I Don't Want to Be a Bother
If you say or feel this often, you learned to put your needs aside for others and as you heal, you will learn to elevate the importance of your needs to the same importance as the needs of others.
The goal is never to move from “others first” to “me first”.
The goal is to elevate your needs to the same importance you give to the needs of others.
This is the a-ha moment for many of the women I work with because they have lived for others for so long that it feels like the ultimate selfishness is to declare “me first.”
Before I share how you can practice giving the same importance to your needs as you do to the needs of others, let’s consider what led you to “I don’t want to be a bother” in the first place.
When women say “I don’t want to be a bother” to me, I know they grew up in an environment where these two dynamics were happening:
Your needs were being ignored.
It may not have been a deliberate ignoring that would be considered neglect, although neglect is definitely ignoring needs.
For many of you, it was modeled for you by your mothers and grandmothers to ignore your own needs while prioritizing the needs of others because that is what you observed your mom and grandma doing.
It is this subtle generational transfer of the false notion that when you are selfless you are righteous, and selflessness equals self-abandonment. And, because this self-abandonment is so that you can serve others and their needs, it is held up as noble and good.
That is a hot mess of ridiculousness!
You have the power to abandon that generational pattern of self-abandonment by shifting first your mindset.
Choose a mantra that is meaningful to you and that will support you in those moments where you want to throw your needs aside because you are fearful you won’t be good enough or belong or be loved if you don’t abandon yourself to meet the needs, requests, and demands of others.
Potential mantras include:
My needs matter as much as the needs of others.
I am deserving of love and belonging simply because I exist.
When I honor my needs, I have energy and compassion to honor the needs of others.
ADD YOUR MANTRA suggestions by leaving a comment.
You were told you were “independent” from a very young age.
Your ability to take care of yourself and your needs at a young age became a liability because the adults in your life thought they didn’t need to worry about you.
They may have done this out of exhaustion over meeting the needs of your siblings.
They may have done this out of their own unhealed relational wounds and trauma.
Whatever the source of the adults in your life expecting your “independent” nature to be all you needed, you get to redeem and change that for yourself now.
Yes, you may have been self-sufficient in many ways at an early age, and that should have been built upon instead of sending you the message you are on your own.
You can begin to shift this by being more collaborative with others and trusting yourself to know who has your back. Practice asking one person each day to join you in meeting your needs. This could be as simple as asking for a hug to as complex as asking for support with a project. The act of asking feels risky because when you asked in the past, you were told or sent the message to figure it out on your own. Start with people you know you can trust and who will want to join you in shifting this hyper-independence you have relied upon for so long and in the process move you out of the mindset that you are a bother.
Breaking patterns is always freeing and it takes consistent practice in adjusting your mindset and your actions. It is forming an alignment from within you that flows from a fierce belief that you an indeed NOT a bother because you matter and your needs matter.
For more support on shifting this mindset and improving your relationships with family through deep inner healing work plus practical relationship skills, drop me a message and subscribe to this publication.