Swallow Feelings Much?

Hey! All right, so you and me again. Welcome to the CEO Stage Podcast. This is Kris Plachy. And today, I'm gonna talk to you about something that, I'm gonna invite you to something. And I'll be really curious. Like, you know, I love feedback. So if you listen to this and you have a thought, can you please tell us? You can email me, kris@krisplachy.com. Just tell me like, oh yeah, girl, or like, no, right? Like, I just love to know the things. And hey, if you've never written a review, would you write one? I would love that. If you listen every week and you haven't written one, it would be so awesome if you'd write a review. Okay, anyway, um, it just helps— it helps elevate that podcast, and then more people will hear it, which would be great. Um, so here's what I want to talk to you about. I want to I want to talk to you about sucking it up, but maybe not in the way that you think. So one of the things that has sort of been happening as a byproduct, I think, of me moving through my own sort of growth edges is I'm not sucking it up anymore. I, I believe that when I look at my life, um, In so many places in my life, I have been hurt, disappointed, offended, um, What was that? Like, had a value conflict in some way, maybe even mistreated, uh, maybe taken advantage of, um, and I sucked it up. I swallowed the feelings for the sake of the relationship. And I don't know if it's my age, if it's the fact that I'm probably finally through the hellscape that was menopause, radical menopause, because I had to have a hysterectomy when I was 50, so that was 6 years ago. I don't know, mama. I don't know. But something happened to me and I, I am unwilling. Now, I'm not trigger happy with— and what I mean by that is I'm not like every time I feel something, I'm not like spouting back at it. But this is what we're taught, right? Especially as women. It's just like suck it up, like suck, swallow your feelings. Your feelings aren't important. Keep the peace. Don't disrupt. Don't hurt their feelings for heaven's sake with your feelings. We all we don't want to do that. That would be tragic, right? And there have been some very significant moments in my life this year where I. I have been unwilling to do that. Some with clients where I had to— I chose to not look away anymore. I chose to not pretend I wasn't feeling what I was feeling and I wasn't thinking what I was thinking. And instead, I I allowed those thoughts and those feelings to be exposed to another person at the risk of the relationship. And I think what I learned is what I think we're all afraid of, which is when you do do that, You may lose the relationship, or at least you recalibrate it. And that's my own— I take responsibility for that, because if I have been a person in a relationship who swallowed my feelings, who didn't name what I believed Was happening or what I thought with honesty and love. Then when I start to do that, I've changed the rules of the relationship, right? It's totally understandable that then the other person gets to choose too, and and I'm okay with that. I didn't used to be. I used to be so afraid of alienating people. Of hurting other people, of being— of that my feelings were less important than their feelings. So I would swallow my feelings so that they didn't have to have bad feelings. But when the dynamic between us was so unhealthy for me, and I know there's every single person listening to this, I know you do this.

It's so easy to see in other people, harder to see and live out in yourself.

So I've done that with, with clients, named it for fear of losing it, but I no longer could sit with myself in such conflict in my values. I've done it in my family. I have drawn, you know, some people I guess call this boundary setting, but for me it's just speaking, like saying, this is, this is my experience here of what's happening. Can we, can I, can I, I'm going to bring my feelings To the table too. Not just smile and say, it's okay, no worries. No worries. That's my famous one. No worries. No worries. Meanwhile, I, I hold it. The longer we, and the more we do that in a relationship, the more the resentment, the more the separation grows.

Oh, good.

And so I've had some difficult conversations in my personal life that I would have never had before, and I haven't lost that relationship. Because that person wants to be in it. And there was a sort of a realization I had when I had several conversations to be met with, I didn't realize, I didn't know, thank you, are we okay? Everything gained with the people in that circumstance that mattered, and then friendships. You know, one of the things I know because of who I am and what I'm sort of naturally inclined to do, which is be this person, this coach, this supporter, this. I do this. This is what I do. I love to do it. I do it in all my relationships too. And I think what can happen is I can set myself up and the person that I'm in relationship with to center the other person, to center the friend. And the relationship ends up like that, that they are centered in the relationship. And so they bring their stuff. They get a lot of support, they get what they need, and I may not. And I don't blame them for that. So I want to make sure I'm not positioning myself as a poor me here. I, I build relationships this way, and what I recognize now is that isn't healthy for me because When I'm in distress, when I'm having a hard time, when I need my friends, I haven't built agreements with them to do that. And so in one friendship in particular, I got very hurt this year, and I decided to tell her. And I knew telling her risked, risked the relationship. Well, we didn't really have one, right? What we had was her getting her needs met, me not getting my needs met, and I was setting it up that way. I was swallowing my feelings. And in this case, I was met with her keen understanding and her awareness and her acknowledgement and care for my feelings and my thoughts.

And so one can only imagine that if This friendship continues, which I believe it will, it's going to have a different foundation that will not be based on me sort of sucking it up. So I, I wanted to bring this up because I, I now I'm listening to my clients through a lens here of where I'm watching them suck it up, of swallowing their feelings to keep the peace.

Yep.

Of not believing they should have feelings because feelings are disruptive, of not knowing what to do with a feeling because they've sucked it up for so long. And then seeing how sucking it up is altering their experience and not allowing them to live in their truth and in their honesty. And in the expression of who they are. So when I work with my clients, these are things that we uncover because the lens of when a woman tells me what she really, really, really wants is quite— it's a wonderful lens because then we can look there, we can say, this is what I really, really, really want, right? Or even if she's not sure yet, we cultivate it. We start to get this lens. We see something in the future. But then what happens is all of the habits and the cycles and the patterns and the thoughts and the experiences and the weight of unexpressed versions of yourself, they start to reveal themselves in that pursuit if you're willing. And if we can clear that, you know, I'm in my mid-50s. I don't want to live in my world the way I did in my 30s. I have zero interest in that. She was bright and talented and really capable, but you know what? She held so much back for fear of loss, judgment, ostracization, being ostracized. Kicked out, unloved. And now as I stand here today, like, my circle is so good because I'm all in. You know, it's funny, I was playing pickleball one day, sort of random, but I was playing pickleball one day and I have a mouth.

Everybody needs to know.

I'm sure you know if you spend any time.

I have a little bit of a mouth. Yeah. I can say some bad words. And I was on the pickleball court and we were having a great match.

And my daughter and my husband came out to watch and I was F-bombing and, you know, D-A-M-N-ing and all the things. And my partner said, looked at me kind of funny and she's like, your daughter, your daughter. And I looked at her like, are you kidding? My daughter knows I swear like a sailor because she swears with me.

Like, no.

But it was so interesting.

Like, I'm supposed to hide that part of myself from my kid?

My kid's 21, almost 22.

I'm not hiding parts of who I am anymore from my daughter, my children.

I didn't swear a lot when they were young, but I didn't mean I didn't swear. I swore all the freaking time. I just didn't swear a lot around them when I was young, and only because I didn't want them to go to school and drop F-bombs. But that's Like, it's such a silly example, but right, like there's this repressiveness of who we are. And so as I start working with women in these parts of their lives now where they're like, I want to do that, I want that.

Okay, let's get that. And how do we do that?

We got to look at all this stuff you tell yourself is why you can't or shouldn't. Or how you will lose if you do, or who you will lose if you do, and what it means if you lose those people if you do. Does it really mean loss or just a little bit of a sting, and then it might actually be better on the other side?

Hmm. Stuff to think about, Mama.

Talk to you next time.