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At some point, many of us arrive at a moment where we realise we’ve lost our identity among the stress load, the mental load and the pressures of life and motherhood.
And between all the things we do for other people, and routinely putting our needs bottom of the list we suddenly realise that we need to rekindle our purpose, our joy and our passion again.
In this episode, I’m exploring why so many of us lose ourselves along the way - to nervous system burnout, people pleasing and always putting everyone else’s needs first. And more importantly, I’m sharing practical ways to begin reconnecting with yourself again and finding your purpose and passion.
Here’s what we’ll talk about:
NEXT STEPS:
Being a mum can be truly all encompassing.
And when our kids are little, it can feel like our life has been taken over by tiny terrorists intent on siphoning off every last ounce of our energy. It almost feels inevitable that we will lose something of ourselves and have to make certain sacrifices to manage that role.
But what if you've given yourself so completely to that that now the kids are maybe a bit older, you feel like you have lost sense of who you are outside of that, who you are beyond being a mum, a provider of snacks, an unpaid PA to a rabble of unavoidable, appreciative offspring.
Well, today we're talking all about what happens to our self worth and our joy when we forget who we are, when we sacrifice ourselves to others and to people pleasing, and when we suppress our own needs.
And then, of course, more importantly, we're going to look at how we can reclaim our boundaries, how we can reclaim our joy and reclaim a new sense of who we are beyond being a giver to everybody else. Welcome to the Busy Woman's Guide to well Being, the podcast for women who are done with the hustle and are ready to feel at home in their own skin.
I'm your host, Alix Life, therapeutic and fitness coach for busy women who want to do less, live more, and feel good from the inside out. Every week I'm going to help you to cut through the noise, challenge the shoulds, and find new ways to live and move that actually feel like you.
Hello there. Welcome to this week's episode.
And I feel like this one is very much needed because I see a lot of this, this thing where women have given themselves over to other roles in their lives. And look, I talked about it from the point of view of being a mum in the intro, because that's what I know.
And that is definitely something that has given me pause to ask, okay, who. Who am I when I'm not being a mom? I've definitely asked myself that question.
But it's honestly any role where you have sacrificed your own needs for the sake of others. And that can come in many roles, many guises. It can come through work, it can come through older parents and things like that as well.
And we as women are pushed to sacrifice ourselves.
And I think, you know, there are certain times in our lives where that kind of thing, it feels necessary, it feels unavoidable, but the problem is when it becomes a bit more prolonged and when we get to a stage in life where we kind of suddenly feel like, I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know who I am outside of this role that I have been playing for such a long time.
And we forget our needs, we forget our desires, we forget our own joy.
And we suddenly end up in a place where we feel a bit lost, we feel a little bit untethered to anything because we have forgotten those things and what they mean to us in our lives. And I think being the mum of teenagers is an obvious time for this, right? I have got a 13 year old and a 16, almost 17 year old.
She's about to start driving lessons, all that kind of stuff, and they start pulling away. Do you know what? I am thankful for that because that means that they are healthy teenagers. They have to separate themselves at this point.
It's part of their normal development that they do that. But when that happens, we can start feeling a void. We can start to wonder, oh, okay, well, the hell do I do with myself now?
What is it I actually want? What is it that excites me or interests me? What are my desires? And we can have real problems answering that question, let's be honest.
And that is when we are left in this place of saying, I don't even know who I am anymore. Who the hell am I? What am I doing? Where am I going? Where am I headed? And that I think is normal for every woman.
I think we all have that happen to us at least once in our lives. For some of us, it can be something that we travel through more quickly.
For others of us, it can be something that can make us feel very stuck and it can make us feel like we just do not know the bloody answer to it because we've suppressed our own desires for such a long time that it becomes an almost impossible question to answer. I'm not going to pretend to have all of the answers here for you. I can't answer this for you in the space of the next 20 minutes.
But what I really would love to do today is look at how. How do we end up losing ourselves?
Why do we end up losing ourselves and then really using that to help us to rediscover our needs, rediscover our desires again, and bring more of that joy and purpose back into our lives. And I think the thing that is true, especially for women, is that we are expected to put ourselves last. We start to feel that we have to do this.
Whether it's because we've had kids or whether it's other people in our lives that have needed us and lent on us for various reasons. We feel like we have this responsibility to other people, and that that is the most important thing that we can possibly do.
So we start to sacrifice our own needs for that. We start to put parts of ourselves away in the pursuit of caring for other people. Their needs become more important.
Making other people happy becomes more important. People pleasing becomes more important. And so our needs either sink right to the bottom of the list or for some women, they cease to exist at all.
Our needs are not even something that crosses our mind until we get a little bit later on in this journey, and like I say, we suddenly have that little glimmer of light, that little glimmer of space, and we start to go, whoa, hang on a minute, what happened to me? Where did I go amongst all this? So I think it particularly happens to women.
I mean, we all know that men have their midlife crises as well, but it particularly happens to women because of. Because of those expectations. You know, we are raised and socialized to be givers.
We are raised and socialized to sacrifice ourselves for others, to put others, other people's needs before our own, to believe that our own needs are unimportant or even actually selfish. We are socialized to carry a lot of the mental load. And we know that women take on more than our fair share of this.
We've become default parent, the planner, the helper, the problem solver, the person that does all the things, the person that prioritizes everybody else. And not only that, but it's like we've become responsible for other people's emotions.
So I don't know if you're aware of this, but let's just look at the discourse around the Stephen Bartlett, you know, diary of a CEO, isn't it?
He did an episode of his podcast about male loneliness, and part of that, he appeared to turn the spotlight onto what women's roles were in that and putting some of the blame on women for things like lower birth rates and decline in dating. And four, that epidemic of male loneliness.
And that is just one example of a really long line of instances where men or society put the onus on women for fixing things, for fixing things that other people are experiencing, for fixing things that men are experiencing, for managing other people's emotions as well.
So there's an awful lot of pressure that's put on us to actually suppress our own needs, to suppress our own true selves, to suppress our own true desires so that we can do things for other people. We can manage other people's emotions, we can be agreeable, we can make sure we're not asking for too much.
So all of those things end up playing into this place where we end up going and who the hell am I? And what I would love today is to, like, really help you to bring out what is it? What is it that that makes you passionate?
What is it that makes you unique? What is it that makes you or helps you to light up? What are the things that you want to pursue?
So, anyway, enough dwelling on all of that, because if you are feeling this, if you're listening to this and thinking, yeah, I really relate to that, then what we want to do is we want to start reintroducing ourselves to ourselves. We want to start understanding who we are when we're not performing these roles.
And we want to understand what is our joy, what are our desires, what are the things that we want for ourselves. And there's a few ways that you can really start to do that.
Now, I think the first one, and I think this is really important, actually, is to start looking about at how you can reclaim your boundaries. Now, I did an episode of this ages and ages and ages ago around healthy boundaries and how to create them.
So if this is an area for you to explore a little bit more, do go listen to that. That was episode 150 of the podcast. Like I say, it's quite an old one, but do go have a listen, because I think that'll be really helpful for you.
So, yeah, reclaiming our boundaries. Because like I say, we have sacrificed our own needs to other people.
And so when that is the case, there is normally a conversation that has to be had with ourselves around those boundaries, whether it's with kids, with partners, with parents, with friends.
Because if we allow people to keep overstepping our boundaries, or if we keep operating without knowing where our boundaries are, then we remove the space that we need to be able to lean into our own desires. And the thing is, poor boundaries, they often come from a place of people pleasing.
They often come from a place of worrying about what other people are going to think, worrying that other people are going to be disappointed with you if you don't say yes. And it's not just about physical boundaries either. It's about things like emotions as well.
So, for example, that friend who always moans to you and takes a lot of your energy away, and you want to be nice, you want to be a good friend, you want to be loyal, but actually spending time with that person is incredibly draining.
You've come to resent it, and again, you're in a position where you are in service to somebody else because you are trying to be nice to them because you haven't put those boundaries in place that say actually I don't want to do that anymore. That's not something that is serving me and helping me. And we think of that as selfish.
If it's not serving you, then that doesn't really matter because you're doing it for somebody else. But it is bloody important.
There's enough stuff that we do in our lives that we don't particularly want to do, but we kind of have to do to then add it in a load of other stuff that we're saying yes to, that we really don't want to do. And that really is draining us of energy just because we want to be a nice person.
And by putting a few healthy boundaries in place, we can start to put our own needs top of the list sometimes. So just be aware of those situations. Watch where you're saying yes. Be prepared to say no.
And I know that is incredibly hard because like I say, we, we want to be nice. We want to be nice to people and we find it very, very difficult to think that somebody might be disapp or pissed off with us.
But we have to protect our boundaries if we want the space to discover who we are and what gives us joy and pleasure. So be aware of where we're saying yes. Where is the yes coming from?
Is it coming from guilt or conflict or not wanting to disappoint or because it's habit that you say yes? Start to become aware of that and start to become less available for it. Less available for the yeses that are coming from the wrong place.
Because we will say yes to stuff that where we genuinely want to help somebody or when it genuinely makes us feel good to do that.
But if there's things that are going on where you're saying yes just because you feel guilty otherwise that's not a good place for that yes to come from. So think about those boundaries. Think about where those boundaries have maybe got a little bit too loose and where you might tighten those up a bit.
And it's going to take you out of that self sacrificing energy all the time and it's going to allow you to ask the questions that are really, really important to you. The second thing is I would love you to ask yourself who are you when you're not a mum or a carer or a good worker or whatever it is?
What are those roles that you have sacrificed yourself to to keep other people happy? And I want you to almost separate yourself from that and to ask yourself, who am I without that?
And look, this is a really, really hard question to answer. You're probably not going to have the answers right now.
But it's so important because among the noise of life, we have forgotten who we are when it's not in relation to somebody else, when it not in relation to our productivity or the things that we're doing. But you're allowed to have your own desires and needs. You're absolutely allowed to have those things, but you need to identify what they are first.
And in order to do that, you need to understand who you are outside of those roles that have defined you up until this point. So what makes you passionate? What lights you up? What do you enjoy? Or what did you used to enjoy that you've. You've let fall by the wayside?
What feels indulgent to you that you have not allowed yourself to do for a long time? So for me, you know, I'm very lucky, right?
I was talking to my husband about this the other day and he was sort of saying to me, oh, I think you need a hobby. So he loves golf and he's always trying to improve his swing and, you know, watching YouTube golfing videos and all this kind of thing.
And I don't necessarily have anything like that, but I explained it to him as saying, well, the thing is, I'm really lucky because I am running a business that is all about my passion. This is all about what lights me up. It's like when I sit down, I record a podcast episode. I am expressing that to the world.
I'm expressing my passion to the world. And so I get to do that all the time. And that for me is a very important part of who I am. I'm a feminist.
I do this as a feminist because I want women to take up more space, because I want women to stop beating themselves up about their weight all the time. I want women to be able to like, recognize and step into their own brilliance. Because I think that that is how we change the world.
I'm not gonna go into that. I did a episode on that very recently, but that shit lights me up. What lights you up? What makes you get on your soapbox?
What do you really enjoy doing?
You don't have to have something like I've got, but there will be things that you're like, oh my God, I really loved it that time that I went cold water swimming with that amazing group of women. I wanna do more of that.
What is it that you have not allowed yourself to do, because it's in those things that you're gonna find your joy, you're gonna find your passion. So start, like I say, it's not necessarily very easy to answer, but really, really try things like journaling, try meditation, things like that.
Take yourself out for a walk for 15 minutes without listening to a podcast and just really give yourself the time to mull over that and think about that. And I think part of this, which is the next one, is about a little bit of pleasure activation.
So what's one small thing you can do each day or each week that is gonna activate your pleasure? It could be a walk by the beach, it could be a cold water swim, it could be a long bath, it could be danc. Stick around your kitchen.
It could be taking yourself out for lunch with a book.
So we don't do those things because they feel indulgent, because they feel like they take up time that we should be using to do something else with somebody else. But those are really important. You have got to get back in touch with your pleasure and your joy.
So start to get in touch with that side of yourself again. Start to allow yourself to do things for pleasure, not just because they have an outcome or they're helping somebody else.
You know, even today, for example, I. I've been sitting here all day doing the podcast, recording a couple of episodes and planning and everything. And if you're in the uk, you're gonna know that this has been a particularly long and brutal winter.
Not because of the cold, but because of the wetness. And it's been, even by our standards, has been pretty shit, right? But today was one of the first days where the sun actually came out.
And I was sat here and I was looking out the window and I was like, the sun is actually shining on the garden. And so I got up and I just went outside for two minutes and I stood there with my face in the sun. I was like, oh, my God, this feels amazing.
I didn't even have to have a jumper on, so that was really nice. Even little things like that where you just go, I'm going to take a moment, I'm going to take a moment to allow that pleasure into my life.
Can be really helpful in this as well, because it starts to reconnect you to that part of yourself where you're not trying to numb yourself with comfort eating, where you're not trying to numb yourself with that glass of wine on a Friday night or whatever, but where you're actually like taking the time for A bit of joy. So definitely do that bit of pleasure and joy in your life.
And then the last thing is to rewrite the belief, rewrite the beliefs that you're carrying now about how you should be sacrificing yourself or suppressing your needs. So a big one. That comes up a lot. Because I'm a mum, my needs automatically come bottom of the list. Let's rewrite that.
You know, being a mum is really important to me. And sometimes my needs are also allowed to come higher up the list and I'm allowed to put myself first every now.
And we spend enough of our lives sacrificing for other people, doing things for other people. We are allowed for part of our lives to be for us.
So just be aware of where are those beliefs about I have to suppress myself, my needs have to become bottom of the list because of. And then start to think, yep, you know what, that stuff is important. But my needs are also allowed to come higher up sometimes too.
You know, a lot of us get our value from what we do for others, who we are for others, but we are allowed an identity of that.
So notice the beliefs that are keeping you stuck in endless giving and start to reframe them in a way that gives you that permission to be more of yourself.
And when you start to put these things together, when you start to lean into more pleasure and joy, when you start to understand who you are and what you offer beyond the roles that you play for others, when you start to rewrite some of those beliefs and give yourself permission to meet your own needs, it allows you to reconnect with who you are again. It allows you to reconnect with what you. What lights you up. And here's the thing.
You do not exist to be in service to everything and everyone else at all times. You do not exist to suppress yourself or to be depleted. You exist to be your amazing, wonderful self.
And actually, I believe that the more that you do that, the less you abandon yourself, the more phenomenal you you get as a mother, as a partner, as a leader, as a friend.
Because for sure, I want my kids to look at what I've done and to be able to see this is who my mum was, this is what she was passionate about, this is what she happen in her life. Like, I want my kids to look at me and to see that. And I don't think they always have.
I think I have given myself over to motherhood for many, many years. But now I am really starting to bring out those things that I'm passionate about.
I'm really beginning to understand who I am beyond all of that as well. And I want my kids to see that. I want my kids to see that as an example of how they might live their lives as well.
And I believe that I can do all of that. That and be a great mum and be a great support for them as well. And that when I do that, it gives me more energy to be able to do that as well.
So, like I say, this episode is not about solving this entire thing in 20 minutes because I can't do that for you. But hopefully what it's done is it's given you a bit of food for thought.
It's given you something to get your teeth into that allows you to answer that question of who the fuck you are right now. Because life does get better when you know the answer to that. It gives you more direction, it gives you more joy, it gives you more pleasure.
And who does not want more of that into our lives? So here's to excavating some of that. Here's to leaning into becoming your amazing, powerful self.
And with all that said, I'm going to love you and leave you and I'll see you back here again next time. Thank you as always, for joining me.
If this episode has hit home, share it with with another woman who needs to hear it and come connect with me on Instagram @lifeeditwithalix for more real talk, mindset shifts and daily inspiration.