The Paradox of Giving and Receiving

Artwork by Aphra Natley

Have you been noticing a surge of stress in your relationships and client work? Do you naturally posses the skill to help others, deep down you know it is your superpower, yet still struggle to integrate all you are feeling without losing yourself in the process?

I know for myself when I feel the collective struggle increase in intensity I speed up and immediately feel I HAVE TO DO something about it. My system wants to go right into helping, fixing, finding a solution.

With time I have learned that the deeper pattern here is: one of over connecting with the experience of others.

If you're ok. Then I can be ok too. If you are not ok, then there is a problem and I need to find it and fix it.
Sound familiar?

I see this a lot in my practice. Powerful, capable, empathic women who care deeply, are committed to their healing work with others and still struggle to maintain clear, authentic boundaries in personal and professional relationships.

The capacity to feel what others are feeling gives us the gift of being able to relate so well with others. As empathic people we are able to feel the experience of our clients and loved ones sometimes more than we are able to feel or acknowledge our own.

This highly attuned embodied skill is something we learn about, cultivate over time and use to help support our clients. When this skill of empathy is a deeply rooted in forms of presence self-responsibility and compassion it is healing and transformative. When it becomes debilitated by self-criticism, feelings of unworthiness and judgement we can fall into patterns of disempowered care-taking.

So, when the whole world hits a new level of crisis this can outright de-stabilize those of us who are sensitive, undermine our natural ability to self-regulate and compromise our capacity for resilient responsiveness.

There is nothing wrong with your unique ability to feel deeply. It is the source of your creativity and intuitive capacity to understand a situation from multiple perspectives. And for a long time it has been the way you created safety for yourself and others.

The challenge is that when your pattern of giving and receiving is not in harmony with what brings your system into balance it causes havoc on your ability to remain centered, grounded and clear in your relationships.

What I see most often in my practice is deeply feeling, deeply caring women who are so so hard on themselves for not “doing enough”. 

When we take a closer look usually at it’s core this is a place inside that needs permission to allow for support to come in and to feel safe experiencing deeper levels of healing, support and love.

Consequently, this is the same pattern I see over and over again that holds most women back from being able to receive acknowledgment, stand in the value of their work and make a good living doing what they love.

Unconscious patterns will show up all the time.

The point is not to hate on ourselves because of them or rip them out on the spot like a weed so that they are destroyed forever. The opportunity here is to learn from them.

To learn who we are by way of how we are.

This includes learning about how our tendencies to care-take show up, so that we can welcome new ways of being, make different choices and grow our authentic capacity to respond in ways that are healthy for us and sustainable in the long term.

There’s nothing wrong with your deep desire to help. There is nothing wrong with your deep feeling nature. There is nothing wrong with your capacity to hold space and care for others.

When it begins to eat up all of your energy, consume your vitality, prevent you from feeling pleasure in being yourself and blur your sense of self in relationships - this is when we know you've pushed past the boundary of what is healthy for you.

The paradox of giving and receiving is that true giving is from a place that can receive.

True giving arises out of being able to give to ourselves the full experience of who we are.

"Rescuing others: doing for others from what they can do for themselves. This victimizes and infantilizes them and gives you dominance over them."  - David Richo

Rescuing is not compassionate. Rescuing is not what healing is about.

In order to maintain healthy, authentic relationships with others we have to regularly practice tending to and taking responsibility for our own needs first.

In order to show up fully in our work and relationships we need to learn how to genuinely care for ourselves.

To know what a healthy authentic boundary feels like - uniquely for us, in our body.
To know how to create safety from within, so that when clients show up feeling unsafe in their experience (or the world feels like a terrorized place) we can respond appropriately to support them.

To support not from a place that is drowning with our clients. But from an informed and compassionate place that can hold perspective open and enable their authentic process to unfold.

So, that they may see themselves more fully and receive who they are with clarity. So that kindness, vitality, compassion and choice can emerge even in difficult situations.

The capacity for responsiveness is what true empowerment feels like.

All of your freedom resides in your power to choose to respond appropriately to a situation.

To be self-responsible (able-to-respond-first-from-within) is the foundation to creating resilient change.

Self-responsibility is the prerequisite to being able to help effectively in ways we care about.

I used to think it was my job as a healer to suffer for a cause. I used to make myself the martyr. To think that if I suffered as those I cared for suffered I could help them. But all that did was reinforce the suffering without providing a real solution.

What I’ve come to understand is that we are far more helpful when we can take full responsibility for what we need first. To actively show up for what is challenging for us first and compassionately tend to the need that is right here within.

When we can slow it all way down and create a the space we need to get in touch with ourselves first we generate awareness. Patience arises and the ability to create the solutions that align with what is deeply true for us and our relationships becomes possible.

I am not in service to my clients (or in full relationship with my loved ones) if I’m not able to meet my own needs first. If my needs continually go unmet I cannot help to support the space my clients need to be met in a transformational way.

This is the number one challenge I see for women on a spiritual path: they care deeply, are fully capable and are devoted to helping, yet struggle to allow for and receive support for themselves.

Maybe on some level, for some, there is a memory of when choosing to take a stand for yourself meant the difference between survival (belonging) and death (exile). I know for myself that I bump up against this place almost every time I am about to share something new about my work.

And I believe wholeheartedly that we each have the capacity to self-heal. To shift our perspective and make different choices. To remember who we are. At the deepest level of who we are.

All of your power is in how you choose to respond.

You can choose to criticize yourself for not doing enough and feel paralyzed. You can also remember the needs that are yours to tend to and trust that you what you are already doing is enough.

That underneath all of your striving there is actually a part of yourself that has a need worth tending to.

On March 27th from 1 to 3 PM I will be offering a live presentation on how we can compassionately work with emotions to create more clarity and ease in our personal relationships as well as authentic and healthy boundaries in our client work.

I see a real need for women to have a safe space to be able to receive support around their deep feeling nature, so that they can step more powerfully and effectively into their autonomy personally and professionally.

This free workshop will be interactive so I hope you will bring requests for coaching with you.

In this workshop you will have a chance to receive embodied coaching from Andrea directly as well as learn in an interactive space with like-hearted women who are also on a path to deepening their self-awareness and healing work.

My hope is that this time together will provide you with tools for new possibilities in your client work and personal relationships. Moving forward with deeper knowledge about yourself (and your tendencies) so that you can experience greater ease with boundary setting (either personally or professionally) and enjoy all the ways you experience giving and receiving.

I hope you will join us!
Click HERE.

With deepest love and care for you, 

Andrea