What does it mean to care?
To give yourself up...that's at least what I thought until now
My whole life I cared for others, I still do.
However, this week, I realized something: I was pretty messed up about what I thought caring was, and how it felt.
Basically, I thought caring means:
giving myself up for others
over-caring and over-giving
deeply feeling their emotions
trying everything to take away their pain
fix their problems
help them
be there & available at all times
listen deeply, console, agree, be kind & understanding
… and all that, at the cost of myself
My own well-being, health, thoughts, emotions, my whole energy basically.
I thought I was supposed to feel drained, de-energized & tired after a 2-hour walk, only talking about my friends’ recurring decade-old issues. Never to be “fixed”.
I also thought I have to deeply feel all their stuffs, because I automatically did, my whole life. I felt other people's pain & took it on me.
It felt so bad, that of course, that made me want to help them even more & care, because I didn't want them to feel so bad. I started to take it as my responsibility to help them.
Because quite often, they didn’t have anyone else…
I did it with friends, family members, and partners I had…
I am sure modern psychology has very specific terms and labels for all these behaviors. I don’t care so much, its enough for me to know it was not healthy.
The trickiest part is, to describe how it all felt inside of me.
It was a mixture of pain, denseness, suffering, a cramping feeling, pressure, an urge to relieve it but not being able to, tiredness & exhaustion.
It sounds painful and it was, but I thought all that was “caring” and being a good person! A caring and true friend, family member and partner. After all, this is what I have experienced growing up with.
Luckily, I am able to speak about this in the past, because I don’t feel like this anymore. If I am honest, since quite a while already, but it just caught up with me on a deeper level this week.
It was a slow & quiet development, and I cannot tell you the precise steps I did to get where I am now.
But I can tell you how I feel inside now and what caused me to realize all that:
I had several interactions in my personal and professional life these last weeks that accelerated this realization.
Suddenly I noticed I felt what I called” indifference” inside of me. A type of neutral feeling upon hearing about other peoples life sufferings.
None of my usual patterns of feelings were there, they were gone. Done. Finito.
I stayed calm, not emotionally over-invested, not worried, not exhausted, not feeling their feelings, not thinking about it all in an unhealthy, absorbing way.
And yet I knew: I care. I am still empathetic. But differently.
Only after speaking with my teacher, Elizabeth, who asked the right questions, observed me, and knows me for years, did I realize that what I thought “caring” was, was a flawed way of doing it.
It made me cry, realizing this. Cos somewhere inside of me, I thought I am a bad person, a bad friend, co-worker, or family member, while knowing as well that I am not actually a bad person.
Make it make sense huh ;) :D!
The 30+ years of having this type of “caring” attitude took a while to be replaced.
Now I know that I “need to fill my own cup first before I can help others”.
I also know that nothing that drains my energy in that way is something normal. It doesn't mean someone else is bad, it just shows where I am not honoring myself enough, where I don't set boundaries & protect myself.
Usually our relationships and external surroundings mirror something within ourselves, a type of lesson we need to learn.
Some lessons are deeper than others, more entangled in illogical behaviours, others are easier. And we all have different sets of life-lessons to learn, when we are ready to.
I can tell you: all this feels awesome!!
This realization was a big breakthrough for me, and I am sure I will be able to handle situations better now.
Knowing that I still care deeply, feeling like I feel now, by staying neutral, without losing myself and compromising on my energy, is one of the best realizations I had!
It might still take a while to integrate it all, maybe I will fail here & there, but the core of it is done, healed, gone… or whatever other word you might want to use :)
I would love to hear what your relationship to “caring” is? How does it feel for you & how do you define to care for something or someone?
Love,
Daria