Pressing Pause ep 127 Why you feel the way you feel
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Welcome to Pressing Pause, I’m your host, Gabrielle Treanor, a coach, writer, introvert and sensitive soul with an inclination to ponder over the stuff of life. Join me as I explore how we can create, find and feel more calm, ease and joy in our daily lives.
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Before we get into the episode I wanted to remind you that there are two bonuses available when you pre-order my book, The 1% Wellness Experiment. There’s my 1 Minute Magic guide – 50 micro actions to calm and soothe, resource and regulate which, as it sounds, has 50 small but mighty actions that take just 60 seconds or less to de-stress your mind and body. Plus you have the chance to win one of three 45 minute one to one coaching sessions with me.
You just need to go to thewellnessexperiment.co.uk and send me confirmation of your book pre-order for you to be emailed 1 Minute Magic on 21 December, the book publication day, and to be entered into the prize draw to win a coaching session.
You can pre-order The 1% Wellness Experiment at your local bookstore or you can find a list of worldwide online stores at thewellnessexperiment.co.uk. Both of these bonuses are only available for pre-orders of the book before publication day. You can find out more about the bonuses at thewellnessexperiment.co.uk.
Okay, the last couple of episodes have been pretty long by my standards so I’m going to get straight on with this one!
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Welcome to episode 127. Often when I’m talking with women who feel overwhelmed there’s something that comes up quite early on in the discussion. And it’s one of the biggest reasons why we get overwhelmed and why we find it so hard to feel calm and to enjoy the joy in our lives, to relax and take care of ourselves, and to have the time and space to do all of that.
You might think it’s because of a personal failing or a lack of trying hard enough or some other reason to blame yourself. But there’s something else at play here.
What plays a significant role is messaging we took in from a very early age that comes from society, from our families, from our friends, from school, from work, from music and TV and film and the news and magazines and everywhere around us!
What we’ve learned is that to be accepted and thought well of we need to put others’ needs before our own, we need to be helpful, amenable, reliable, responsible, useful, productive, not too much nor too little, to not rock the boat.
This good girl conditioning is why we do what someone else needs before we think of what we need. It’s why we say yes when we want to say no, and if we do say no we feel guilty about it. It’s why we feel lazy if we rest. It’s why there’s a nagging, underlying feeling that we should always be doing something, even if we don’t know what. It’s why you hate making a mistake (even little ones) and the thought of someone being disappointed. It’s why you want to fix and make better any problems, any struggle you see. It’s why how productive you are, how much you get done, feels like a direct reflection of how good (or not) a person you are. It’s why you don’t feel you have enough time, there’s a sense of falling behind even though you’re trying hard to keep up.
And it leads to feeling resentful that you have to do it all and you’re not appreciated enough. It leads to thinking how unfair it is when you see someone else say no or take a break or doing something for themselves, interestingly sometimes more so if it’s a woman. It leads to realising that something you’ve been meaning to do, something you love or makes you excited, perhaps something you used to do, has fallen by the wayside and you wonder when you’ll ever get round to it.
Were you a Brownie as a child? Someone shared with me the Brownie law that she promised to obey when she was seven years old in the 1970s. This is the law: ‘A Brownie Guide thinks of others before themselves and does a good turn every day.’
I did a little research and it seems this law was included, in the UK at least, in the Brownie Girl Guides from 1947 and it is STILL the existing law that Brownies promise to keep now, in 2023.
I am most definitely all for doing good turns and for being considerate and thoughtful buuuuut there’s a big difference here. This ‘law’ is telling girls from age seven NOT to think of others AS WELL AS themselves, but to think of others BEFORE themselves.
I’m not gunning for Girlguiding or the Brownies here, this is just an example of one message, from one place in life, that girls are being given. As were the girls before them, and before them. You don’t have to be a Brownie to have taken on this message because it’s everywhere.
And it’s because of the myriad messages that, as grown women, we feel we never have enough time – because we’re always giving our time to others or thinking and feeling like we should be doing something useful, productive, helpful… no wonder we’re exhausted and fed up!
Oh, and by the way, another current Girlguiding law is ‘A Guide is helpful and uses her time and abilities wisely’. Who gets to decide what constitutes ‘wisely’, is that code for productively, I wonder?
This messaging, this conditioning, that has seeped into you from every direction since you were a little girl plays a significant part in why, after decades of being the good girl and putting everyone else before yourself, you feel so worn out, put upon and overwhelmed.
It’s quite an eye-opener, isn’t it?
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Thank you for listening to Pressing Pause, you can find the show notes at gabrielletreanor.com/podcast.
There are lots more resources such as free guides, blog posts, online courses and one to one coaching, to help you to create, find and feel more calm, ease and joy in your life, at gabrielletreanor.com. You’ll also find information on my book, The 1% Wellness Experiment, and the pre-order bonuses you can get there too.
I write on Substack and send my weeklyish emails from there so if you want to connect with me and say hi I would love that! You can search for my name at substack.com or click the link in the show notes.
And, lastly, if you enjoyed this podcast it would be incredibly helpful and lovely of you to leave a rating or review on iTunes. Reviews make a big difference to how podcasts are found and it would be wonderful if more people could find and listen to this podcast
Any time you want to message me I’m always happy to hear from you. Email me at [email protected].
Thanks again for listening, until next time.
