In Part 1 of this series I touched on caretaking behaviors, their impacts on your energy and how your beliefs and repressed emotions stimulate the pattern.
This post focuses on your ability to:
- gain self-awareness
- evolve the pattern
- experience yourself (and your life!) free from the intense pull of caretaking
Let’s delve in with a simple experiential exercise.
Your Caretaker in Action – Observe Yourself
Sample Scenario:
It’s Sunday after an extra hectic week, and you have the whole afternoon to yourself. You are just about to leave for a long hike. Just you, your pup and the sunshine, and most importantly – no computer. Yay!
You receive a text.
Your friend Samantha could “really use your help.” She is working on a job application and wonders if you would use your fabulous wordsmith skills to spruce up her cover letter and resume.
The application is not due for 2 weeks but she has the afternoon free and wants to submit it today – she is anxious and excited, and wants to cross this off of her list asap.
You consider cancelling your walk, look over at your computer, and your bouncing dog. You think about texting her back back to say you are happy to help her but that today won’t work, and offer her some other options.
Truly, you prefer not to participate at all in this instance. Your plate is pretty full and you don’t feel like you have the bandwidth right now, to do the work or to engage with her stress.
Using the scenario above or an equivalent example from your own life – consider hitting send on a text reply saying “No,” then pause, and notice:
- Are you squirming on the inside or feel a sense of impending doom?
- Do you feel discomfort, tension, stress or other sensations in your body?
- What emotions and/or thoughts are you aware of?
- Do you feel numb, agitated, floaty or disconnected?
Your answers to any or all of the questions above can be traced back to:
- how your energy is wired to react to caretaking prompts,
- how you process emotions energetically,
- the power of the caretaking pattern.
[Bonus experience: after you have considered the answers to the questions above, reverse the scenario. Think about what your answers would be as you contemplate saying “Yes” instead.🙂]
Resilience through Energy Work
Not unlike behavioral habits, energy patterns can be identified and unraveled; and new patterns can be created in their place.
To revisit the ‘cookie’ example from Part 1, the call of the cookie bag can be silenced.
You are capable of moving the needle on your caretaking tendencies, and the way you show up for yourself and in your relationships. By working with an energy practitioner or with self-care skills, the influence of the caretaking pattern and related difficult emotions – will wane over time.
You Can:
- Expand your awareness of the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) cues that your energy system and physical body offer when the caretaking pattern activates.
- Discern the difference between your energy and emotions, and those of others; and regulate and contain your energy.
- Learn to love and choose yourself as you sit in the sometimes supreme discomfort of your choice to leave caretaking behind.
- Clear your energy patterns and unresolved and stuck emotions to Let Go and live a life in Forward Motion without caretaking as your motivator.
- Be as kind and gentle with yourself as you are with others; know that you are wonderful and “worth it,” and enjoy prioritizing your personal needs and desires.
You can be free from the intense pull of people seeking your support because of the caretaking pattern that is held in your field, but is not who You Truly Are.
In Part 3 of the series, I dive into the relationship between caretaking, the holding of stress, tension and unprocessed emotions and energy; and your physical wellbeing.
Contact me if you are ready to release your caretaking pattern, and related stuck energy and emotions. I’d be delighted to connect with you!
Photo by Joshua Bos on Unsplash
