Stop Auto-Accommodating - For Empaths, Codependents & Highly Sensitive People - Terri Cole

well hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Terry Cole show I am your host Terry Cole I'm going to start this episode with a question are you very dialed in to all of the environments that you find yourself in do you think that you might be an empath but let's say you're in a restaurant and something is happening at a table many tables away from you or you or your antennas up will you be aware that that is happening or not and if you said no I'm totally oblivious you might find this episode interesting but for the people who said I would be fully aware of exactly what was going on this episode is for you and I'm calling it how to stop auto accommodating to create more internal peace and bandwidth for ourselves so what is Auto accommodating you may be doing this for so long in your life that you're completely aware it can be an unconscious mechanism that is going on so what actually is it this is not just the difficulty with saying no or always saying yes when people ask you to do things that is an obvious accommodator auto accommodating is being in this state of it's sort of like a hyper vigilance about what needs to happen and feeling in a high-functioning codependent way responsible for what is going on and although I have been a recovering high-functioning codependent for a long time I found myself in this situation sort of feeling emotionally compromised it was recently the three year anniversary of my niece's very tragic death Vic is going away to Iraq for three weeks to be embedded you know not exactly the safest experience to do for those of you who don't know he is a visual artist a visual journalist who is going to draw what he sees and I'm writing a book so all of those things combined I almost feel like I can see past behaviors or past sort of default positions being more activated than they would normally be so I was getting my hair done a couple of weeks ago and there wasn't enough room at the sinks and I'm laying there you know people were waiting in line and so it was my turn and they were putting something on that was going to stay on like a conditioner for awhile and so I say to the assistant oh hey if you need me to move because you need the sink I'm happy to sit somewhere else while this sits and she said no it's fine and then she walked away and I had like about 10 minutes to really think about what that interaction was and it's not that what I said was a crime it's it's being nice it's being considerate but here's the thing it's being overly accommodating in an automatic way that is totally unnecessary and if it was just free if that's psychological all that machination that's going on in my mind if it if it were free and there was no downside to it it'd be like fine people will and people will experience you as being kind great but it's not free so let's talk about the cost and that's just a silly example of auto accommodation that came to mind which got me really thinking about this and of course you we've all heard of the concept of being overly accommodating but this is different this is an unconscious process that it knew what it's like so what is the cost let's talk about the cost it's like your computer running slow but you can't figure out why and then you suddenly realize like oh wow I have that tab open with that very huge software running or that huge Hoggy program taking up all my bandwidth or all of my speed or whatever it is that explains why the computer is running slowly this is the same thing so what is the cost well I don't know the cost meaning I know there is one because exhausting to be in any state of semi hyper-vigilance about anything is exhausting so we get that what would I been thinking about if I wasn't micromanaging how the the flow of the hair sinks in my hair salon on West Broadway and Soho with this huge staff you know what they don't need they don't need Terry Cole figuring out who's going next to the sink and where are they gonna fit everyone I guess they've been doing this for a little while they gotta figure it out so I could have been sitting enjoying meditating listening to a body scan I could have been doing many other things instead of wasting my precious brain space and my energy on managing something that is not at all my side of the street so that's sort of a benign example but I want you to think about if you're doing this all the time the way I used to do in my younger life in my 20s all the time every situation now at least I usually have a choice I can see that my mind is going there and I'm like okay not necessary not your deal not your side of the street relax let people do their thing it's allowing other people to do what they do and not feeling like the child in you feels which is that everything is on you so let's talk about why if the resonates with you right why would we over accommodate what would cause this in our lives well childhoods of course I hate to always feel like I'm constantly turning around and pointing backwards at the family of origin but hey man this is just how human nature is and again I'm not doing that with blame in my heart I'm doing that because that's where the answers are so if you grew up in a home that was chaotic in some way there were addiction abuse mental illness perfectionism too much authoritarianism there are so many things that create this hyper-vigilance and kids and a hyper awareness of our surroundings right how many of you who listen and to my to my show or watch my show on YouTube would consider yourself a highly sensitive person or an empath I know a lot of you are shaking your heads yes and I identify as the same why is that because there was an adaptive reason for us to become that in our childhood you learn early on if you're in any kind of a chaotic system that your needs cannot be at the top of the list that you must prioritize other people's needs so if you're in a situation and it's about safety you are prioritizing that dysfunctional parents needs and once you're trying to stay below the radar if someone had an explosive temper or if someone was very judgmental if someone was very mean if there was addiction a kid nobody has to teach us how to do these things this is our adaptive functioning because we are wired to survive so we learn how to take care of things and we try to get positive attention from the adult figures in our life by doing these things so even if it is at the expense of our self as a kid you don't have a choice you just need to get by and do whatever you need to do what happens when you're always in this state of hyper vigilance we can call it it's it's not it really isn't technically so so I'll call it hyper awareness because hyper vigilance there's actually a whole entire psychological thing around hyper vigilance that is very specific so we're gonna say hyper-awareness right what does this create this is an enhanced state let's say of sensory sensitivity so we are dialed in to what is happening and a lot of times if you came from a family where you nobody had the ability to conflict solve well or if there was violence or if there was alcoholism or whatever you're you're basically intensely scanning to make sure everything is okay like you're scanning even if you don't know it if you haven't tried to not do this and if you haven't brought this from your unconscious mind to your conscious mind I mean how aware are you of what is going on in your surroundings and even though I have healed myself and I am recovering in all these many ways from a lot of this sort of hyper awareness hyper-vigilance it also is my superpower and I think a lot of empaths and highly sensitive people feel this way that honestly even though it can be exhausting when I'm not being hyper vigilant around my own health my own mental health taking care of me then yes it can be exhausting because then I don't feel like I'm controlling the energy that's coming in it's just happening most of the time I do energy work daily like I am able to tap into the power of being highly sensitive to do a good work that I do in the world and so I would not change that and I'd also like to say that if it goes unchecked it is can be debilitating because what happens when you're really in the hyper awareness state is that it's similar to being in fight-or-flight well it is being in fight-or-flight the same things are happening in your mind it's like you're scanning constantly for threats there's a low-level anxiety that goes along even if you were relatively unconscious that this is happening so what happens when you have fight-or-flight when you have anxiety when you go into fight or flight when you threatened because you see that there's a problem well we know what happens stress hormones cortisol all kinds of things get released into your body this lasts for a long time and in fact this can last for up to 12 hours imagine that that you haven't experienced that not is not remotely life-threatening and yet you could be leaking or flowing cortisol into your body for that period of time and other hormones so it really does matter and to create this inner expansion and this inner sense of peace you have to be aware so let's talk about what can you do if you feel like auto accommodation auto fixing auto accommodation if that is you or that you have these experiences what do we actually need to do well like I say for everything and it's true not to be boring but the first step is you have to raise your awareness about where and when you're doing it and if you were like I was in my mid-20s I was doing it all the time I didn't know it but I was tired I sure was exhausted because it is exhausting so raising your awareness means you have to tap in to what's happening in your mind what are you thinking about you need present-moment consciousness and self-awareness to be able to know what you're thinking about so an easy way to start to normalize doing this is I'm going to ask you to put an alarm on your phone and every let's say four hours you stop and you'll do a really quick little 4x4 breathing exercise and tap into what you're thinking so what is a four by four breathing exercise I've shared it with you before actually I learned it from my teacher David G you just breathe in for the count of four here let's do it right now breathe in hold it breathe out two three four hold it out two three four four by four you can't do it wrong do that four times slowly breathing in for four holding for four breathing out for four holding it out for four that will give you enough time to just drop into your body and then just ask yourself what am I thinking about what am i dialed into right now we want to bring the attention by doing the breathing we're bringing your attention back into your body your thoughts your mind not having it be out bringing it in and if you do this on a regular basis you will start to flex that muscle of self awareness becoming more automatic right setting your intention which is the next thing I'm going to ask you to do so let's move into number two which is basically you've got to create some kind of a morning practice if you're not doing this we talked about it so many of my friends in this wellness space and this empowerment space talk about meditation but it doesn't only have to be meditation just create some sacred time in the morning you could do breathing exercises you could do one of my 8,000 free guided meditations that are all over the web just put my name and got a meditation you will find them David G that's David ji all together one word has probably 1,200 free meditations online but the most amazing voice so there's not a lack of free resources for you to do this if you want to you can also just put a timer on and count your breaths count one in one out two in two out do that to you get to 10 and do it all over again and again and again for three minutes why are we want why do I want you to create stillness and silence well first of all because this is where you can plant your intention so let's say you create meditate for 10 minutes or create 10 minutes of stillness and silence somehow there's a million ways google it and I've written about it pretty extensively and then I ask you to plant your intention for that day plant your intention to be mindful to be aware to stay dialed into your body to stay on your side of the street right to not be giving away all of your precious attention because imagine what you could be doing in your life if you are leaking all of that energy as my friend dr. Deb Kern would say she helps you figure out your energy leaks so let's say you are leaking that energy that way imagine what you might be doing with that energy if you weren't worrying about the flow of the sinks at your hair salon like I was and I won't know I won't know what it could have been thinking about at that moment besides that but I know I don't want to spend any more precious moments of my life and my bandwidth doing that so that second step is creating some kind of a stillness and silence practice practice so that you can plant those seeds of your intention this also gives you about 2 to 3 seconds of response time in your life so that means so much more responding as opposed to reacting it creates expansion to breathe to think before you speak to realize not everything needs to happen now there's something about having some kind of a dedicated morning practice and stillness and silence that creates expansion throughout the rest of your day and so if we want to stop being overly accommodating in our waking life an auto accommodating in our subconscious or unconscious mind stillness and silence will help all of those things and let's move into the last one where I'm just going to give you a little cognitive behavioral technique that I believe I've shared before but I'll share it again I want you to put a rubber band on your wrist and with the gained awareness that you're going to have from these other two steps anytime you notice that you are Auto accommodating in situations that are not on your side of the street offering advice that no one's asking for offering to switch seats and you know it on an airplane if those people want to sit together just stop over functioning please when you notice it I'm gonna ask you to snap the rubber band so what are we doing we're creating an association of a little bit of pain I mean you don't want to like make yourself bleed but a little bit of pain with this auto accommodating experience so naturally we will feel adverse to it this is training your unconscious and your conscious mind to not want to continue doing that because we don't like to feel uncomfortable in that snap will be uncomfortable so all the instructions are in the little 3-step cheat sheet that you have hey if this resonated with you if you know someone that you think that this episode would be helpful for please share it on your social media platforms this is how I reach people and add value to their life hopefully I want to say thank you so much to my tried and true people you know that I know who you are and I so appreciate your time your interest in your own mental health but I appreciate you watching listening and sharing I really do so and one quick announcement I'm gonna be doing a weekend at Kripalu the link will be right here the dates are 13th to 15th of September for women only all about boundaries come hang out with me at KU Paulo and if you don't know I'm talking about click the link and it's a beautiful like yoga and wellness place in the Berkshires in Massachusetts which is only about a half hour from my house upstate so yeah that was my last townsmen let's say to be continued I hope you guys have an amazing amazing week with your attention on you and as always take care of you you

Channel: Terri Cole

Views: 164,662

Keywords: codependent, codependency, terri cole, empaths, sensitive people, auto accomodoting, internal peace, love, real love, real love revolution, boundaries, empath, narcissist, family roles, avoid conflict, avoiding conflict, problem solving, putting your needs first

Id: TEtwpbNe-0U

Length: 20min 28sec (1228 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2019