Ep. 12- How To Be Ok When Someone You Love Isn't Ok
EPISODE 12-
How To Be Ok When Someone You Love Isn't Ok
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Struggling to find emotional balance while offering support to a loved one who is experiencing hard times?
Sometimes, the biggest challenge is understanding that you didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it —that you don't have to fix their situation to be supportive and helpful.
In this transformative session, we discuss tools to...
-> Let go of worry and stress about others.
-> Truly support your loved ones.
-> Experience growth during hard times in your relationships.
Join me, and discover how to transform your challenges into stepping stones towards a life full of healthy, meaningful relationships.
Website: mrs-hard.com
Click here to book your FREE 30 Minute Coaching Session
Instagram: @mrs.hard_timesnomore
Fabcebook: Mrs.Hard
Full Transcript:
Hi, I'm Alessandra Tolome hard, aka Mrs Hard, and this is Hard Times no More, a podcast for people who are tired of struggling with boundaries, people pleasing and relationship problems. I have overcome some hard times. Within three years, I stopped drinking, my mom died of cancer and my house burnt down in a California wildfire, and those are just the highlights. I have a lot of reasons to be miserable, but I'm not. The truth is, life was more challenging before these events happened. If you are tired of waiting for your circumstances to change to find happiness and peace of mind, you are in the right place. Join me as I share the tools I use and love to transform challenges into assets and interview others about their relationship journeys. Together, let's learn how to have a happy life full of healthy, meaningful relationships and say goodbye to hard times for good. Hey everyone, welcome to the Hard Times no More Relationship Podcast. I'm Alessandra Tolome hard, your host. If you are, like many of the people I work with, you have a big heart. You care deeply about the well-being of those around you. When someone close to you isn't doing well, it can affect your relationships and peace of mind. You want everyone to be okay, and it's hard when someone close to you is hurting. That's what we're going to talk about today how to be okay when someone close to you isn't okay. We're going to talk about how you can maintain your own well-being while supporting someone who is going through a hard time. This reminds me of an Al-Anon slogan called the three C's you didn't cause it, you can't control it, you can't cure it. Three C's cause, control, cure. You are only responsible for yourself. Let's take that in for a moment. You are only responsible for yourself. If you're a parent and the person in your life going through a hard time is your kid, you may feel a bit of responsibility. You may wonder if you had done something different or better than they wouldn't be in this situation. You're that. You're their protector and provider and should be able to help them. Maybe you have a close friend that has health problems and you feel if only they would be more proactive about their health, their physical therapy appointments and what they eat, then they would be okay. Worrying about the ones close to you causes stress and concern. You are always thinking of them and these thoughts weigh heavy on you. How do you let go of this worry and stress about the other person? So first, let's recognize that life's challenges aren't always a bad thing in the long run. Remember, this is coming from a girl who's had a chronically ill parent, a parent who died and up until maybe two years ago, struggled with anxiety and panic attacks. I've been on both sides of the coin. I've been the one struggling and I've also been the one wanting to help others when they're in difficult situations. Let me tell you from the experience of somebody who's gone through hard times I am so grateful that no one took away my life challenges from me. What I have experienced has made me into a strong, more empathetic, resourceful person, because I know how to manage challenging times when they arise. I know things will be okay because I've had the experience of things being horribly wrong and finding solutions. I now have less fear, stress and anxiety than I ever imagined possible, and I struggled with anxiety for years, ever since I was in high school. I didn't know an anxiety-free life was possible. But maybe you're thinking my loved one isn't doing the work, they aren't taking the steps they need to take to change their situation, and that's why I'm concerned. Let me ask you, what if your loved one is not taking the steps you want them to take. What I mean by this is we all have our own way of processing what we're going through, and their way might be different than yours. It might be different than what you would do if you were in the same situation. And if they are truly stuck in their circumstances, maybe now is not the right time for them to seek help. What if things are operating on a spiritual timeline that you're not aware of? What if their higher power has a plan for them and this time of stagnation and stuckness is part of a greater plan? I have a way of looking at life that I adopted years ago. I believe that before we come down to this planet, we sign up for a series of life situations and soul-growing obstacles. We commit to these experiences to help our souls evolve and help others on their life journey as well. This makes sense to me because I believe the purpose of life is to grow as a soul. Like you're on a mission, I sometimes wonder if some souls signed up to have more hardships or be a real pain in the butt to others so that others could experience an opportunity for greater soul evolution. When people are challenging or not doing what we want, they offer us an opportunity to work on ourselves and the uncomfortable feelings we're experiencing. The challenging people in our lives can be our greatest teachers, and so can uncomfortable situations. This brings us back to the earlier statement. I am only responsible for myself. What is disturbing you about the other person not being okay? Beyond not wanting to see the other person's effort, that's totally understandable. When we focus on ourselves and let go of the need to fix or control others, we can just be with the other person and accept them as who they are, and that is truly supportive. This also helps you not feed into their belief or narrative that something is wrong with them. Sometimes, when people are experiencing challenges, they can get stuck in an internal narrative that everything is happening to them and that there is something wrong with them and wrong with what they are going through. When you are worried and need to fix them in the situation, you are subconsciously reinforcing this narrative. Trust me, I sang this song for many years. I would tell people how hard my life was and how things were happening to me. People close to me who loved me agreed with me. They wanted to love and support me. They didn't know what else to do, but it wasn't truly helpful. It just reinforced the thoughts that were keeping me stuck. The people who really changed my life when I was willing to seek help were the people who had done the internal work themselves, who had overcome their own life challenges and had moved from a state of anxiety to peace. I was drawn to them. I wanted what they had and they didn't try to fix me. They just shared their experience with me and shared what they would do if they were in my situation After I asked them for help that is very important After I asked them for help. When you are a helper and a doer, a mover and a shaker, you become used to inserting yourself in other situations without realizing it. I mean, why not? It's more efficient. You see a problem, you have an answer or you can find an answer, so why wouldn't you right? Ultimately, you want to be selfless and helpful, but sometimes we get it a little backward and accidentally focus on needing the other person to be okay so that we don't feel worried. Instead, bring your focus onto yourself and support yourself. Take time to look within and see what you need to do to keep yourself well. I understand this because I used to be there too. Like I said, I was on both sides of the coin. I was the person struggling and I've also been the person who wanted to help others who didn't necessarily ask for my help. I was super attached to others' well-being and sometimes it was like a roller coaster ride. For example, as I've mentioned in previous episodes, for a long time my happiness was directly correlated with my father's health. He's had multiple sclerosis my whole life and gone through many peaks and valleys, and he wasn't proactive about his care in his health. He didn't take care of himself the way I thought he should. I would feel deeply depressed when he was having a flare up and his health issues were not going well. I am so grateful for the counselor who asked me how caring his pain was helping him. Obviously it wasn't at all, and it would have made him so sad to know how much his disease was damaging my life because of how I was taking it on. So ask yourself if you are feeling overly responsible for the other person's well-being or happiness. How would you feel if they knew you were carrying this weight? How is it helping them? What would it be like if you shifted your energy to caring for yourself and letting them be as they are right now. Next, let's get spiritual and have a little God talk. If talking about God is triggering for you, hear me out. I used to be uncomfortable with any topic about religion or God, and we're not going to talk about religion, we're going to talk about spirituality. But I've learned to look at God differently and it's really helped my relationships and how I deal with life. So first, do you believe in something greater than yourself? Maybe you call it God, maybe you call it a higher power, maybe you aren't sure or you don't believe. I like to use the word higher power, so just insert your belief in when I talk about higher power, and if you don't believe in anything, we'll get to that shortly. If you believe in something greater than yourself, do you have faith that your higher power has a plan for you? Can you trust it? Do you have faith that the person struggling has a higher power and that their higher power has a plan for them? It is helpful to believe that others have their own higher power and their own life path, because that means something else is in the driver's seat, you are not in control, which can be a relieving feeling. It's not up to you to figure it out and make sure everything and everyone is okay If you aren't really connected with your higher power. Now may be an opportunity to get connected. I believe a lot of our life challenges have gifts on the other side, and one of those gifts is connection. Hard times present an opportunity to grow closer to your higher power and to create a connection with it. Now, if you're on the fence about this whole higher power God connection thing, maybe you were raised religiously and feel a little burned from it. I understand that I was raised Catholic and I believed that I did not have a very loving God for a long time. It had a lot of conditions like don't ever sin. You must be perfect, because if you weren't at the end of your life, you're going to be judged. And I'm not saying all religious people feel this way. This is just how I perceived God for a long time. So what would it be like if you had an all loving higher power, a kind, open and forgiving higher power? How would you create a relationship with it? Maybe, if you already have a relationship with it, maybe you need a little tune up. What would that look like? And if you're not sure on the fence. Ask it for a sign, ask it to show up in your life in a way that makes you feel connected to it. Remember, when you are creating a relationship with something greater than yourself, it is a relationship, a hi, hello, how are you? And a response. And so look for your higher powers response in your life. Maybe this challenging situation is an opportunity for you to lean into something outside of yourself and let go a little more so that you can find deeper healing and serenity. Now what if you don't believe in anything? You believe life is random, events happen and when you die, the show is over. Can you accept that this challenging situation that your loved one is experiencing is just that, a challenging situation? And it doesn't help if you are burdened by stress and worry, because no offense, but worry is not an action. It is making up unreal situations in your mind and projecting them onto the future, causing unnecessary stress. And so it may be helpful to recognize that, logically, to let go and realize you're not in control of the other person and that you can just let them have their life experience, because you feeling burdened by it isn't going to do anything beneficial. And lastly, when I'm hyper focused on others. I'm usually avoiding something within myself. So let me ask you is there something within yourself that you're avoiding? Do you need to spend more time caring for yourself in a little less time involved in another person's situation? Maybe your life is stressful, aside from the situation, and you're depleted. Maybe you're lonely in seeking comfort by trying to be involved in someone else's stuff and you didn't realize you were doing that. Maybe there's something deeper going on. Tied to your self worth, I used to need to be needed by others. If I wasn't of service to others, I didn't know what to do with myself. When I was super focused on others, I would lose myself and forget what brought me joy in life. I would just mold to what others needed me to be. It just seemed easier that way. So this experience might be the universe, tapping you on the shoulder, urging you to rediscover what you enjoy, what lights you up. When you do this, when you take care of yourself and find connection, that is when your stress and worries will be relieved, not the other way around, like once your stress and worries are relieved, then you'll be able to feel at peace and find connection, because this is life. It's messy and things happen. The only thing you can control is how you respond to life's challenges. The other person is going through their experience. It may be short, it may be long. When you think things are finally better, they may relapse into chaos or despair. You will be better equipped to deal with their highs and lows if you're taking care of yourself, meaning you aren't running on empty energetically and you feel supported in your life by something greater your friends and your family. Remember you can't control others, you can't cure them and it's not your fault. You didn't cause whatever they're going through. You are only responsible for yourself and if you are okay, you can be of greater service to others when they ask for your help. If you wanna take a deeper dive into this topic and your unique situation, I'm here for you. I'm offering you a free 30 minute call. You can ask me anything related to your relationships or life challenges. I'll put a link for that in the show notes. You can also reach out to me on Instagram at mrshard Mrs Hard underscore times no more. I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. One last word I know I've been talking a lot about connecting with your higher power recently and I wanna share that it took some time for me to develop a relationship with something greater than myself. Every challenge I've experienced has brought me closer to it, but I just didn't wake up one day and feel connected. It was a process like forming a friendship. There is a period of time where I needed to develop trust. So if you don't know what you believe in or the higher power thing's a little uncomfortable, that's totally normal. Just keep on putting it out there and see what the universe shows you. All right, that's all I got for today, wishing you lots of growth on your human journey. Take care.