Friday, February 3, 2017

Are You Caretaking Others In Order To Get Love, Attention or Approval?

                                                   "When you show up authentic,
                                      you create the space for others to do the same.
                                                           Walk in your truth."

Are you a person that gets your self-worth, love, approval and significance from caretaking others?

Lets be honest .....who is the person that really needs to be taken care of here?
Yes....it is YOU.

A lot of times people get so wrapped up in caretaking others that they neglect their own needs. These type of people are usually women and they will eventually get totally drained in their efforts of caretaking others instead of taking care of themselves.

So why do so many women choose to take care of others at the expense of their own wellbeing?
I believe it is a way of not wanting to focus on what is going on in their own world. It is a lot easier to focus on something "out there" instead of lifting the lid on their own life and maybe start dealing with some issues that they..... themselves have.

What do I mean by this
Maybe you marriage isn´t where you want it to be. Your partner doesn't acknowledge and love you the way you want to be acknowledged and loved. So instead you shift you attention onto someone else that will acknowledge and love you.

Maybe you are unhappy at work and you will pour all your efforts into caretaking someone to get significance from this particular person.

Your friend don't pay attention to you they way you want  them to and instead you overwork. Spending a lot of extra hours at the office signing up for all kinds of assignments outside your work schedule, to prove to everyone how good you are and how much you care about your job and that you deserve attention and significance.

In other words you want other people to give you what you are not giving to yourself. You are giving with attachments. You expect something back from others that you don't give yourself on a regular base. The problem with doing this is that other people will feel a pull on their energy from you. They feel that you are wanting something back from them. So instead of getting what you want from these people, whether it is love, approval, attention or significance. These people will pull away from you and that will leave you feeling even more empty on the inside.

The solution to this dilemma is that we all must learn to give ourselves what we most need from other people.
If is love....give yourself some love on a regular base. Same thing with attention, approval and significance. Learn to give it to yourself so than you don't have to pull on other people to give it to you. And another great bonus is..... by giving love, attention, support to yourself, it can never be taken away from you.....because you are giving it to YOU.

Now of course there are a lot a lot of people out there that want to be taken care of. The absolutely love when you do a lot of things for them. They don't want to be responsible for taking care of themselves so they absolutely love to be friends or in a relationship with a caretaker. The problem with these relationships is that eventually the caretaker will get totally drained of their own energy and when they are no longer able to be the caretaker, the other person...."the taker" might move on to the next "new" caretaking person because you are no longer willing or able to take care of them.

It takes a lot of courage to focus on loving yourself and letting go of caretaking. The people that you have been giving a lot to in order to get love, attention or approval, may become angry at you for withdrawing your caretaking and they might feel like you are abandoning them.
They loved your caretaking and they may not want to be with you and they might not want to be supportive of you when you stop caretaking them
.
So when you decide to stop caretaking certain people, you might lose them.
So what!!! There will be other people filling their spot. People that appreciate you for who you are and they don't need for you to take care of them.







Karin Glannstam - Personal Success Coach

No comments:

Post a Comment