This is an abbreviated transcript from the Curiosity Junkie Podcast Episode 1 – Self Care is Self Love. Tracy Brady joined me for an amazing conversation about the guilt that comes with self care and so much more. Check out the full podcast at Curiosity Junkie.
Cassie Burton: I wanted to talk about something that popped up in a conversation the other day. It’s about self-love, self-care, and how we tend to put everything in front of ourselves and forget to take care of and pay attention to what we need.
The other day, I was having a conversation, and the young woman said she felt the pressure to always keep others in front of herself, even though she knew it was affecting her mental health, her state of mind or happiness.
Now, I know for years, I pretty much did the same thing. The societal pressures make you feel like, as a woman, you are the caregiver, the nurturer, and that you’re supposed to do that for everyone else. So how do we show love to ourselves through self-care without feeling guilty. I think that is the big question, how do we let go of the guilt that comes with self-care.
Tracy Brady: Wow. I don’t think your friend is alone in this, and just the fact that someone feels guilty about something is an indicator that something’s amiss. There is some sort of contradiction occurring and that sounds like an awareness is coming forth from inside that says, Hey, what about me?
And then when you talk about the guilt, like you mentioned society, or our conditioning or societal conditioning certainly does contribute to the pressures of not only women. Men as well, feel this, as well as children who start early in life to learn or be conditioned to neglect themselves.
We are not, most of us brought up to think that we are supposed to, or even should take care of ourselves, aside from the traditional tie your own shoes and feed yourself, get a job, and get a degree. And if you are blessed enough to be in a place in life or born in a place where you can have those things.
If you look at much of the social media, and for my era and yours probably too, it has been TV and radio, not so much internet, but certainly internet now. And with social media, what you have seen has been women who are encouraged to take care of themselves after a long day at work or after the children have gone to bed. Then you can have a nice bath with XYZ, bath salts. Or men, you can have a nice steak on the grill for yourself, after you have mowed the grass, after the dogs have been walked and the neighbors have been catered to. it is a constant barrage of information. Encouragement takes us out of ourselves and to others which plays upon our natural animalistic instinctual fears of being left out. That if we are not good enough, that if we don’t perform, if we aren’t accepted by our peers or our pack, we could be left out. And that is one of the worst things a person can feel, is to feel left out alone abandoned. And so, as you could see a lot of things go into this, and it’s no wonder that it’s a struggle for people to overcome because it’s not going to be encouraged externally. Usually it’s not, it’s just not.
Cassie Burton: I love that, you brought up the fear piece. The fear of being left out, kind of causes us to do things that create the lack of self-love. Because I truly think all of this stems back to the self-love piece. I heard something the other day, this gal was saying we should be teaching self-love to our children. We don’t teach self-love, and I think Oh, can I go back and figure out how to start teaching that to the next generation? Because it is so important that we know how to love ourselves,
Tracy Brady: Yeah. Teaching it would be wonderful, but first we must learn how to love ourselves.
Cassie Burton: Yes, absolutely.
Tracy Brady: And we must have an agreement within ourselves that it’s the right thing to do, which is very difficult. When it, pulls at your heart strings, you see an animal that’s in need or you see a child that’s being abused, or you see a person who is in less happy circumstances or beneficial circumstances as yourself. You want to do something, it’s a natural instinct to care for each other, even small children, even infants have this natural ability to comfort each other. They have done studies. So that is also something that we’re up against is this pull to nurture and care. The thing about it is there are certain things that we must do for ourselves?
If you consider, the physical body for example, if someone refuses to eat or cannot eat, for whatever reason, you could put a tube in them, and you can feed them. Right? You can give that to them. You can do that for them, but for them to get any nourishment from that food or sustenance, they must digest and assimilate that themselves. You cannot do that for them. If we realize that there are certain things, we must do for ourselves, physically emotionally and spiritually.
Then you can understand how, no matter what someone does for us, there is a certain level of responsibility that we must do to continue that and to do it for ourselves. I think that many, many, many times we run up against this contradiction of someone needs my help and, I cannot stand the idea of not providing that.
Let me ask you Cassie, how would it feel for someone to give you something that they themselves needed? Whether it’s money, food, time, if they were taking away from something they really needed. And they say here, let me give this to you. What would that feel like. How would that make you feel?
Cassie Burton: I would want them to take care of themselves first. That is a powerful gift, However, they are taking away from what they really need.
Tracy Brady: Right. You’ve heard the old saying we can’t pour from an empty cup. If we are perpetuating needy, irresponsible people by basically taking a band-aid off myself and putting it on you and then my artery is spurting, how is that beneficial? You know, we need to provide people a leg up, not one of our legs.
Cassie Burton: Exactly. What a great example and visual.
Tracy Brady: And you know, It’s not a foreign concept for us. Really. When we get started in taking care of ourselves, it starts to feel less foreign and starts to feel right. I would encourage people and your friend, to start at the beginning. Think of the things that you do already. To take care of yourself, you get out of bed and you brush your teeth. You might do things during the day that you do not realize how beneficial they are to yourself. And if you can intentionally make a list of those things. And then thank yourself for that.
Just because we grow tall and get long hair or hair changes or our voice changes and we get wrinkles does not mean that we are not still those precious children that need encouragement and love. Somehow, we’ve got to be examples for others, our children, especially our adult children, that it’s okay to take care of yourself. And it’s not just, okay. It’s the responsible thing to do. It is the responsible thing, because if I take care of myself, say financially, if I’m able and blessed enough to where I can save some for a rainy day. Then I can possibly help others and I can donate, but if I’m donating or sharing finances, when I haven’t paid my bills or I don’t have enough for a rainy day I’m not going to sleep well, it’s going to affect every part of me. And I think there’s probably going to be some pushback to that emotionally.
I have some friends who are good “listeners” and they actually love to listen to other people vent. They love it. And what I have found when they’re talking to me about this, and these are friends not clients, is that they are avoiding doing something in their own lives, and they’re also finding and seeking out people who have worse problems. So that they can “listen” to them and it makes them feel better about ignoring their own issues.
Cassie Burton: Yeah. I can totally see that.
Tracy Brady: That’s just one example of how we distract ourselves in a good way. And we call it an honorable way of taking us away from something that really needs our own attention. When we abandoned ourselves, Cassie, it shows up in all sorts of ways where we try to compensate for the abandonment, addictions distractions that are harmful. We’re not comfortable as a society going inward and attending to our inner selves. But we are comfortable running away from ourselves. I think this is how we abandon our self-care and self-love and how that perpetuates this society of people who are codependent. We’ve got a whole society built on codependency and It starts with us. It starts with one person taking care of themselves. Yeah, you’re going to have some feelings of guilt or thoughts of guilt, but does that let us off the hook?
If I don’t take care of myself somebody is going to have to emotionally, physically, financially. I’m not perfect at it by any stretch. And my adult daughter will come over here and say, wow, get rid of that shit. I don’t want to have to deal with your shit, you know.
Cassie Burton: Right? I’ve had this same conversation with my own mother.
Cassie Burton: Okay, you brought up two words that kind of resonated with me. One is turning inward and how challenging that can be. And I think some of that is because it’s so unknown. We don’t talk about going inward and identifying the feelings in a moment and working through why that feeling is coming up. No one talks about that, So I’d love to spend a little time talking about turning inward. It would be great if you could share some thoughts on how we can turn inward. And the other one is boundaries and actually that one popped into my head as you were talking. I’m going to throw it out there, so I don’t forget.
Tracy Brady: Briefly about boundaries. People see them as a block, as a blockade to their inner workings and their most individual unique gifts. And that’s not what they are. The principle behind boundaries is just like a property boundary it’s movable, it’s transparent and it’s not for somebody else to respect me. It’s for me to decide what’s important to me. And I get to change that only if I want to. And there’s going to be some hard lessons there. You might say I moved this boundary thinking that it was okay. And, and you learned a lesson from that? Well, that’s okay. That’s what boundaries are about. it’s about knowing where I stop, and you start.
Cassie Burton: And that’s so important to know and own. I think that is another thing we’re not really taught growing up. I did not grow up with boundaries. It was a free for all, everybody was in everyone else’s business, and is not healthy. That has been a tough thing to learn as an adult. I’m in my fifties, and I’m learning to set boundaries. Hey, at least I’m learning to set them.
Tracy Brady: Girl you’re way ahead of most of us. Good for you. And it’s not easy because you have to confront all of your old ideas when you do that. And are people gonna love me? Are they gonna stop talking to me? And most times people are shocked when you decide, Hey, I’m not accepting this anymore. If you want to have a conversation, we’re going to do it without that.
I remember when I set some boundaries with my daughter a few years back and, she came over and she said, you know, I just don’t like the new you. I don’t think I like you. You’re being very, very selfish. And, I don’t think I like it. And I, I said, I understand that, but this is important to me.
At the time, she had had full reign when coming into my home. She would come in and run back to the bedroom and the bathroom, get out all my stuff out and lounge around on the bed, and do all these things. And I really didn’t want her to feel like I didn’t respect her and love her enough to share everything I have with her. But at the same time I needed to know that some of these things were important enough to me that I would protect them. So that’s what I had to do. And I had to say when you come in, I don’t want you to do that. And what that did for me was tell me that I can trust myself to show up for myself on something small.
Because when I say, Oh, it’s okay. It doesn’t matter. It’s all good. That’s an indicator, right there, that I need to pay attention to, something’s not good. Something inside me needs attention and I’m abandoning myself, possibly. It doesn’t mean it’s always the case. Right. So that’s a short overview of boundaries and the other thing you said was going inward and how do we do that? Or how do we even begin to go inward? How do we know we need to go inward? You know, I’m a big proponent of mindfulness. I think everybody should do at least 10 minutes of mindful. I’m not even going to use the meditation word because it can freak people out.
But if you can just sit quietly for 10 minutes a day and maybe shut your eyes and turn off every audible sound you can control that will at least introduce you to your inner self. And I’m still not comfortable with my inner self, because it is so different from the outer self, but there is something so intriguing and so beautiful about this separate world that I can’t stay away for long. It becomes a draw, it becomes something that draws me in. It’s almost like food, I have to have it.
Even if you don’t do that, even if somebody doesn’t want to do the 10 minute quiet thing a day, what you can do. Is pay attention to little things like, am I rushing about, am I rushing? Think about it, would you rush someone you cared about? No.
I remember a few years back. I was very conscientious of trying to take care of myself because I realized nobody else was going to do it. Other people fail at that? We max them out. We really take and take and then they can’t give any more. And then we’re like, hey you were providing me this emotional, physical, financial support and where the hell did you go? Right? And actually, it’s our inner self saying that to ourselves. What about me? I decided I would, I try it and it’s so uncomfortable.
So I was standing at my counter writing something. The TV was on a little bit too loud and my back was hurting because I’d been up all day and I was standing there writing something on the counter, pay a bill or something, stressing out thinking about something. And I noticed that there was a bar stool right next to me. Now this is my own home and the TV was annoying. I couldn’t hear myself think. And so those little cues are important, we need to pay attention to our physical body. It’s a barometer of what’s going on inside. I said, Hey, here’s a good time to do this. What would you do for somebody that you loved? if your daughter or your partner or your mother or somebody you really care about, your best friend, was standing there enduring the TV, I would go shut off, which I did. Then I offered myself a chair, would you like to sit down? And the whole time I was thinking, this is the waste of time. That’s what the brain was saying, Right. Because the conditioning is strong.
Joe Dispenza talks about this. You must do things that are ahead of this thinking or in spite of this thinking. Pay attention to your physical cues, watch yourself, watch your speed of thought, your speed of speech, your body. Am I sitting the way I really want to appear for myself, my self-worth and my physical comfort? Do I need to straighten up, are my legs crossed? And they don’t feel good, so I think I’ll uncross them. You know, grounding is a tool that people use all the time for high anxiety, but you don’t have to wait until you’re in a high anxiety state to attend to yourself. I’ll tell you the more we take care of ourselves, the more we have for other people. And the better examples we’ll be for those that we care about to take care of themselves.
And in fact, it’s our responsibility to take care of ourselves. It’s irresponsible to ask others to do for us, what we can do for ourselves.
Cassie Burton: Right. Yes. And I love the thought of caring for yourself. Like you would care for another individual. But, Like you said, the brain is telling us to keep going, to push forward which doesn’t work. We have to stop and take a minute to just show yourself a little love and self-care.
Tracy Brady: yeah. You know, when you’re a little girl, the message that you get when you have a need is it’s okay, it doesn’t matter, that’s not important. And that’s not because our caregivers don’t think we’re important. It’s just, they don’t know how to care for their own needs. So they encourage us to distract in ways that seem to help, food, TV, play a game. You’re sad because you didn’t get to go to a party that your friend had. Oh, let me distract you from that feeling because I don’t know how to deal with it myself.
Cassie Burton: I’ve done that my whole life. And it’s funny because I see it in my own kids. You see that you’ve taught them to distract, to Ignore, to keep moving forward. This will pass, just ignore it, push it down. Yeah, I did that to my kids… it’s so interesting what we pass from generation to generation.
Tracy Brady: It’s a great topic. Really great and much needed. I think it completely permeates the social fabric of today. Let me take care of you and neglect me. When we pour from our cup, we’ve got make sure we have enough left for ourselves. Because when we pour from a low or empty cup, it doesn’t help anybody.
One of the motivators I’ve found since we are so driven to Love others and to alleviate suffering in others, is to remember that when I am alleviating my own suffering, I have a personal experience that I can then share with others. And that’s true compassion and true empathy, as opposed to let me alleviate your suffering so that I don’t have to see it.
Cassie Burton: Yes, I love that. Thank you for sharing your time and knowledge with all of us.
7 steps for creating mindful and compassionate self-love.
- Take 10 minutes of quiet time each day to sit with yourself.
- In the morning before getting out of bed, place your hands on your heart and recite the words “I Love You” until you feel the love.
- Be mindful in all you do as you move through your day. And if you find yourself moving or talking quickly, slow down and become mindful of your situation.
- Nurture your inner child to help create trust and elevate fears: Stand in front of a mirror, look yourself in the eyes and say, I am so sorry I haven’t been here for you, and I’m going to do my best to be here for you now.
- Speak to yourself and treat yourself the same way you would a loved one. Be kind and compassionate.
- We are responsible for loving ourselves for taking care of ourselves. It’s not someone else’s responsibility. It is 100% ours.
- Make a list of all the little things you do for yourself throughout the day. It helps to train the brain and then begins to feel less foreign.
Remember you cannot pour from an empty cup! And yes, you can fill up your own cup!