When You're Amazing at Holding Others (But Can't Be Held Yourself)

It feels edgy to admit this, but I'm going to do it anyway. There were many times during my healing career where I was seeing multiple clients a day in my home office that I felt jealous of my own clients. I felt envious of their the quality of care and attunement I was providing them. But I felt deeply green with jealousy at how well they were able to receive it and how they were able to invest in receiving being held being met in the way that was happening in that office. If you even recognize like you have a twinge of recognition at what I'm talking about, this episode is for you.

This is the Healer's Journey Podcast. I'm your host, Inge Broer, and today what we're talking about is that pernitious block on many healers journeys that they feel like they are too big, too complicated, too complex, too, I don't know what to be held to themselves. And so they become exquisite at holding other people because they long for it so deeply. Then this one's for you if you have a story that you're here to help other people to help to hold other people but not to be held yourself. And it feels a little bit like a tragic myth that you're a tragic hero here to hold up the world.

But the world isn't to hold up you. And despite energy work forcing us to ground, to feel held ourselves, you've managed to somehow skip that part and just take it all on yourself anyway. And trust me, I I know I am starting to see my journey as the journey of a perfectionist. somebody who on the outside became really good at presenting as kind, as having her stuff together, at being in control, independent, um, never needing anyone or burdening anyone. And this happened young. I had some friends who did an intervention with me when I was maybe turning 12.

They're like, "I don't think we know you. You're pretending to be perfect all the time and we don't really know you." And I remember at the time it went in one ear and then it literally went the other. I could not remember. Like my brain went completely blank because it was so true. I was so called out on my ego strategy in that moment that I couldn't like I couldn't let it in. It was kind of life-threatening for me at that time. And I think a lot of healers are born this way. I think a lot of us learn somehow that we learn to hold others.

We learn to keep the peace. We learn to be really great diplomats. We learn to soothe because the world feels more manageable and in control that way. The cost, the hidden cost, one of them is that we ourselves feel like we cannot show vulnerability. We cannot present our soft underbellies to the world. Because the way the healing gift is born for some of us is a survival strategy. And it is a place where it feels void of kindness and it feels void of gentleness. And so we become something that that system needs desperately.

that at a one of the things that happened for me and you might recognize this in your system as well is that because I became so good at plugging the holes at holding the people that needed to be held at um being a really great second in command in some ways. I took on the energy around me like it was my job because as a kid in some ways it was not so much in my family system but very much at school. And in the long run what happens is that you become so adept at everybody else's feelings and emotions and energies not just at knowing them but at becoming them and at becoming an answer to them.

that if someone asks or wants to know like how you are, you can't even answer that because you just don't know. You get lost in all of that. And again, I'll speak for myself. I got lost in all. I was somehow sort of as a kid stoic, outwardly presenting, very kind, unflapable. And when the kids in my school tried to make me cry to like bring down that facade, I worked extra hard at my facade and I got really good at it. Inscrutable in some ways. And so when I was a bit older, when I was about 17 and I had my first boyfriend and he called on all of that and he was really actually interested in getting to know me, knowing what I thought, what I felt, not some reflection of my friends, not some reflection of what I thought would be the right answer.

And what happened is that I just started crying all the time. It's like I discovered I had emotions and then the floodgates were open. And so somewhere there I thought, well, see, nobody can really hold me. I'm way too complicated. I'm way too big. I'm way too messy. But the reason that was is because I hadn't let myself be held for a good decade, my teenage years, when like what else did I need than that? And it's not like my parents didn't try. It's just that I was a vault. And so when I finally opened, it was really messy.

And I ended up in the basement of where I was living with this boyfriend. not at 17, but at uh 19, maybe 2 years later, we had moved out together. We'd moved out into the basement apartment his parents owned. And his stepmom was checking things out. You know how like there's we had a basement apartment and then there's like sort of more of a storage area. And she was there and she was hearing me whailing, just crying my eyes out. I'm not sure why. I don't think he had done anything wrong. It was just I was so full of emotion and so burnt out from this way of being that I really would cry.

And she she stopped the like facade of propriety and she like knocked and she came in and I was like, "What? Why is this person here? like nobody's supposed to see behind the scenes how and how much pain I am and she was a wise woman and she just gave me the longest hug and she asked me if I'd ever thought of going to see a psychologist and I mean I talked to my mom about this because I would also break down with her. I'd be kind of perfect everywhere else and then a little bit, not a little bit, I'd be very mean with her and I would break down in the biggest emotions with her ever.

And I couldn't explain it. She was like, "Okay, I think we need to see a psychologist." I was like, "No." Because at the time, I thought that meant that I'd failed. And in the game I was playing of like being perfect, quote unquote, uh yeah, that would have been a failure, but it was not a real game. That wasn't the game I wanted to actually wanted to be playing. The real game I want to be playing, and I knew this at the time was I wanted to be the most fully me. I wanted to be authentic when I grew up.

But that story that I'm too complex or too big to be held. I did go into therapy by the way and I learned EFT there and it was very helpful. I started unraveling things for me. But the story that I was too complicated, too deep to be held, that's sticking around and it's still not completely gone. So what it the impact of this was that I could never really go further than the limits of my own nervous system's comfort level with appearing perfect. As soon as I started appearing messy, I would shut down and collapse.

And so it required quite a long healing journey to be able to start receiving more. And so I did invest during my healing career in coaching in um other healings holding me and every time it dismantled this block a little further a little further and yet I did it with reserve. if I did small containers and in some ways that was the perfect thing for me because anything bigger maybe would have blown open my system and I may be ready for more support. It all started breaking the pattern started breaking at deeper and deeper levels once I had my kids with my first kid.

I decided that I was stopping all one-on-one work. And I'm really good at that one-on-one work. And I'm I receive a lot of validation from the clients. And at the time, my sense of worth was really tied with it. And I knew that. And I knew I needed to cut the addiction. I knew I needed to cut the addiction of um getting to be the one people project on as like having it all figured out, the one to help others. Um getting to play like lip service to being imperfect, but like I would do that perfectly, making myself appear human and all of that.

And I like I played it I really did played it to perfection. I did really good. But then with all the hormones and the really big event of the birth and stopping that, I plunged into a depression of sorts. But what it really was was a a sobering of using my healing work. Something what it really was was breaking the addiction pattern to the healing work itself and how it reflected on me and my ego. And then by the time our second kid came around, I was like, there's no way I'm surviving this unless I get support.

and I really figure out how to be supported myself. And so, as strange as this sounds, I started taking responsibility for being supported, for being held. I refused to continue the story of victimhood, that I am not supportable. And I started making lists that I pinned to our little corkboard inside like if you want to help us and you have 10 minutes you can sweep the floor. If you have 30 minutes you can do this and that and the other thing. And I think one person did it once but what felt important is that I took the decision that I was going to be learning how to be supported and how to be held and how to be not doing motherhood of two alone.

And our marriage until then had been like I'm pretty hyper independent, my husband's pretty hyper independent. We do lots of fun things together. We get along great. We're building a future together. But we weren't intertwined yet the way that children makes you intertwined. Literally, there's flesh and blood that is our flesh and blood intertwined. And we are now responsible for it. And it forced hundreds of uncomfortable conversations, uncomfortable moments of like, what do I actually need here?

Not what would be the perfect thing, but what do I actually need? And now, two years in of being parents of two kids, we've dismantled so many of our blocks. And one of the amazing things on the back end of that is we've created a community organization creating lots of events for our little neighborhood. And what that means is now we go and walk around and we have an actual village. We go to the pool, we see people. My husband now wakes up really early to watch the sunrise over the river and there's our friends there.

This afternoon, our neighbor who just moved from, well, moved a couple months ago from Alberta said, "Okay, when's break time in your house? I'll have some cake and tea." And the support is humongous. And I believe, if I can leave you with one thing, I believe that it is completely because I took ownership of my desire to be supported in this lifetime. that forced a lot of the perfectionist patterns out the door. Living in community means sometimes everybody sees me being completely overwhelmed with my kids.

And I don't like that they see that, but I like that they see that because sometimes it's my turn to receive and sometimes it's my turn to give. And the same goes for everybody here. I feel it's a permission giving. And what I'm interested in creating and stewarding and leading is a new way for healers to exist in the world. Perhaps by creating a community of healers where we can support each other without the posturing, without the I'm better than you because I need less than you. I'm better than you because I got my together more than you.

That has absolutely nothing to do with how well you receive support. In fact, for the things that really matter, do you feel free in your life? Do you feel loved in your life? Do you feel like you can have a relationship of intimacy in your life? Not having it all together on occasion and being totally open to receiving help and love might be the thing. So, over to you. This has been a long storytelling of my own tender shifts. With this, I want you to think to yourself, what resonates in this? Do I know that envy that Inge started this with?

Envy at how well my clients are able to receive. Envy at the quality of care I'm able to give. And do you receive that as a sign like I did that there's something that needs to be dismantled in you? It's time for the resentments to dissolve, for the ego story to evolve, and to start experimenting in small ways with receiving support. Perhaps simply taking responsibility for it. I'm hungry for support. I have beliefs that say I can't be supported, and I'm still hungry for it. Still desiring it. I'm still craving it.

And what would it look like if I took responsibility for that? Might you hire someone? Or might you call up a friend and say, "Thank you for waiting patiently for three decades. I am now ready to receive your support." And they're going to jump for freaking joy. Okay. Having been there, when our daughter, our second child was in the NICU, and I was very careful like who do I want to call? because I knew it was a kind of a gift because I hadn't let people support me. And the friend who was able to come, she was able to sort of drop everything, drive a full hour to come and drive me from the hospital home and back again.

It changed something in our relationship, something really big. And we'd been friends since we were nine. So, I'm not kidding about the 30 years and the three decades. I got to see her in a different way because I got to receive her as the support giver and she was really amazing at and I'd never given her that chance. And so I created a whole story in my head about who she is that wasn't true and vice versa. So give the people in your life the opportunity to show how caring and loving they can be as well.

It's not just you. Stop being so selfish. All right, that concludes our episode today, my darling. This has been the healer's journey. I'm your host, Inge Broer. Music has been by Lana Chakra. I hope you take this and experiment with how can I let 2% more support in from my environment? Maybe 5%. How can I see somebody in my life differently than I've seen them because I'm so attached to my own ego story? And when you're ready to do healing as a team sport, come find me. That's how I teach these days and that's how I mentor and that's how I do one-on- ones.

That's how I do everything. Healer Awakened, Healer Embodied are both group programs for this very reason.