you’ve maintained.
You love to be needed and to be of service to your close friends and family.
Being a nurturing person who may strive to be the best in your multiple roles - as an employee, a spouse, a friend, a parent - this can start to become a central part of your identity. You may begin to identify closely with being the most reliable, the most understanding, the most generous person. It’s not a bad title to have, honestly.
But what happens when you’re in need of some R&R or if you’re struggling to catch a breath of fresh air?
The thought of sharing how you may be struggling or have something on your mind may feel uncomfortable or downright wrong. The need to please and make others happy can override your ability to ask for the space, support, and time you need.
Do you often find yourself prefacing a need or want with the phrase: “Is it selfish of me if…?” or “Is it wrong of me to...?” For example, after a long week you might secretly crave a night in by yourself to enjoy a glass of wine and watch Netflix shows, but you’re supposed to go to your friend’s birthday party? Having these types of desire for some you-time and other forms of self care may trigger a sense of guilt and a feeling that you’re a bad person.
Let me momentarily be the bearer of bad news: There is a downside to being the go-to person for everyone.
For a while, you can feel like you’re running on all cylinders checking off your to-do lists for your home, work, and social life. But you might also be familiar with that sense of fatigue, the subtle signs that you need to pause and cut back on some of the things you’re tasking yourself with on a day to day basis. How about those occasions that you’ve overcommitted yourself, overworked yourself, and been left feeling overwhelmed? Next thing you know, you haven’t been to the gym in three months, more often than not you’re cramming some sort of food product into your mouth when you find a minute, and you’re running on less than 5 hours of sleep. When your own physical and emotional needs go unmet for long stretches of time, this can jeopardize your ability to be that good friend, parent, spouse, or employee.
Asking for some help might not sound so bad at this point does it?
Fortunately, you can learn how to create healthy boundaries on your time and energy that are still in line with your values and desire to stay connected to meaningful relationships. It is possible to focus on yourself and your relationships in a deliberate and mindful manner.
In therapy, I will help you explore ways of re-wiring the habits you have towards spreading yourself thin for everyone else. We will work on how to communicate your needs to others in ways that are both kind and compassionate yet clear and assertive.
First learn how to take care of yourself and you will grow stronger relationships.
Trusting that “self care isn’t selfish” can feel hard. For those who are prone to identifying as caregivers and people-pleasers, self-care can seem mutually exclusive from other-care, the act of being there for others. However, this is simply not the case. In fact, by identifying your own needs and attending to them, you may find that you have more energy and more wherewithal to show up in your relationships. Funny how that works, right?
Together we will explore some of the messages that may get in the way of you letting go of old fears and habits of people-pleasing.
As a psychologist and someone raised within an immigrant family, I understand the importance of family values and cultural beliefs that motivate your strong need to put others first. For example, some of us have been taught that putting the needs of our family and community first goes above all else, including yourself. You don’t have to look far back into your family to see models of sacrifice and dedication to others’ needs.
I do not believe in debunking these values in the service of promoting the message, “Screw them! It’s all about YOU!”. Instead, I strive to honor these family and cultural values while we work towards forming new habits and communication skills that will help you speak up for your needs in a way that feels true to you.
This isn’t easy work because just like any habit, even caregiving is in itself sort of like a series of habits and they’re hard to change. Rather than thinking of breaking habits, let’s consider this a form of course-correcting and adding some new tools to your “Relationship Toolbox”.
Sometimes it takes an outside person who isn’t a family, friend, or co-worker to help you step back from the “should” messages that have kept you from speaking up and trying something new in your life and I can be that person for you.
Effective Communication
Not all communication is equal.
The weight of what we say and how we say them can make or break the outcome, whether that’s how it is received by someone else, whether someone will listen to us, and how someone responds back to us. When it comes to asking for what you want or need, there are both ineffective and effective ways of doing so.
Imagine the difference between saying “Why can’t you just give me some space for once?!” to your spouse versus “I need 15 minutes to myself and then I’ll be able to attend to you.” Which do you think your spouse will respond better to?
In therapy, we will work on tweaking the way you share your feelings and needs so that you can get the most out of the experience. Both you and the person on the receiving end can benefit from effective communication.
Healthy Assertiveness
Assertiveness gets a bad rap.
It is often misconstrued as being “mean” or “pushy” particularly for women. However, the more nuanced and fuller definition of assertiveness is to stand up for something in a manner that is not aggressive or overly passive.
In therapy, we will work on finding that balance between what previously may have felt “too aggressive” or “too passive”. Think of it as a series of Goldilocks-like experiments where we find what fits for your communication style and your relationships.
You don’t need to equate asking for your needs as being “bad.” Instead, you can learn to own assertiveness as a key skill and asset to make you an even more effective leader, role model, and partner.
Reclaiming Your Identity Outside of Your Relationships
It can be easy to get swept up by the responsibilities you have in various domains of your life.
You are probably someone who wears multiple hats and seemingly you’re trying to wear those hats simultaneously. But underneath all of those hats (I’m building a funny image now, aren’t I?), there’s still you.
You need to get back in touch with who you are outside of being there for others all of the time. You might feel like you’ve lost a sense of self, or haven’t fully felt like yourself in a long time. You may find that you don’t enjoy things you used to enjoy and this can be a product of exhaustion or lack of time.
In therapy, I can help you identify and nurture those parts of yourself that may have gone unattended.
Getting back in touch with core values, interests, and traits can bring more clarity and motivation back into your life.
You may have questions or concerns about relationship counseling and caregiver burnout…
Self care till sounds selfish and self-indulgent to me
There’s a difference between self-care and being selfish: Selfish is a pure lack of consideration of the needs of others. That just doesn’t sound like you at all. Instead, self care is nurturing oneself in order to reach your highest potential, meaning you’ll actually end up being a better person to others.
Sometimes it may require you putting your own needs first above someone else’s but there is a compassionate way to do this that still considers the wellbeing of others. Also, let’s say there’s a healthy dose of self-indulgence involved with self-care. Is that so bad? If the answer is yes, let’s talk about it!
The long term benefits of indulging in your needs to take care of your physical and emotional needs will outweigh the short term breaks of not being able to be at the beck and call of someone.
Still not convinced? Let’s try it out together and see!
If I set boundaries, don’t I risk jeopardizing my close relationships?
It’s not uncommon for someone to assume that “setting boundaries” means you’re breaking relationship ties or alienating yourself from another. However, boundaries are much more than that.
Think of a boundary as a message either explicitly or implicitly sent to others that because you are human (sometimes we forget, it’s okay), you have certain limitations to how much you can and want to give to a relationship. Up to that certain point though, you are still engaged and committed to the relationship. Also, boundaries are very person-specific.
Together we will work on finding what feels right for you and practicing some flexibility as you tweak what feels like an adaptive boundary to set that allows you to maintain your own needs while still being connected to your relationships.
I’m a parent and I can’t “be there for myself” while still taking care of my family.
Trust me, I hear you. I believe that it is very hard to imagine that being there for yourself seems like a non-option because the responsibilities you have to your loved ones are very real.
However (bear with me), not all responsibilities and tasks are on equal footing in terms of priority. What can happen when you’re a parent or caregiver is that your sense of duty and anxiety can override your ability to make intentional choices about how you use your time. When everything and everyone else begins to feel like a #1 priority in bright red letters, it’s no wonder that “time for yourself” falls way below the radar. But remember that by attending to your own needs is in itself a way of tending to your family.
It sounds counterintuitive, right? It takes practice and a level of trust and accountability. If this feels like a plausible solution yet is still hard to wrap your mind around it, therapy is a perfect opportunity to learn how to put it into practice.
In therapy, I can be a source of accountability for you to tap into concrete and realistic ways of being there for yourself while being the best parent/caregiver /partner you can be.
