Who Are You When No One Needs You? Identity, People Pleasing & Rediscovering Yourself

Hi friends, and welcome back to Life Beyond BS, where we go beyond the belief systems and yeah, the bullshit that society can put on us and we can put on ourselves that holds us back.

I'm Heather McNally, your host, and I'm so excited for you to be here today.

Can I ask you something? And it's not because I expect you to answer it right away or perfectly or anything like that.

But it's more because I have a feeling it's a question that you've probably never even been asked.

Or maybe it's a question you've never given yourself permission to fully answer.

Who are you when no one needs you? Not what do you do? Not what have you accomplished or who you are as a parent or a spouse, a caregiver, or the person that like everyone calls when something's wrong.

What I mean is, who are you when the calendar is quiet, no one's asking for your help, when no one needs you to fix anything or solve a problem or remember everything or even hold everything together? Just take a second and ask yourself that and kind of notice what is happening inside you, inside your body.

Seriously, notice your first instinct.

What do you feel? Did your mind kind of immediately start searching for an answer? Or did you get strangely quiet in your mind? I think for a lot of us, the silence can feel really uncomfortable.

And if you haven't sat in it, you might be surprised by that.

I don't know or think that it's because we don't know who we are.

I think it's because we've spent so much time of our lives answering a different question.

Who do I need to be for everyone else? And you may not even really be focused on that.

It's just part of who you are.

Somewhere along the way, without anyone ever saying the words out loud, many of us start thinking and believing that felt true.

Something that quietly became part of the way that maybe we moved through the world.

We began believing that being needed and being worthy, big word there, worthy, were the same thing.

For me growing up in a household with an abusive, narcissistic father, unfortunately, I did learn that this is what I was supposed to be, like performing for everyone else and that that's what mattered.

And I'm hoping that's not what it was for you.

But most of that doesn't happen overnight.

It's not normally that someone's telling you this.

or because anyone's intentionally teaching you that, it happens slowly and quietly.

It's one role at a time in your life, one responsibility at a time, and one yes at a time when maybe you should have been saying no until you can't remember where those roles end and you actually begin.

Hi friends, and welcome back to Life Beyond BS, where we go beyond the belief systems and yeah, the bullshit that society can put on us and we can put on ourselves that holds us back.

I'm Heather McNally, your host, and I'm so excited for you to be here today.

Can I ask you something? And it's not because I expect you to answer it right away or perfectly or anything like that.

But it's more because I have a feeling it's a question that you've probably never even been asked.

Or maybe it's a question you've never given yourself permission to fully answer.

Who are you when no one needs you? Not what do you do? Not what have you accomplished or who you are as a parent or a spouse, a caregiver, or the person that like everyone calls when something's wrong.

What I mean is, who are you when the calendar is quiet, no one's asking for your help, when no one needs you to fix anything or solve a problem or remember everything or even hold everything together? Just take a second and ask yourself that and kind of notice what is happening inside you, inside your body.

Seriously, notice your first instinct.

What do you feel? Did your mind kind of immediately start searching for an answer? Or did you get strangely quiet in your mind? I think for a lot of us, the silence can feel really uncomfortable.

And if you haven't sat in it, you might be surprised by that.

I don't know or think that it's because we don't know who we are.

I think it's because we've spent so much time of our lives answering a different question.

Who do I need to be for everyone else? And you may not even really be focused on that.

It's just part of who you are.

Somewhere along the way, without anyone ever saying the words out loud, many of us start thinking and believing that felt true.

Something that quietly became part of the way that maybe we moved through the world.

We began believing that being needed and being worthy, big word there, worthy, were the same thing.

For me growing up in a household with an abusive, narcissistic father, unfortunately, I did learn that this is what I was supposed to be, like performing for everyone else and that that's what mattered.

And I'm hoping that's not what it was for you.

But most of that doesn't happen overnight.

It's not normally that someone's telling you this.

or because anyone's intentionally teaching you that, it happens slowly and quietly.

It's one role at a time in your life, one responsibility at a time, and one yes at a time when maybe you should have been saying no until you can't remember where those roles end and you actually begin.