Breaking the Cycle of Feeling Neglected in Relationships

If you have ever experienced a pattern of feeling neglected in your relationships, stick around, buckle up, grab some paper and a pen to take notes and let's dive deeper into this topic that impacts all of us. Okay, we're going. Okay. Three, two, one. Foreign welcome to the Healing Is possible experience where we take you on a journey back to the truth of who you are. Back to the place where you love and trust yourself and your life again. This show is here to help you get fully expressed and fully fulfilled and we bring you new content every single week. I'm your host, Rebecca Silence. I author, media personality and emotional healing and relationship coach. I've had a practice for over 15 years. I have not just a background and experience working with couples, but I've been through my own hell and transformed my experience of family, of relationships. But more importantly, I've learned how to master getting my needs met. And this is especially skill that I teach every single client I have. You can be living in such a way where your life is yours. You can be living in such a way where every moment, not just sometimes, but always as a default, as a baseline, you are doing what you want and you are getting what you want. I believe that that's what life's all about. Joy, fulfillment, alignment and authentic living. I've had so many clients this year working out and working on how do I get my needs met when my partner isn't showing up? How do I get my needs met when I've never actually had the experience that my needs matter, that my needs get met? Well, we are four episodes offering a series on this very topic. So if you haven't already watched Unveiling the secrets behind getting your needs met on my YouTube channel, please do yourself the favor of going back and watching it. If that is something that feels like you know you want it, you know you need it. You don't have to have watched the first episode to enjoy and experience experience today's but just so you're aware, this is a four part series. Today is part two of four and let's just go here. So particularly today's episode is about overcoming that pattern of feeling like you're just not getting your needs met in your relationships. If you felt neglected in your relationships, if you feel neglected now in your relationships, we are going to give you five big important pieces to consider, to unpack and to transform so that this pattern gets knocked in a new direction. So that your experience of feeling neglected in your relationships can change. And ultimately it is possible to get to a place where you don't feel neglected in your relationships ever again. That's not because you become this perfect person that has other people loving and respecting you so much that they never disappoint you again, that they show up beautifully again. It's not about disclaimer getting other people to wake up, getting other people to get it, getting other people to behave or show up differently. It's about you knowing so clearly how to take care of yourself, how to make sure your needs are met, that the pressure is off of other people. Point one, we've got to identify the potential reasons why we're not getting our needs met in our relationships first. Most important thing to consider on this subject is you've been trained to believe your needs aren't going to be met. If you feel neglected in relationships. You're used to neglect from other people, you're used to neglecting yourself, and you're used to disappointment. Likely, these are the three biggest culprits that are potentially the reason why you're feeling neglected in relationship. Let me say it again. Number one, you're just used to not getting your needs met in relationship. You're used to neglecting yourself and your needs and you're used to being disappointed. This is so important because this unconscious low bar, low standard, it will have you just accepting crumbs and frustrated and likely resentful. And the good news here is we have control over all three of these things. We can raise the bar, okay, right now, right here, right now, it's time to raise the bar. And if you need to take your hand and raise the bar and physically show the universe, talk to God, whatever your beliefs are, and go, hey, enough. It's time to raise the bar. Enough. Me accepting crumbs, no, no longer good enough. Me being so used to being neglected, not accepting, expecting my needs to get met, me having this as a normal, Me being willing to and continually neglecting myself, me expecting disappointment or when disappointment happens, me not being surprised, me feeling like, here we go again, this isn't good enough. This isn't good enough at all. And it's time for me to take my power back and raise the bar versus it's time for me putting my power in other people's hands, me meeting the world to change other people, to change my situation, to change for me to believe I can get my needs met. That's a powerless path. That's a path that ends nowhere. But you, you know, feeling more upset, more low vibration, and more triggered and confronted and it's just not necessary. So no More tolerating. This is really a you with you game. And once you've mastered you with you, it progresses. It becomes you with God or the universe or whatever your spiritual beliefs are. But where we're starting with this four part series is you with you. Because you have more power and control there than you can imagine. You have more power and control there than you've ever given yourself credit for, I guarantee it. And if you're feeling neglected in your relationships, I am giving you today. Which by the way, today is a longer episode because this is so important, this whole series, these videos are going to be longer because there's so much here to unpack and there's so much here that you have the power to transform quickly. So again, I hope you're taking notes. If you haven't already, by the way, hit the subscribe button, hit that notification bell because you want to be in the loop as the rest of this series comes out. And I promise all of this can change. And it's already changing because you're here. Let's look at the second big piece now. The second big piece today is about understanding how the past is continuing to impact the experience you're having of your needs getting met in the present. We talk about this so much. So many spiritual teachers, so many personal growth leaders and influencers. We talk about the past doesn't have to dictate the present. We talk about Eckhart Tolle, the power of now, and being present as this version of you as the adult being. But so often the missing piece that isn't talked about enough is the part about you don't have control over your unhealed inner child running the show. You don't ask for the past to bleed into now. You don't ask for your unhealed, unclear past, making it more difficult for you to be the fully expressed adult, for you to be fully emotionally clear. And it's not your fault, it is your work. And what we don't understand is how to know what is going on, how is the past still impacting me and when we notice that, what to do about it. So let's, let's unpack this piece. Okay? I have never had a client in any type of distress, in any type of suffering, in any type of even breakdown or crisis that wasn't stuck in a moment in time, that had nothing to do with right here, right now. The secret magic sauce formula of what the practice of emotional healing that I've developed teaches is how to go. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait A minute. We want to welcome the triggers. We want to bring it on approach and here's why. Your triggers, they run your life. Your triggers, they ruin your experience of relationship. So often because we think it's this person that's doing something to us or isn't showing up or isn't being careful enough or loving enough or fulfilling our needs enough. But what's really going on is this person is a ghost from your past. We fight with ghosts when we are in any type of misalignment or upset. Here's what's going on. We are at a stuck age with stuck emotions because of an event that we likely don't even realize is the culprit. So this is a very complex principle and paradigm and thought for you that I want to make as simple as possible. I love to say the work of emotional healing, which again, this is my jam. And if you're just meeting me for the first time, let me tell you something. I don't come from being nurtured as a little girl around self esteem or self worth or full self expression or emotions. My last name is Silence because I was so committed to silence growing up. Ended up marrying a guy with the last name Silence because I thought if I don't say too much, if I don't rock the boat and abuse and neglect gets better. Wrong. But that was my survival tactic for so many years. And what was wild is on my personal journey, I just threw myself into getting educated around behavior, around human development, and around emotional resilience and intelligence and health. But there was a moment in time. Even with an undergraduate degree in music therapy and psychology, and a national board certification here in the United States as a music therapist, even with a master's in counseling, where I got a 4O because I wanted to be the best student possible and learn as much as I could. Even after working at psychiatric hospitals, drug and alcohol rehab facilities for adults, being a school counselor for years, a school counseling coordinator, and, you know, having all of this information, I just still wasn't emotionally regulated. My past was still running the show and I didn't understand why I was stunted in. The good news here is we don't need to go into shame. We don't need to go into embarrassment, we don't need to go into self deprecation. We just need to understand what the hell is going on here that has us fighting with ghosts and in our relationship experiencing patterns that we experienced in our family dynamics, whether it was our parents with us or our parents with each other or our Parents with our siblings, what was modeled growing up, it becomes a glass ceiling that we have the ability to break through and shatter. Which, by the way, the practice of emotional healing, it's a practice that heals generational pain patterns. And if you're here with me, you are likely the cycle breaker in your family. You are likely the generational healer in your family. But what happens so much, so often for so many of us that were that kid that saw it could be better, why isn't it so often we thought something was wrong with us and the possibilities that we wanted for our family became absolutely out of the question. If what we saw as possible wasn't validated, if we thought, oh, my God, something must be wrong with me, I must be crazy, Crazy likely we just dumbed it down. We just decided to adapt and conform to the family and those patterns and those dynamics. And guess what? That's the beginning of us no longer honoring ourselves. That is the beginning of where we neglected ourselves. We neglected what we saw as possible, what on some level we knew as possible, and just decided something must be wrong with what I'm imagining could be true. So I'm just going to neglect the desire to make this my reality. I'm just going to fall into line and I'm just going to submit to the reality that I'm learning is as good as it gets, is how it is in my family system. So if you need to pause and listen to this again, please, please, please, I am giving you gold here. Not, you know, because I'm so smart. Because I have worked with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of couples and families and individual clients that are leaders, that are effective, that are successful, and yet they're unfulfilled, mostly because they're not getting their own needs met in their life. And I am promising you every single time it goes back to when what did I learn was acceptable or not acceptable about my needs being met? Growing up, what did I see my parents experiencing? Was my mother getting her needs met or did she decide that would make her selfish? Was my father getting his needs met and everybody else suffered as a result? So why would I ever want to be the person in my family that gets my needs met when it is that damaging to everyone around me? Your modeling. Were you the golden child that was spoiled? Were you the sibling that watched another sibling be the golden child that was spoiled and it all just felt like too much? What is your story? Start there. Journal about the patterns in your family system. Journal about the modeling. What was acceptable, what wasn't when it came to getting your needs met. And in so many of our families, me betraying myself in the name of love, me dumbing down the truth about who I really am, what I really want, what I really need. That happens. And it happens in different ways. But here's what will occur if we're not careful, if we don't decide it's finished. Enough is enough. My getting my needs met, that changes right here, right now. It no longer has to be that what I was taught is appropriate. That's it. That's where the bar sits again. We're raising the bar today, right here, right now, you and me. Why not let your children or the children in your life see you modeling healthy, healthy dynamics and healthy ways of getting your needs met. That isn't you, you know, bulldozing everybody around you to get your needs met, or pretending like you have no needs or. This one happens all the time. We just don't talk about it. Secretly getting your needs met and trying like hell to make sure nobody sees right. Needs getting met in dysfunctional ways like addiction, affairs, hurting yourself in any way, shape or form, burning the candle at both ends to try to prove your worth. These are all unhealthy. So the past bleeds into the present until you become a fully expressed adult, until you heal up that stuck age, heal through and release stuck emotions that have been just trapped in your body, in your cells and festered, and have become toxic. This is the path because we don't want you feeling like, oh my God, here we go again with another person. And we don't want you to continue to end relationships, hoping the next one's better when you haven't healed through the limited possibilities that were modeled to you growing up and have become where your bar sits, where your standards are. We're raising the bar today. You are a divine child of God. You are meant to be cherished, but the world isn't going to cherish you more than you cherish you. And we've heard that before, so many of us. Maybe in a different way, but let me just say it again. The world will not cherish you more than you cherish you. The world will not fulfill your needs more than you are committed to being the one that makes sure your needs are met. Okay, point three. Let's talk specifically about the impact of self worth and self esteem being a major factor around why we feel neglected in our relationships and why we feel like our needs just don't matter or just aren't getting met in our relationships. Relationships I was told once by a former mentor that self esteem is the one thing that can never heal. We can train confidence, we can train self worth, but we can't train or heal self esteem. I'm just gonna say it. Fuck that. That all day long, we can absolutely heal self esteem. And if I can, as a survivor of extreme childhood abuse, physically ment, mentally, sexually, starting when I was four, we all can. And I'm not here to say, oh, my story is so bad, so if I can do it, so can you. But I am here to say I have survived my way through my life with about this much self esteem until about three years ago. I am telling you, until I was in my late 30s, I had no self esteem. And because I had been told by mentors, you're never going to have it, I just thought I had to live in spite of it and achieve more to make up for the lack of self esteem and self worth. So if you struggle in any way with low self esteem, low self worth, no confidence, please listen up. It can heal. It can heal. I'm living proof and I have countless clients that are living proof. We've got to be the one with our own inner child. We've got to be the one as the adult, as the fully expressed adult that is providing the needs that were not met for our inner child to our inner child. So maybe I felt powerless growing up. Maybe I was afraid. I didn't want to take up too much space, so I just tried to be quieter. I just tried to not have needs. Whatever it is, you needed validation. You needed approval. You needed, more importantly, to be seen, to be heard and to be valued and to know your worth. You are the one that must take responsibility for providing validation to yourself, providing approval to yourself, seeing yourself, listening to yourself, honoring yourself, supporting yourself, respecting yourself. I could go on and on and on, but it is critical, it is essential that you reparent yourself, that you as the adult come in and go, come here, you scrumptious, beautiful, precious angel. I've got you. You're never going to be alone again, ever. Because I've got you. I'm never leaving your side. We treat ourselves the way we were treated. And then we hope our future relationships make up for where our needs were neglected growing up. And here's the most important thing I think I could say this entire series. Maybe this isn't about beating up your parents. This isn't about them being the reason that you're suffering and struggling in your relationships today or the reason why you feel Neglected in your relationships today? Oh hell no. I am not the coach that says, well, we have to blame someone outside of ourselves and it's our parents fault. It's our parents fault. Our parents are a product of the generational programming in our family system. Guaranteed they did the best they could with what they had, guaranteed they did better than their parents did and they loved us. I promise you, I've never met a parent that didn't love their child. And I have worked with people that physically abused their children, that mentally abused their children. They still loved them. They were just powerlessly trying to take their power back. They were just still at the effect of their childhood trying to navigate those waters with some inappropriate standards and norms that they didn't want to play out, but they just didn't know, didn't have to be there. So if you've been playing out norms that you know aren't good enough for you, that you know aren't good for you, that you don't want your children to see and inherit, if you are playing out relationship dynamics and you don't have children but you want better for you and your partner, this is it. This is it. This is the work going. Wait a minute. My past is impacting the present. And as long as I resign as the unhealed inner child that doesn't expect better and won't do better for myself, the cycle continues. I continue to neglect me. I continue to experience the people I love neglecting me. Just like I experienced my family of origin neglecting me or my caretakers growing up neglecting me. And here's the deal, my friends, it does not have to continue to be Groundhog Day day after day after day after day after day. Everything can change, starting right now, because you understand the possibility of you becoming the adult you always needed for yourself. This brings me to point 4. It is time to create an environment that nurtures you. Now I see this over and over and over again in my private practice where people, they set up home life, their environment to match what they experienced growing up. The whole point of going back is not to re traumatize yourself, is not to have to live it again. It's to break free and break through so you can have a brand new experience. So let's start with this. Not what was so terrible about my environment that I'm playing out today that it's my fault if I'm still doing this to myself. No, that's not the conversation. We're in a different discussion now. The conversation now is what environment would Nurture me now. If that question feels like a doozy, feels super confronting. You have no freaking clue. Good news, Just start flirting with possibility. Let's trial and error, let's guess. So when I'm talking about environment, I'm talking about everything from my physical environment. How my feeding, moving, nurturing my body. What is the environment I'm living in for so many years? I'll be honest, I'll call myself out. I was running on fumes, I wouldn't eat. I was anorexic for years. I was poisoning myself with, with way too much exercise, way little sleep, way too little sleep. I was not in any way caring about what rest I needed, what types of relationships were good enough for me, what type of romantic partners I was choosing. And I'm not again calling anybody else out. The people I was attracting, like, attracts. So I wasn't taking good care of me. So guess what? I was attracting people who weren't taking good care of themselves either. So how the hell were they supposed to take care of me more than they were taking care of themselves, right? So I was absolutely not believing I had worth or self esteem as we've already talked about. And again, the path to healing through self esteem. It's you honoring you the way you always deserved to be honored. It's you honoring you the way God is already honoring you that you just might not yet know how to receive. Okay, so the environment, everything from your physical body to your sacred space. And do you even treat your body like it's sacred? Do you even treat your car like it's sacred? Your home in every single room, drawer, closet, like it is sacred? If not, please start there. Do you treat your relationships like they're an environment to nurture? They are. They are. I love my body like never before. My home, every single room. My sister likes to say it's like a museum in my house. It is so exactly what I want, so exactly how I want it. And it's beautiful and it's clean and it's open and it's bright. And that was not my childhood. You know, the walls in my room growing up in high school, I painted them red. Like blood red, dark red. My window sills and closet, they were a dark purple. It was so dark. And what I always say is, the darkness is real, but so is the light. So when it comes to your environment, your body, your home, your spirituality, your relationships, your money, your sex life, how are you nurturing it? Don't let this be a big overwhelming question. Just pick one area. Maybe it's your body. Maybe it's your bedroom, maybe it's your car. Maybe it's your closet. Pick one environment to nurture. Take it, run with it. This is an assignment that will change your life, not to mention your mind. How are you nurturing your mind? I help my clients find their right, most aligned way to nurture their environment in all of these areas themselves. In all of these areas. I love to teach again. If you're new to the channel, if you're new to working with me, if you're just meeting me for the first time, I am not the coach that says healing is possible and here's the right way to do it. No, I don't know the right way for you. I certainly know the right way for me. And I certainly believe with all of my heart that healing isn't just possible in general. It's possible for you. And where there's misaligned energy, where there's hurt of any kind, guess what? That's an opportunity to heal and nurture you, starting with your environment. And you know the way. You know the way. So taking on your environment, it clears out all this excess, all this heaviness, all this chaos that isn't helpful, that clogs you up and prevents you from being able to connect to your own truth. There's not a right or a wrong way to heal or to live, or to lead or to love. But there is what works for you. And my goal today is to help you find what works for you. So start with one area of your environment to nurture this week and really take it on. Even if it's just organizing your bookshelf or your makeup drawer or your jewelry chest or your wallet. Start nurturing you the way you wish the world and your relationships would. Start nurturing your environment. Oh, my goodness. How game changing is that for you and for your relationships and to help you break the cycle of feeling like you're just constantly neglected in your relationships. And you might be thinking, rebecca, how does any of this have to do with how neglected I am in my relationships? My spouse calls me names. My spouse hasn't had sex with me in three months or three years or three decades maybe, you know? Yes, okay, I hear you. I see you. I validate. None of that's cool. None of it's unacceptable and it's all real. But don't let that mean you don't get to have yours, that this is just your fate, that you're just going to continue to be neglected. No, no, no. I am so Proud of my marriage and of my family. I am so proud of the life I've built. And again, I'm not the coach that's like, you know, do what I say, don't do what I do. I've spent decades nurturing my environments across the board. And I am telling you, my relationship, my marriage, it is elevated beyond comprehension as a result. Okay, final point for today.5. This one is huge. So everybody just take a deep breath with me. I'm so proud of you for coming this far in this episode. I'm so proud of you for being here with me for a huge conversation. The fifth big thing I want to talk about today is evolving together as needs change over time. This is so simple, not easy, but especially if you've been in relationship for years and years and years. I recently did a healing roadmap call with a woman who'd been married for 30 years, recently found out her spouse was having an affair and she was devastated. Totally understandable. But what happened there is. As these two beautiful souls grew together, had their life play out, they didn't check in. How are our needs changing over time? Who are we now versus 30 years ago? And the healthiest relationships, they evolve and they grow. People evolve and they grow together and they check in. What I needed a year ago is not what I need now from my husband. And I'm telling you, the way I grow and you might be like me or you might want to get to this place for yourself, if not already a week. For me, I grow a lifetime. Every single week, every year is a decade or more worth of growth for me just because I'm continuing. And this is what the practice of emotional healing offers us, to shed what isn't me so I can get more free and more liberated and more authentic and more aligned. That's the point. The practice again of emotional healing is not to go back and relive and be re traumatized and just stuck in a rut. The point is, let's go back there, clean up, clear out what hasn't been cleaned up or cleared out yet so we can be fully expressed. Releasing the stuck ages that need to be healed, transformed, grown through and released. Releasing the stuck emotions that need to be healed, grown through, released and unstuck so that we're just who we are now. So another great journal exercise is who am I now? What do I need now? What do I want now? And again, if you don't know, go back to unveiling the secrets around why we don't get our needs Met in relationship. That first part of our four part series here. Or at the very least just start writing down, here's what I know I don't want and need and just start guessing, here's what I think I might want and need instead. And then just play with it, flirt with it. See the other big relationship hack that I'll leave you with here for taking on, evolving and reassessing what our needs are now as individuals and as a couple. Every single week I give this assignment to all my couples, do three things. Number one, take inventory. What's working, what's not, what needs to happen. Instead, have a conversation. Mark and I, we get out our calendars on Sunday, we pour some coffee, we get in our hot tub and we talk about how this week goes, what's working for us, what isn't. And then we never just are focused on, here's what the problems are, here's what's pissing us off, here's what's not working. We talk about what is working first because we want to be able to build off of that. We talk about what is working first because we want to be able to build off of that. We talk about what isn't working and what's the solution. We make a request or we offer a solution. We come to the table with ideas so that we're not just passing the problems back and forth or focused on the problem or the limited possibilities or the low vibration we're frustrated with and don't want anymore. Now this conversation, it doesn't happen on a date night. It doesn't happen while we're busy. It doesn't happen as an ambush. I'm in the middle of something and Mark comes down the stairs. Here's what's not working. With no permission, with no invitation, with no agreed upon, we're going to have a real conversation. And that's how I want us to think about it. It's a real conversation. It's not a hard conversation or a difficult conversation. We're getting real because we care about all three. Me getting my needs met, my partner getting their needs met. And the relationship is a separate entity getting its needs met. So these are the three big areas that we want to tackle when it comes to growing and evolving together. My needs getting met, that's my responsibility. I've got to communicate lovingly, gently. Open heart is so important. Seeing the other person is innocent. They're doing the best they can with the tools they have at their level of awareness. And it's my job to train myself to have the guts, the self esteem to be able to just be honest. Here's where I'm at. Here's what's working, here's what's not. Here's what would work instead. Every single week. Second big thing is please go on dates. Please. We have a sacred Monday night date night. We have a standing babysitter and we don't talk issues on the date. We are on Sundays having that inventory conversation on Mondays. We go have fun every week we take turns who plans the date and we just spend quality time together because we enjoy each other. We found each other against all odds. This love story is better than any fairy tale. And I know how to help you have a love story better than any fairy tale. But we can't just expect our needs are only going to be met as much as they were met growing up and have a love story better than a fairy tale. We've got to decide to take on getting our needs met for that to happen. And then the third big thing is physical intimacy. Whatever that looks like to you. Have physical touch. Have physical connection in whatever way you're comfortable with. But every single week, an inventory conversation, a date. Physical connection and intimacy. Emotional connection and intimacy. Watch everything change from there. I hope this episode has been helpful. I hope you got what you needed. I'd love to hear in the comments what that is. What did you get that you needed that maybe you didn't even know you needed? What's one big takeaway from today's episode that you're going to take into your heart and into your life today and this week? Again, I'm so thankful that when you could be anywhere, you took the time to join me and to go on a journey of unpacking how to get your needs met so that you're not feeling neglected day after day, year after year, season after season in your relationships. I'm so proud of you. I couldn't love you anymore if I tried. I mean that with all of my heart. The darkness is real, but so is the light. And healing is possible. And not just in theory. It's not promised. But it is possible. For you, for me, and for all of us when we'll show up to the table and take ownership and leadership over getting our own needs met in this one precious lifetime. Please share this video with anyone you know who needs it. Please again subscribe to the YouTube channel hit that bell so you can get all of our latest and greatest content right away. And if you're feeling called, visit rebeccasilence.com where you can join me for free services. You can order my amazing book Coming back to Life which by the way chapter two will give you so much more around how do I navigate the stuck ages and the stuck emotions that are still running the show that I didn't even realize or apply to coach with me so that you can get the direct VIP access to me that will help you quantum leap so fast. There are so many services on the website so go check it out. RebeccaSilence.com and I will see you soon. No more feeling neglected in relationships. No more resigning to my fate is to just have unmet needs and make the best of it or worse my fate is to make the best of really low self esteem. No life gets to get so good. Relationships are amazing. Stay tuned. Two more parts to this series coming up for you soon again. Love you. Talk again next week. Bye everyone. Sam.