#372 The Power of Acceptance - Supporting Others Without Losing Yourself

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After a diagnosis of breast cancer, we face many challenges that test our strength and resilience including how we can and how we want to show up for others.

It's natural to feel the urge to fix things, whether it's our own circumstances or the lives of our loved ones.

However, this episode sheds light on the deeper reasons behind this impulse and offers insights into why we feel compelled to relieve other people’s suffering even when we have no power to do so and the mental burden undermines our health.

We discuss the powerful role of empathy, compassion, and the desire for control in our attempts to fix others' lives, and how these well-intentioned instincts can prevent us from fully accepting and embracing the present moment.

You'll discover how resisting what is can be a significant source of suffering and how accepting reality as it unfolds can lead to a sense of peace and freedom.

Join me as we navigate the journey of making peace with the present moment and trusting in the natural order of life. This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking to find solace and strength amidst adversity.

 

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0:00
You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach, I'm your host, Laura lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills on the insides and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis if you're looking for a way to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started. Hey there, friends. Welcome to episode 371 of better than before breast cancer. I'm your host, Laura lummer, and today, I want to share something with you that I'm kind of working through myself, because I know that if you're listening to this, more than likely this is either affecting you in some way in your life, or has affected you in some way, or will affect you in some way. And what that is really I guess, when I get down to the granular root of it is accepting reality. You know, years ago, I was reading a book by Byron Katie. I don't remember exactly which of her books it was, but I do remember a couple of things that stood out to me. One was she said, when you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time. And I gotta say that that's pretty impactful, because I think that we spend a lot of time fighting reality. We don't want to accept what is, because what is is making us uncomfortable, right? And if we could only fix it, then we could feel better. I think we kind of skip over that step a little bit of the time, and we say, if I could fix it, they would feel better. But really making someone else feel better is because we want to feel better. What we're watching is making us very uncomfortable, right? And, you know, there's a situation in my life right now where I'm seeing someone I love very much struggle and I can't fix it, right, I think, and it makes me think about you, this population of women that I work with, because I work with a lot of fixers, I work with a lot of people who are empathetic, who have a tremendous amount of compassion, who want to help people. And I think underlying that is also a thread of desire to control things, right? We really like to control things, because if we can control things, we can make them better. We can feel good. We don't like to look at it necessarily as control a lot of the times, because we just think we want to do something nice for somebody else. And that is true, but I think it's all kind of woven together, right? We are wired to connect emotionally to other people, and when we see someone in pain, we want to help, because we we empathize with their suffering. Maybe we've been in that same position before, and we know how bad it feels, right? But when we try to fix other people's problems, we're also trying to exert a little bit of control over them, right? That that may help us, may help us feel purposeful, but it also can put a tremendous amount of stress on us, especially when the reality of the situation is someone put themselves in a situation and there's nothing you can do about it. Instead of fighting that reality which will result in a loss, how do we pull ourselves back and just say another Byron Katie idea, I don't know if it was a quote, but an idea that everything is exactly as it's supposed to be, and this is difficult because it means we have to accept things, and we don't want to accept things that are beyond our influence. And I think we struggle sometimes. I know I struggle with sometimes with I don't want it to look like I don't care, right? We might have that feeling like someone else is suffering, and I want to step in so it looks like I care. Well, you care already, right? We don't have to prove that we care. And I also, when I think about that statement, everything is exactly as it's supposed to be. I remember when I first heard that, I'm pretty sure it was Byron Katie that when I first heard it, I thought that would be like me, like, I'm supposed to have cancer. Well, clearly, yes, because I did or do right at that moment, it's like I'm not supposed to be in this position, or they're not supposed to be in that position, or this isn't supposed to happen that way. And when you think about it, it's a very logical statement. Well, clearly. Is supposed to be that way because it is that way. So how do we make peace with it? How do we recognize that we are fighting with reality? We are refusing to say, this is what it is. This is exactly the way it's supposed to be, because it is right now and then,

5:20
as I've worked through that over time, and as I'm working through something now, I ask myself, how could this be happening for me? And I do not mean that someone else's suffering is happening to benefit me. I mean, I'm in this place of discomfort. I'm trying to figure out a solution. It's not my solution to come up with where's my boundary here to allow this other person to grow right, to allow this other person to be where they need to be, and having healthy boundaries there is recognizing that when helping turns into enabling, and being able to take a step back and allow other people to be responsible for their own lives. That's not easy to do. Right, to trust in the process, to believe that if this is exactly how it's supposed to be, then there's a plan or a purpose or a reason or something beyond what I'm able to see. And I think most of the time when that happens, we look back in life and say, you know, we call those a blessing in disguise, or say, I know that was a hard time, but look how much you grew from it, right? And we have to really learn to trust in the process into just find acceptance. It is not easy to do, but I'm noticing this as I'm going through this, and I'm going through all the arguments in my head, right, of why it feels so uncomfortable, and I think too, that sometimes when we can't help other people, we tend to judge ourselves. I know I do, like, why am I not in a better position to do this? Or if I would have learned that first, maybe I could help them now and then, where does that lead? Right? No good can come from that. No good can come from beating yourself up because someone else is struggling in it's out of your purview. There's nothing you can do about it. You have no power over it. So when I say, How can this be happening for me? That's my work right now, right? I think that is when we come back to this work of saying, Well, how it happens for me is that I find a way to make peace, to allow someone else to live their own life by their own choices, to allow someone else to step into responsibility for whatever's going on in their life, to go through that process of growth, which I think most of the Time, growth is a painful process, and how do you show up in a way that is loving and is supportive, that isn't enabling, right? How do you step back and say, I'm here with love for you, right? I'm here to care about you. I'm here to love you, but I'm not here to fix your life, because ultimately, what's happening here is I'm making myself sick, right as I worry about someone else. And what is Worry? Worry is projecting worst case scenario thoughts into the future, of determining before something's happened what's going to happen. And that's not true, because I don't know what's coming in the future, right? So allowing my brain to put energy into these worst case scenario thoughts that doesn't serve me, that gives me that anxious feeling, that electrical, like my skin is crawling kind of feeling. And so again, this is, I think, for me, another step in my own ability to heal and my own ability to grow. So how is this happening for me? It's happening for me as another lesson in a long chain of lessons in my life, that everybody's got to stay in their own lane, and that doesn't mean that we don't love them, and that doesn't mean that we don't want to do things to support them, but it means sometimes we have to stop fighting with reality. I think that we can apply that to lots of relationships, right, especially when it comes to our dear loved ones, family members, children, especially. And I think that applies to us as well. You know, getting a diagnosis of cancer or going through difficult times in your life, whatever those difficult times are, and being able to pull yourself back from thinking you have to fix someone or make someone else different so you can feel better, to just really looking at what is the reality. So mindfulness practice is really important, and it's, it's freeing, like, if we're engaged in thoughts about how someone else's life should be, if we're obsessed with, what can I do? What can I do? How can I fix it? How can I change this for them? How can I make it better? That's really heavy. You know, think about it like the energy of it in itself is just. It's a heavy energy. So when we start to look at the reality of what is, and we look at the reality of what power we have, and we start fighting with the reality of what we cannot do about it, we free ourselves from that burden. It's not easy. It doesn't necessarily feel great that we'd start to take a step more towards supporting our well being, like if we can care about people and love people, but when it goes so deep and so far that it goes into worry and anxiety and making yourself sick, then it's not helping anybody. And as I said a minute ago, that definitely applies with us too, with getting whatever news that we're getting about our health, with getting whatever diagnosis we're getting, we have to process what's happening. But I think there's a difference between processing what's happening and fighting with what's happening, right? Remember, Byron Katie, we'll lose 100% of the time when we fight with what is so taking these steps to really look at your life and whatever situations you're struggling with, and thinking about a few of the things that I mentioned about really accepting reality, about understanding that growth is a part of life, and it usually comes from struggles and from allowing ourselves to face struggles in others, to face struggles by asking yourself, what are the boundaries here? Right where? What is the difference in this situation from a healthy boundary to enabling right to allowing someone else to be responsible for their life? And can you trust that the process is exactly what it's supposed to be right now, because it is what it is right now, and then focus on our own personal growth. This is where the house is happening. For me, how can I improve myself and set a positive example and come out better from a sticky suffering situation by being very present and very compassionate and very loving, but learning how to release people to live their own lives and to keep our brain out of their lives in situations where our brain is not benefiting anybody by being there. So I know this is just a quick episode, but it's really all I have to say. I'm just really working through a process right now, and I think that I'm not alone in that. You know, a lot of people go through this. We go through especially, you know, seeing our loved ones struggle with things, and we've got to learn how to go through that and be with them and be with ourselves and support ourselves by just processing the whole situation and stepping into what is and trying really to stay in a place of compassion and not one of anxiety and worry or anger or judgment, because none of those do any good right judging someone for whatever situation that they're in, or whatever choices they made leading to it doesn't again, change the reality of the situation, right? So I just thought I'd share some of those thoughts with you. I know that we're all only human, and so experiences that I'm going through you're going through too, and I just find that these steps are not easy steps to take, the ones that I just shared with you, but they're important steps to take, and they're important steps also to talk to other people about right to say, hey, help me. Help me come back and stay centered on this tightrope that I'm walking right now, right? And I think it's a great thing to get support with that too. Trust me, I reach out to people that I feel comfortable and safe. Come fighting and and say, here's what I'm thinking, give me your honest feedback, right? Or here's where I can see myself going on the rails, help me come back, right? So I think that it's important when we see ourselves kind of going off on a situation where we are making ourselves sick, we're undermining our health, and we're stepping outside of whatever it is that we have the ability to support or control in our life, right? I think sometimes it just has to be enough to be compassionate and to be there to love someone through it. All right, friends, I will talk to you again very soon, and until then, Please be good to yourself. Take care

 

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