Un-nerving Your System

For most of my life, I thought feeling safe was something I received from other people. Looking back, it was due to experiencing emotional invalidation. In all its forms, invalidation instilled in me a false belief that safety comes from outside of yourself. If you’ve been emotionally invalidated, you may feel:

That your feelings needed someone else’s agreement before they were real.

That love was something you earned by being understanding, patient, and accommodating.

That if someone couldn’t meet your needs, you should explain them better instead of asking whether they were capable of meeting them.

That keeping the relationship was more important than keeping yourself.

That your nervous system belonged in someone else’s hands.

For years, I worked hard to make other people feel important because that’s what I thought love was. More than anything, I wanted to feel important to the people I loved. So much so, I would force the “wrong” relationships into being right.

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I’ve done a lot of work this last year and it’s shed light one an important truth: truly feeling important comes from within.

That’s an easy concept to say, but how does someone actually feel important on the inside? Also, how do you feel important enough on the inside that you could confidently walk away from anything that isn’t aligned with your needs?

The first step is taking back the keys to your nervous system.

When you are in a relationship with someone who doesn’t align with your needs, your insides may spiral out of control asking:

Why haven’t they texted me?

Will they choose me?

Will they consider me?

Am I important?

Each question places your foundation in someone else’s hands. Any time someone shows up it makes you feel secure; but if/when they pull away, that foundation crumbles. You’re nervous system will constantly look to the outside by begging and pleading for things it shouldn’t have to ask for. Things it wouldn’t have to ask for, from an aligned partner. If this sounds familiar, your nervous system may need a bit of reprogramming.

First, building security in your own foundation is making how you feel about yourself strong enough to hold yourself; while you discover what it means to be aligned.

This secure self is based on YOU. Not someone else. Healing isn’t about learning how to make someone stay.

That’s the confusion you created by forcing the wrong relationship so having someone (even the wrong someone) regulates you. Living through emotional invalidation can allow you to create a self that is hyper-focused on what others need. How someone else feels. If you’ve been emotionally invalidated for decades, it conditions you to be empathetic to others needs - but NEVER to your own.

The last year, I dove deep into myself to stop the cycle of choosing misalignment over choosing myself. I started asking the most important question: What do I need?

Honestly, when it comes to relationships, I’ve rarely thought about what I need. I’ve conditioned myself to think of what others need. My internal system believed giving others what they need, is love.

It’s not love. It’s service.

What you need is the most important thing you can discover.

Once I realized how little I asked myself what I needed, I had to create a new habit of asking myself. Every morning, I would ask myself these questions to focus on building my own foundation:

How do I feel?

What do I need?

What sounds fun today?

What would make myself proud of myself tonight?

What can wait?

That new habit, allowed me to stop focusing on what wasn’t aligned with me. I changed my belief that love is becoming what someone else needs, or them becoming what I need.

I learned to trust letting go of needing to be everything for anyone, except myself...

I learned that this is also not a failure.

It’s one of the deepest forms of self-understanding and self-love. It’s about trusting yourself.

It’s recognizing your needs and accepting that what doesn’t meet your needs, simply isn’t meant for you. Including realizing that YOU must meet your own needs.

Today, I don’t need someone to validate me to create my sense of security.

I am my own security.

I’ve built that security with my own boundaries. Boundaries, I used to believe, were walls that guarded my heart from getting hurt. Today, boundaries aren’t walls.

They’re standards.

They allow me to trust what I need, while keeping my heart completely open.

There is an incredible safety knowing you can leave a situation that doesn’t provide what you need and you will still be 100% okay within yourself. It’s because you can provide what you need.

If you’re settling for someone who consistently leaves you feeling unsafe, unseen, or emotionally alone, stop gripping tighter.

Don’t chase.

Don’t convince.

Instead, ask yourself one simple question:

What do I need?

It’s your job to figure that out. When you do, you will feel more like yourself than ever. Identifying and going after your needs and being able to provide them to yourself is the biggest gift you can give yourself.

Be kind to yourself and give it time. You can’t learn everything about yourself immediately. Begin to notice how much you focus on what others and circle back to yourself until it becomes natural.

Once you master knowing what you need, it will be very difficult to prioritize a misaligned fit. You will know your own needs so well that you will find someone who naturally provides what you need; and for the first time, you’ll feel what I call, “leaning in” feels like.

Leaning in? Stay.

Leaning out? This is your responsibility to understand, why?

Leaning in is knowing what you need and moving toward that. Leaning out is also knowing what you don’t need and calls you to pay attention. Both signal that your nervous system is telling you something.

The right relationships are always invitations.

Master alignment within, first. When know your needs and have calmed your own nervous system; you’ll be ready to seek a relationship.

Next, when spending time with a potential relationship, ask yourself: Am I “leaning in” and are they “leaning in” to me?”

If you’re both on the same page, keep leaning in.

And if they don’t…you’ll be okay.

Let them go. Missing them is allowed. Grieving them is too.

Just remember: Your safety doesn’t leave if they do.

Because the safest place you will ever find, is leaning in.

Even if the person you’re “leaning in” to… is you.

You’re worth it,

Happy Amy