Losing sight of your needs

Our overwhelming desire to care for others and contribute to their well-being is often our own undoing. 

We care! We care deeply and completely for our partners, our parents, our siblings, our friends, our children ... and that is what motivates us to keep going when we feel our reserves are dwindling.  

In caring for others so consistently, we often find imbalance creeping into our lives. Perhaps we notice it, perhaps we don't initially.  Many of us are not sure what to do about that imbalance, and so we ignore it or avoid it and carry on with our caring for others. 

Many of us hold the belief that taking care of ourselves means ceasing to take care of others, and that in order to take care of others properly, we must forget ourselves. 

Those of us who have forgotten ourselves either pay the price personally (physically, emotionally, mentally) or seek to make others pay for it!

Our own joy and well-being must be priority when we care for others - particularly if we want that caring to be effective. If this is not the case, then it would be better for us and others if we did something else.

How often do we do damage to ourselves while doing good that we are no longer capable of doing much of anything? We cut ourselves off from our Self to such an extent that our energy and vitality run out ... we become broken. 

By failing to listen to our Self we are living without compassion towards that Self and life (through demanding, controlling, overworking, feeling guilty) we run the risk of producing a violent reaction from life itself via an accident, disease, depression, anxiety, mourning).  

This new conversation with Self starts with asking "what are my needs?" or "how am I meeting my own needs and what needs are not being met just now". 

Begin it today. 

Sarah xx