A “caretaker” prioritizes, thoughts, feelings, behaviors of another person over their own.
A “caretaker” is so focused on taking care of others physical and emotional needs that the individual forgets to take care of their own…
Then in burnout or overwhelm, the individual then remembers they have needs too but feels guilty about meeting them, and worse than guilt doesn’t even know the HOW to meet them.
A taker receives without reciprocating.
This dynamic duo is unhealthy in dynamics ➡️ becomes unbalanced and dysfunctional by all rights.
❓Are you a caretaker so focused on meeting the needs of others that you ignore your own needs?
❓Do you get hurt, upset, angry, disappointed when the other person doesn’t notice your efforts?
❓Do you feel anxious, frustrated, out of control within when your partner, family member or friend isn’t reciprocating?
❓Do you obsess in THOUGHT cycles of what the other person is thinking? Doing?
❓Do you self medicate with alcohol to numb feelings over your overwhelm, stress, disappointments, feelings of rejection, abandonment, and or unworthiness?
❓Do you think if you can get someone to just “hear” you that you can somehow convince the other person to validate your worth?
❓Do you take responsibility over someone else’s choices – how they feel? How they act?
❓Are you looking to another for approval? Are you striving so hard to get your effort noticed about what you were doing for another that you are neglecting your other roles and responsibilities?
❓Are you afraid that if you stop focusing so hard on “them” that they will leave/abandon you if you do not meet their approval?
❓Do you blame others for how you feel?
❓Are you now emotionally “dis-regulated” because you are feeling the “dis-ease.”
✅ If any of these questions apply to you, you may want to consider that you were looking outside of yourself to get your emotional needs met, you may have disconnected from the source of power…
✅ When you become solely dependent on another’s actions to dictate your thought or emotional life, you may begin spiraling down into the slippery slope of lacking trust and confidence in your own self. ⬇️
✔️ You may have trouble setting boundaries and “voicing” those boundaries (when needed) to others in a healthy way.
✔️ Trouble communicating? Have you now reached the point where you are avoiding the other person in order to avoid conflict?
💥 Building HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHERS starts with building a healthy one in YOU.
🌸 Happiness is not dependent on others but a state of being that you develop from within… despite actions and circumstances of others.
❣️ Yes, if you are a “caregiver” in a relationship, it’s natural to want to step in, take over all in the name of “HELP” but it becomes unhealthy for everyone involved, when it means that you lose yourself in the process.
It may just be the time to step in and understand what the first part of the commandment means to love yourself. ⬇️
Developing FIRST your IDENTITY in which you are your own INDIVIDUAL and can express yourself from a place of understanding of who you are (and created to BE in HIM).
✔️ Healthy relationships with others overflow from the state of knowing who you are…
✔️ When you know who you are and whose you are, you know what to do…
⁉️ Maybe the gap in loving others is because there’s the gap of loving others as thy self…
Our capacity to love others can only come from the cup from which we are filled….
What’s in your cup? What well are you drinking from?
Be YOU in Him 🌸 LivingOUTLoudLife.com
