Episode 66 - From Stuck to Secure

This week’s podcast is an invitation. An invitation to stop feeling “stuck.” An invitation to step into the security and self-connection you need to move forward. Most importantly, it is an invitation to join my masterclass and workshop series, From Stuck to Secure, designed specifically for individuals seeking to improve their relationships, gain self-connection, find real belonging, and break free from people pleasing. In this episode, I share my personal journey of going from being stuck to being secure in my relationships. I emphasize the power of security, particularly security within yourself. Without it, you’re most likely trapped in a toxic and exhausting cycle of people pleasing and seeking endless external validation. But with security, you can take control – share your needs, take risks, and show up in every aspect of your life as your authentic YOU. It's about empowering yourself to be in charge of your happiness and fulfillment. 

I can’t wait for you to listen and to join From Stuck to Secure: Your Playbook for Changing Any Relationship, a masterclass in secure relationships, for an incredible value of just $37. Starting at the end of June, this masterclass and workshop series offers comprehensive information, personal guidance, and practical strategies that you’ll practice immediately.  Here’s what to expect:

• Two 90-minute interactive masterclasses, held in the evenings on June 25 and June 27, where you’ll learn to create security within yourself and your relationships. During these classes, you’ll make a playbook for yourself to put what you learn into action.  
• From June 28 – July 7, you’ll get an exclusive mini podcast series with additional and personal encouragement from me as you take the week to put your playbook into action.
•  On July 8, we’ll come together for a live group coaching session. This session will be a safe space for you to share your experiences, ask questions, and receive feedback. We’ll talk about what worked, what didn’t, and how to keep progressing. It's a unique opportunity to learn from others and build a supportive community.
•  You’ll wrap up with a one-on-one session with me, where we’ll dive into your specific journey. This personalized attention is designed to get you to a place where, no matter what comes your way, you can confidently say: “I approve of myself, and I can handle anything.”

Sign Up Here: sarafisk.coach/stucktosecure

More on the genesis of people pleasing: https://theexgoodgirlpodcast.bu

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Transcript

0:51

You are listening to the X Good Girl podcast, episode 66. Whenever I decide to offer a class, it is because I've gone through a period of self, Uh, experimentation and experimentation with some of my clients, where I have been able to see the need for either a certain set of skills or a certain type of, um, awareness, because remember to solve any problem, we need 3 things. We need awareness of the fact that it's a problem. We need to have the capacity to be able to address that problem. And we need the skills to be able to solve that problem. And so a very, very common problem for anyone who is a human is a relationship where you feel like something isn't working. So just do a little mental checklist with me. Think about Your work relationships. Is there a relationship there that doesn't feel like it's working very well where you're not able to say the things that you need to say where you are not able to work through problems or issues in a way that is, uh, that feels respectful, that feels productive, that feels like it honors everybody in the relationship. Think about your romantic relationships. Is there anything there that isn't working? Where you don't feel like you can show up and have your needs met. Where you can ask for things that you want. Think about your relationship. Maybe you have children. Or you take care of children. Think about those relationships. Is there any part of those relationships where you think, gosh, I just wish that were different, or I don't know how to move us from kind of always engaging in this way to engaging in a different way. This happens a lot. This used to happen to me a lot with my son. I would walk into his room. I would see the state of his room, which was usually messy. I would sigh and I would roll my eyes and we were kind of off to the races. What, mom? Why? Why are you coming in here? Why are you right? Because we had already had a particular dynamic that was set up where I would go in, I would be frustrated about his room. He would be frustrated that I was frustrated and then we would just kind of trade frustrations back and forth and we would never get to actually solving the room and protecting our relationship. Think about your relationships with friends. Are you able to say when your feelings are hurt? Are you able to say when you feel excluded or left out? Are you able to share your dreams, fun things in your life? Some friends yes, maybe some friends no, that's totally normal. Think through your family relationships. Are you able to participate in family events in a way that feels loving and good to you? Are you able to talk about expectations or hopes with family members for the relationships you would like to have? All of these things are very, very normal to want and to not have. And so when I was thinking about not, not just my own, That's Um, my own experience in my relationships, but I've been talking now for almost seven years to lots and lots of people and people pleasing and the good girl rules always show up and play out in relationships. So what I experienced in my own life was a feeling of stuck ness. And I'm just going to use my relationship with my husband because it was the most profoundly painful relationship that I had. Um, also I loved him so much and I did not have any skills and sometimes I didn't have any capacity to do anything different. And so we were in a relationship dynamic for a lot of years where we were both pretending that things were fine, that weren't fine. We were both. Performing for each other, right? These roles that we thought we were supposed to, and neither of us felt both of us felt that stuckness, and we did not know what to do about it. So what I want to do is address that dynamic head on the stuckness that we feel in relationships, because. Some of the relationships that we feel stuck in actually matter a lot to us relationship with parents where you have disagreements relationships with, um, maybe people you work with that contribute to your economic and financial security. Those are important with friends with neighbors with people that we have, you know, ongoing interactions with. And sometimes we feel stuck and we're able to just easily let a relationship go and move on. I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about the relationships that matter, where you feel like there is something that is not working. Most of the time, when we feel like something isn't working. If I were to kind of broadly survey my clients and even me, what we end up doing is hoping that the other person changes, we might drop hints about what we want to change. We might even address it directly, but we just hope that they will understand that their behavior is problematic or that if they just change these things, the relationship would be so much easier. And we spend a lot of time just sitting back waiting for that change to happen, hoping and hoping someone else will change is not an effective strategy for changing a relationship. And I, I mean, I say that out loud and it seems pretty obvious, but I know so many people think for just a second. Are you in any relationships where you're just kind of treading water, hoping that something changes, that's not bad or wrong. It's just not how relationships actually change. And so, in this masterclass series that starts on June 25th. I want to directly address how do you go from that stuck place to a place of more security? Because in all of the coaching that I have done, in all of the work I've done with myself, security is the key. And let me tell you what I mean by that. Security is the internal feeling of safety. And by safety, I mean the feeling that I can handle what will happen. It doesn't mean I like it. It doesn't mean it's easy. It might still be very overwhelming and it might be painful. And there might be a lot of big feelings to wade through or to work through. But I can do it. And so for a lot of my clients and for me, that was the part that was missing. I did not have the security within myself. To take on having some of these big conversations, I didn't have the security to take on bringing things up that felt really prickly and potentially like they were going to make somebody else mad. I think there's a lot of good reasons why we don't bring these things up when we don't have the skills and when we don't have the security. What we worry about is what if I hurt this other person's feelings, or what if I bring this up and I find out that they don't really value this relationship at the same level that I do, and they don't want to meet my needs or my wants. They don't want us to have this kind of reciprocal and responsive relationship. That's going to be painful. Or what if I lose or damage, what if I damage or lose this relationship completely? So there's a lot of good reasons why we don't bring this up and why we tend to just go into this kind of hoping state. And what I want you to know is there another, there's another way and it starts with security. The type of security that is the internal feeling of I can handle this. Not that it's going to be easy, not that it's going to not be painful. And the reason that I can handle it is because I know myself. I know how to take good care of me. And I know that no matter what happens, I will do that. So all of that starts first with you. And that's where we get turned around because remember what the good girl rules teach us is that other people's opinions of us, their, um, their thoughts about whether or not we're a good or worthy or valuable person. That's what gives us security. And you know what? That is part of it. We are wired to feel. Emotionally secure when we are with our group, think about how wonderful it is to be with people where you feel like you belong, where you can let your hair down, where you can be yourself. If you have even one place like that, that's such a gift. As I think about some friendships, as I think about my relationship with my husband and the security that I feel there, it's very tender. It feels like a warm weightedness, not heaviness, but like solid grounding. What does it feel like for you? Take just a second. Think about where you find that external security and belonging. Pay attention to your body. How does it feel for you? It's so important to recognize that. And it's so important to also affirm that as humans who are mammals, that we are pack animals. We are group animals. Who survive and thrive best in groups. So, of course, we need that external security. And if you've heard me kind of explain the, the, the, the genesis of people pleasing, it's because babies need to belong to survive. They need people bigger than them to take care of them. And so they pick up all this information about what the big people like and what the big people want. And then they do that and then they get belonging and acceptance and they get taken care of. That's a very simplified, um, kind of take on that. I have a whole podcast episode that dives into that, um, directly. And I'll link, I'll put a link to that in the show notes. But eventually, it almost feels like our need for outside external validation becomes bottomless. It's that bottomless pit feeling. I have definitely felt that. For a little while, um, my home's cold. Back in when I was, um, active in the LDS church, which I no longer attend, I was a school teacher. I wanted extra time with my kids. I thought the idea of homeschooling was brilliant and beautiful. And so that's what we did for like a decade. Crazy, huh? And I was a part of a group of women that I loved that I never really felt fully accepted by. And so every time Well, and, and to be, um, really transparent about why that was is because I already had doubts and questions about the LDS church and all of them were LDS. And there is this assumption among a lot of people, I'm not going to say everyone because I don't know, but in a lot of LDS circles, the assumption is that everybody believes the same thing and everybody agrees with the same things and everybody is in the same place in terms of their, their faith. And I knew that I wasn't. I knew that I thought differently about some really core things like, LGBTQ people and whether or not God loved them the same as everybody else and had an equal place for them in the church and You know, the, the, the theology around that I believe something very different and I knew it. And so I had this constant feeling of needing for them to approve of me so that I felt safe. With those parts of me that I knew that they would not approve of and so every time we would get together. I would feel kind of this familiar anxiety of wanting. I didn't I don't know. I for sure didn't know at the time that that's what it was. But if I could look back with hindsight being what it is. I was worried that there was some part of me that was unacceptable to them and rather than just address that directly, because I didn't have the capacity or skills to do that. I looked for other ways to be helpful, to be useful, to be needed. To be accepted for them to want to spend time and, um, you know, energy with, with me and my kids. And it was just a bottomless pit because Monday would be over and, you know, I would get the validation that I was looking for. And then on Thursday, I would need it again. And then the next time I would need it again. And so think for just a minute, is there a relationship like that in your life? Where it feels like no matter how many times. You feel validated. You feel needed and you feel loved. It's still not enough to provide that security for you where you just feel settled and confident that this is real and it's not going to go away. It's very normal. If you're feeling that, there's nothing wrong with that. That happens in every single human, uh, relationship of every single human I've ever worked with. So the good news is if you're like, yeah, I, I can think of a relationship right now that just feels like a never ending need for validation and belonging. That's just totally normal. That's a human experience. The problem is that just becomes really painful to live with day after day after day. And then the way that you try to get that validation is by overgiving, overworking, Over delivering on maybe things that you wouldn't do if you felt secure. So the point of this masterclass series that is coming up is to offer people a place to create first that security with themselves. We're going to bring that need for validation that we've been outsourcing and we're going to bring it in house. Thanks. And we're going to create security with us first. Now, there is a real risk here that I could oversimplify this. And so I'm kind of, I'm trying to talk about it as if it is doable, but not simple. Because it is absolutely doable. How long it takes or what will come up for you as you are creating the security for yourself, I don't know that. And frankly, probably neither do you, right, at this point. Because. The first step in creating security for ourselves is actually to figure out why we don't feel secure with ourselves. Is it because you are just in a chronic state of doubt? Is it because you are chronically critical or judgmental? Is it because you, you are your own bully? Always tearing yourself apart, examining all of the mistakes that you made, berating yourself for not doing better and being better. I never tire of saying this. A woman who is not safe with herself is not safe anywhere. So the first step in creating that personal security is to find out why you have those parts. That are just tearing you to pieces every time something goes wrong. And then it's to give those parts of you love and curiosity and time and attention. All of us have parts. That came into being when we were young, when we needed to be, um, noticing what other people wanted from us, when we needed to be aware of the rules of the different groups that we belonged to, we needed, it was essential that we become very aware of what would get us rewarded in our groups. And what got us punished because again, belonging is a central human need. And so if I need to belong, I need to know what I get in trouble for doing and thus gets me disconnected and what I get rewarded for with more connection and belonging. It's essential. So once we understand and have compassion for those parts of us that that's all they were trying to do. They're just trying to keep us secure and they do it. By trying to, it, it, it, it, it, in my brain, it sounds like this. If I just beat you up enough, you'll change. If I am just hard enough on you, you'll do it differently next time. You'll remember. It's going to be so painful this time that you'll just really remember. And you know what the crazy thing is? At one point that worked. I was very motivated by avoiding the pain of disappointing other people and I would change my behavior. Absolutely. And it got me belonging and it got me friendship and it got me community. The problem becomes as I get older, and I see the amount of self abandonment that I have to do to keep the rules of those groups. I don't want to do it anymore. But this part of me is still is very well developed and has been with me for decades. And so that part that needs to be done. My attention is trying to keep me safe. It's trying to get me belonging. It's trying to protect the communities that I'm a part of. And so of course, when I'm again, back to my relationship with my husband, I, whenever I would want to tell him how much I needed him, how much I loved him, how worried I was that he would leave, how the thing, some of the things that he did hurt my feelings or made me feel like. Small. I would have a part of me that would scream. No, do not say that. Stop. You cannot say that. He's going to think you're gross. He's going to think you're needy. He's going to think that there's something. Why are you so needy? Stop. No, no. Just deal with it on your own. You just tuck that feeling down in there. No, that's gross. Even as I say that, I kind of feel the anxiousness intention in my body and that's what it would feel like. Right, like, I have all of this hurt or this vulnerability or this tenderness. I want to share and I can't because this protector part is in the way. And so when we want to make the switch from stuckness or being stuck in that. You know, place where I can't do anything right except go hide and pretend like nothing is wrong and lick my wounds in private and take care of my sadness on my own. That's my only option. That feels really stuck. And so to move into a place of security means to help that part know. That I can handle what's going to happen. And it involves creating a completely different conversation around those big feelings and around the worries that those parts have about what's going to happen if you tell this other person, what you really think. What's going to happen if you share your innermost tenderness? And maybe not even innermost tenderness, but like, what's going to happen if you tell your boss, you know what, I'm going through a really hard time right now. I have a lot of demands on my mental health or on my actual physical health. And I'm not going to be able to take on that extra project right now, because what we worry about most is punishment. And when it's tied to receiving love, economic security, of course it feels scary. But on the other hand, we have the self abandonment, the overworking, the overgiving, the not taking care of ourselves. And so if you are at a point in your relationships where you can see that stuckness. And it hurts or it bothers you, or, you know, you just something has to change and you've been putting a lot of time and energy and effort into hoping or hinting, then this workshop is for you. I've tried to make it as easy as possible to say yes. All of the details that you need to know are in the link in the show notes and in my bio, but I'm going to tell you what they are here. Just so you know. It's two 90 minute classes. on June 27th, excuse me, June 25th and June 27th in the later evening so that anyone can attend. First night, June 25th, I'm going to teach you how to create the security with you. And then the second night, I'm going to teach you how to create that security or how to take that security that you've created with yourself into the relationships that you're trying to change. So that you can have some of these conversations, you're going to leave those two sessions with an actual playbook for how to maintain and continue to create more security with yourself. And then how to take that security and have conversations, because one of the things that is the hardest for people pleasers is to say the words we actually want to say. So then you're going to have a period of time to practice, but I'm not going to leave you all by yourself. Between June 28th and July 7th, You're going to get a mini podcast series that is private. It is just for the people who sign up for this class. They're going to be very short episodes, reminders, encouragement, stories, strategies, tips to just keep you on track. This practice session or this kind of practice time that you're going to be given between June 28th and July 7th. It's essential because it's you taking that playbook on a test drive. And we need to know what happens. We need to know what goes right and we need to know what goes wrong so that we can tweak it and try again. So in that period of time, you're going to get the mini podcast series and I'm going to be sending you some texts to encourage you to invite any responses and get you any coaching that you need. Then on July 8th. We're going to come back together for a group coaching session. This is one of my favorite things because it's where we evaluate what worked, what didn't work, and what do I need to keep going and try again. If you are serious about building security, this is the place to be because you get the teaching, you get the practice, you get the evaluation, and then every participant gets. a free one on one session with me. 45 minutes that is just yours so that I can go through with you the specifics of your relationships. And I can also offer you some information on how I could be helpful if you joined my group stop people pleasing. Because one of the things that is the most essential part of this is that you begin to get a vision of yourself with more security. You begin to see what would I be capable of if I had more security with myself and in my relationship. A secure woman can speak up with confidence. And again, her confidence is not that everybody else is going to like what she's going to say, or that they're going to approve, but that she approves and that she can handle whatever happens. A woman who is secure has at least a general understanding of what makes her happy, what she wants, what she doesn't want, what she likes, what she doesn't like, and she's able to take the risk of sharing that. Because she is so connected to herself and loves herself deeply. I know that some of this sounds so far away from where you are, but I want you to just stick with me. Because we can't move toward a goal unless we have some idea. Of why it's valuable. So a secure woman can disappoint other people when that is what is best for her. It's still not something she enjoys doing. There might be some anxiety or some fear there. That's very normal, but she can do it when it is what needs to happen. A secure woman can have hard conversations. She can set and hold boundaries. She can decide the direction of her life where she wants to spend her time. And self connection is the goal here. Many people think that when you stop people pleasing, you become selfish. But what I want you to understand is that security isn't selfish. It is self connection. And the beautiful thing about self connection is once you have it, you want it for everybody. Like, this feels so amazing to have my own back this way. I want everybody to have it. And so you show up differently. You honor yourself and everyone else in the relationship in a different way that is not selfish at all, but from self connection and from the confidence that you can handle whatever happens. Thank you. You are a different person in the relationships that you have, and you can say what you need to say and do what you need to do. And that is like, if I could wave my magic wand and have that for every single person. I think that's, that's it. Right. Because when we can all remain in self connection and love for me and love and connection to you, then our relationships are much more honest, and they're much richer. So if this sounds like. Something that you want to consider this your invitation to join this workshop series that starts on June 25th, everything you need to know to sign up. Oh, I forgot to mention it's 37 tried to make it super accessible and inexpensive. One more time, you get the 290 minute master classes on the 25th and 27th of June. There's a practice period where you get a lot of support and a lot of interaction from me between the 28th of July and the 7th of June. Of June, excuse me, 28th of June and 7th of July, and then on the 8th of July, a group coaching program. And then a one on one. I can't wait to see you. Whenever I do something like this, I put my heart into it because it is truly my wish that every single woman, every single human be able to act from self connection and confidence, having their own back. And that's what we're going to do. I'll see you then.