How Being Too Nice Can Destroy You: A Story You've Never Heard

and uh when she was 37 she was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer the stage for meant that the cancer was already in Her Bones by the time it was diagnosed at that time she had two young children age 1 and three and married to a well-to-do businessman she herself was a very high functioning executive for Microsoft and Calgary then she's diagnosed she had a perfect life perfect marriage perfect home of course and then she's diagnosed and healthy physically you know fit always ate well then she's diagnosed with stay short breast cancer and she has a transformation now she gets the best medical advice she can get anywhere in North America and she traveled to New York and elsewhere she got the best medical treatment and with that she was given one year to live CU that's the prognosis stage four despite the medical treatment chances are you be dead in one year now a year ago in February just a year ago now Shannon traveled to the Napa Valley of California with some of her friends and they celebrated her 10th year survival and her 47th birthday and the transform that she experienced was that when she was diagnosed and started paying attention she realized that her life had not been her life she was sexually abused as a child her response to the abuse was of course as many children will experience it can't be about the adults it's about me if this terrible thing happened to me I must be a very bad person so I had to be very good to compensate so the good daughter who doesn't talk about it doesn't disturb the waters the good employee the good student The Good Wife who doesn't talk about the husband's addiction issues cuz that would again disturb the waters and when she's diagnosed and she decides she wants to live she says the hell with all this Perfection and goodness and she confronts her family her origin about the abuse that she had endured and she confronts her husband and she leaves the job by the way which wasn't her wasn't really expressing who she was 11 years later the cancer is still in her bones but it's completely inactive but she knows that if she wants to stay alive she needs to stay authentic if I'm authentic my parents will reject me if you're not in touch with that inner voice the de need to be loyal and a sense of betrayal when that loyalty is somehow uh [Music] insulted if you didn't feel get the love that you needed you'll be consumed by being liked and You' be very likable and very nice you might become a helpful very helping individual which is a coping pattern now you can be genuinely nice and genuinely supportive of others and still look after your own needs that's human nature I think but a lot of people are very nice and likable and [Music] helpful by suppressing their own needs everybody says how nice they are and when they die at age 50 of cancer everybody shows up at their funeral and they weak but how nice they were how selfless they [Music] were children have two needs infants anybody any human being we have two basic needs needs and the more immature we are the more important the first need becomes and that's for attachment and attachment means that connection with another human being for the purpose of being taken care of that's an absolute need of the small child can't live without it impossible so that's one large need contact connection love uh without that the human child does not survive any any mamalian child or even an Aven child doesn't survive so that as soon as you get past the level of reptiles the reptile is is hatched the mother's long gone by then and the reptile infant either lives or dies but there's no attachment to a parenting figure as soon as you get to the level of birds now the baby bird has to be have an attachment with the parents the parents have to be attached to the baby otherwise the infant simply does not survive mamans even more so and most so the human because we're the least developed the least mature with the least developed brains and the most dependent for the longest period of time of any creature in the universe so our attachment needs are enormous and they remain important throughout lifetime because we have to have attachments to foreign Society social groups without which we don't survive so attachment is a huge need we a to connect belong be loved by and love that's just a basic human need another need however we have to function as full human beings is to be authentic authentic means that we know who we are what we feel are able to express it and able to honor it in our Behavior the authenticity is the capacity as I said earlier to uh know what we feel to be in touch with our bodies and to be able to express who we are and manifest who we are in our activities and in our relationships now why is that well think of of human being in evolutionary period who's not in touch with their body and their gut feelings how long do they survive out there in the wild so authenticity is another huge survival need so we have the need for attachment and we have the need for authenticity great so far so good but what happens to a child where the attachment need is not comp able with the need for authenticity in other words if I'm authentic my parents will reject me if I feel what I feel and express what I feel and insist on my own truth my parents can't handle it and parents convey those messages unconsciously all the time not cuz they mean to not because they don't leave love the child not because they're not trying to do their best but because they themselves are suppressed or traumatized or hurt or stressed so I convey that message many times to my children believe me without any conscious desire to do so in fact it was the very opposite of what I wish to convey but that they're not acceptable the way they are with their emotions the way they are that's the message to my kids got when they were small and most children get that in our society and what does a child do with that well if I give up my attachment for the sake of authenticity I lose my relationships on much my life depends therefore there's no question what becomes suppressed is our authenticity our emotions and then we become 2530 or 3540 and we don't know who we are and somebody ask us what do you feel you say I have no idea and how many times we've all had the experience of having an inkling of a strong God feeling but we ignoring it we're ignoring it and we getting into trouble well that tells us what happened what happened was that at some point we found out there was two costly for our attachment relationships to be in touch with our gut feelings so then it becomes our first not our first nature but our second nature to suppress our feelings to lose touch with ourselves and to suppress our gut feelings and then we pay the cost later on in the form of addictions mental illness or any range of physical illnesses but it all began with this tragic conflict that children should never be confronted with but are all the time time between authenticity on the one hand and attachment on the other and even as adults so [Music] many people are suffering that shame and that internal suffering that that that that sense of self- betrayal is our sure guide that we're not being ourselves on one level that happens to a lot of people and then we may look good in the eyes of others and yet internally we suffer shame because we know that we we're not being ourselves so what I'm saying is that at some point or another if you're not in touch with that inner voice if you don't hear it the body will speak to you loud and clear you're going to get something happened to you uh and sometimes that'll happen in the form of illness or symptoms then the body's talking to you the body's saying no when you're not saying no if the voice doesn't speak to you directly or if if it speak to you don't listen your body at some point is going to kick in or you're going to get depressed or anxious or something else if you don't know how to say no when you need to your body will say it for you in the form of illness so chronic illness represents the body saying no when you didn't do it not your fault this is how you were programmed before you had any choice in the matter so again it's not a question of blame or self-blame but it does mean that to prevent illness or if you have an illness to deal with it more effectively you need to learn to assert who you are and to say no now that might be difficult sometimes because the people in your life have got used to you as a yes they've always heard you say yes some of them might not like you very much if you start saying no all of a sudden and what you going to do when you start saying no is you're going to find out who your friends are cuz they real ones are going to say to you hey h so I'm so glad you're finally saying no and the ones that were simply there because you were constantly available for them are going to oh what happen to her or him you know that's it but so it'll create some conflict which which will trigger all your fears about attachment so you're going to have to learn that you're that you are more important than your attachments that wasn't true when you were a kid but it's true as an adult once you reconnect with your authentic self a lot of medical conditions can Abate and even

Channel: Your Inner Child Matters

Views: 759,305

Keywords: mental health, trauma, The Dangers of Being Too Nice, People-Pleasing, Dr. Gabor Maté, Motivation Quotes, Stress, Depression, Cancer, Attachment, Authenticity, Personal Growth, people-pleasing, health, cancer, attachment, authenticity, your inner child matters, mental health awareness, mental health tips, how to improve mental health, Psychological Health, Setting Boundaries, Being Too Nice, Extreme Niceness, stress management, people pleasing, how to set boundaries, wellbeing, gut feeling

Id: xChNbQ2o0Ro

Length: 10min 22sec (622 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 10 2023