The Minute You Lost Your Spark

You're accomplished. You're capable. You're managing a marriage, a career, and a household.
 
 But you're also angry. Reactive. Disconnected. And you can't figure out why.
 
In This Episode:

• The specific moment when you realize you haven't asked yourself what you want in years
• Why capable women stop paying attention to themselves (and it's not what you think)
• The real cost of living on autopilot in your relationships and career
• Why your circumstances probably won't change, and why that's actually good news
• How changing your *thinking* about your situation changes everything downstream
• The one shift that brings the spark back (without burning your life down)

 
There is nothing wrong with you. You certainly are not a victim. You just stopped paying attention to yourself.
 
And when you turn back toward yourself, when you start listening again, everything changes.

Do you want to learn more about the Reset Sessions? Click here.

This podcast is part of my deeper work supporting women who are capable, accomplished, and exhausted from overgiving, overcarrying, and losing themselves inside the life they’ve built.

If you’re ready to go deeper, here are a few ways to begin:

Take the Burnout Assessment
Explore my book, Claws Out: Thriving in a World That Wants You Tamed
Book a Reset Session with me and get clear on the deeper reason behind your pressure, confusion, or emotional exhaustion.

Transcript

Penelope Magoulianiti 0:00

Welcome back to Loved Without Losing Yourself. A space for women who are capable, intelligent and accomplished, yet clearly cut. Welcome back to Loved Without Losing Yourself. A space for women who are capable, intelligent, and accomplished, yet quietly exhausted from holding everything together. Here we talk about what it really takes to come back to yourself without burning your life down. Today I want to talk about a topic that I don't think we name clearly enough or explore enough. And it's about a specific moment of realization when you finally see the reality of your situation. When you realize you haven't asked yourself what you want in so long that you are not even sure you remember how to answer that question anymore. You feel fed up, tired, you want to escape, but you know you can't. You are dissatisfied, and still your mind is telling you that you shouldn't be, that you should be grateful for what you have, that you must feel content and happy. When your husband, your partner tells you you're not the one that I fell in love with, you are always angry and unhappy. When you find yourself shouting, snapping at people instead of having a conversation with them, when you jump into conclusions, when you live in your head, making story after story of why people mistreat you, don't respect you, don't love you anymore. What brought you to this point is life. Regular, normal, everyday life. But that's not the whole truth, is it? Let me be really clear about something right from the start. I'm not here to tell you that you are a victim, because you are not. You are a woman who made choices, choices that made sense at the time, choices that felt right, choices that you still stand by in many ways. You chose a partner, you built something with him, you created a life, you pursued a career, you went for opportunities, you showed up, you delivered, you proved yourself capable, you took on responsibilities at home, you managed the household, you held things together. All of that, those were your choices, and they weren't wrong. But here's what happened in the middle of all those choices. You stopped asking yourself what you actually wanted. You didn't make a decision one day to ignore yourself. It was more subtle than that. It happened gradually in the small moments when you said yes to something because it made sense, even though you didn't really want to. When you adjusted your preferences because it was easier than having a conversation about it. When you prioritized keeping the peace over being honest about how you felt, you did it at work too. You took on the projects that needed taking on. You stayed late when deadlines were tied. You adjusted your communication style to fit what you expected. You learned what success looked like in that environment and you became that. You didn't change all of yourself. You changed the parts of you that worked in that world, the parts that were strategic, efficient, unquestionable. And maybe you are really good at your job. Maybe you've climbed, maybe you've done well, but somewhere in there you also stopped asking, is this what I want to be spending my energy on? Is this who I want to become? You stop paying attention to the cost, and the cost is real. Here's what happens when you stop asking yourself what you want. You become reactive instead of responsive. You are running a mental load that never gets set down. Work stress, home stress, relationship stress, the pressure to be everything to everyone. And because you haven't taken time to actually process any of it, to actually feel what you are feeling and decide what to do about it, it all backs up. So when someone asks you something simple, even if it is, hey, how was your day? And it's actually the 47th small request that's seen that's been made of you today, you snap. You don't mean to, but it comes out of anger as sharpness, as a reaction instead of a real response. And then you feel guilty about it. And your partner notices and he says, I don't recognize you anymore. And he's right, because you are angry, and most of the times it's not because he did something wrong, not even because your life is terrible, but because you've been ignoring yourself for so long that your frustration is the only voice you have left. It's loud, it's reactive, it's not coming from a place of clarity, it's coming from a place of being completely disconnected from what you actually need. So you start making stories. If I am angry all the time, it must be because people don't respect me, people don't love me, people don't see my value, they mistreat me, they take advantage. And maybe some of that is true. But here, what's also true, you haven't told anyone what you actually want. You haven't set any real boundaries, you haven't asked for what you need. So of course people don't know. Of course, things keep happening the way they are happening. You are the only one who knows what you want, and you are not paying attention to yourself enough to even know that. And the worst part, you believe there is no escape. You can't just leave your marriage because you are unfulfilled. You can't quit your job because it's demanding. There are the things you choose. These are the pillars of your life, and they are not bad enough to justify walking away from everything. So you're stuck, stuck between what you have and what you want, between gratitude for your accomplishments and deep dissatisfaction with how you're living, between knowing you need something to change and believing you shouldn't complain because you have so much to be grateful for. That's a painful place to be. Now, let me explain why this happened. Nobody talks about this, but the why of you feeling this way, it didn't happen by accident. You were taught to do this. You were taught that being responsible means sacrificing what you want, that being a good partner means managing his emotions and his needs before your own, that being a good mother, a good daughter, a good professional means being available, reliable, always on a pleaser. You were taught that success in your career means becoming a certain kind of woman, less emotional, more aggressive, more willing to make tough calls, less woman and more corporate player. You were taught that your needs, your rest, your preferences, your desires, your space to be fully yourself, those are luxuries, selfish indulgences nice to have that come after everyone else is taken care of. And because you internalized all of that, you made choices that reflected it. You said yes when you meant no, you adjusted yourself to fit into spaces that weren't built for the whole of who you are. You prioritized other people's comfort and success and happiness before your own clarity. And you told yourself it was love, it was responsibility, it was maturity. But maturity isn't the same as self-abandonment. Responsibility doesn't mean ignoring yourself and love, real love, doesn't ask you to change who you are. And here's where it gets interesting. All of that dissatisfaction you're feeling, all of that anger and reactivity and frustration, that's not a problem. That's actually information. Your body is telling you that something needs to change. Your emotions are telling you that you are living out of alignment with what matters to you. Your frustration is a signal that you've been ignoring yourself and what's important for you for too long. And instead of listening to that signal, you've been trying to manage it. You've been trying to be better at handling the stress, trying to be more patient, try to be less angry, but you can't manage your way out of this. You can't fix this by being a better version of the woman you've become. This only gets fixed when you actually take the time to be honest with yourself, to ask, what do I want? Not what should I want, not what's realistic, not what keeps everyone else happy. What do I actually want? What do you want for your career, for your relationship, for your life, for yourself? And then you have to be willing to let your answer matter. Here's what I know about women like you. And the reason I know is because I've been one of you. There is nothing wrong with you. You haven't lost yourself, you are not damaged, you are disconnected, and the way you come back is not by fixing anything, it's by paying attention. It starts with slowing down enough to actually hear yourself. Maybe that means setting aside time, real time, not the scraps of time between everything else, where you are not managing anyone else's needs, where you can actually think about what you want without immediately editing it based on what's practical or what makes sense or what you think you should want. Maybe it means you have to look at your life and get honest about what's working and what's isn't. You're not going to blame yourself or anyone else. You're going to get clear. Where are you out of alignment? Where are you living someone else's life instead of your own? Maybe it means you have to have some difficult conversations with your partner about what you actually need to feel alive in the relationship, with your boss or yourself about what kind of work actually fulfills you, with your family about what you are actually willing to keep doing and what you are not. Those conversations are uncomfortable. I'm not going to tell you they are not, but they are a hell of a lot less uncomfortable than spending the next 10 years angry and reactive and disconnected from your own life. Now, here's something really important that I want you to understand because this is where real change happens. Right now, your circumstance is you have a marriage, you have a demanding job, you have responsibilities at home, you have a life that feels demanding and overwhelming. That's the circumstance. But what's making you miserable isn't actually the circumstance, it's what you are thinking. It's what you are thinking about the circumstance. Your current thought is something like I'm stuck, I can't escape. People don't respect me. I do everything and nobody appreciates it. I'm a victim of my own choices. This is unfair. That thought creates a feeling. Resentment, frustration, anger, disconnection, despair. And that feeling creates your actions. You snap, you react, you make stories to justify why things are the way they are. You perform for your partner, you manage everyone around you. You try to control their response to you so you don't have to feel how bad it feels inside. And those actions create your result. You are packed up, reactive, not present, tired, angry, and your spark is completely gone. Here's the important part. Your circumstance is probably not going to change. You are still going to be married, your job is still going to be demanding, your responsibilities are still going to be there. The pressures, the expectations, the demands on your time, none of that necessarily goes away. But here's what can change. You're thinking about those circumstances. And when your thinking changes, everything else starts to change. So what will happen if you change your thought from I am a victim of my situation to I am choosing this and I need to figure out what I actually want? What if you remove the blame? What if you stopped making your partner the problem, your job the problem, your circumstances the problem? What if you got yourself honest that you are the one choosing to stay? You are the one sacrificing, you are the one not speaking up. That doesn't feel good. It feels like taking responsibility for something painful, but it actually gives you your power back. And as long as you're blaming your partner for not understanding, you can't change anything. He has to change. As long as you're blaming your job for being demanding, you can't change anything. The job has to change. As long as you're blaming your circumstances, you have no power. But the minute you own it, the minute you say, I am choosing this, and I need to get clear on whether I want to keep choosing it, you get your power back. And that changes your feeling. You're not a powerless victim anymore. You are a woman who made choices, who built a life, and who can make different choices if she wants to. From that feeling, from that place of urgency agency and choice, everything looks different. You stop being reactive because you are not desperate anymore. You stop making stories because you are not trying to explain why your life is happening to you. You are present to the fact that you are creating your life through your thoughts, your choices, your actions. You stop snapping at people because you are not backed up by resentment and blame. You become present again. And when you are present, when you're actually inhabiting your own life, instead of just managing it, instead of just surviving it, the people around you feel that. Your partner feels it, your kids feel it, your colleagues feel it. They respond differently too. And it has nothing to do with manipulating them or fixing them or change them. But because you are genuinely different. You're not trying to please everyone by trying to figure out the version of you that will accept performing anymore. You're not doing that, you're not managing them to keep yourself safe. You are authentic, you are there, real, whole, clear. And people respond to that authenticity in real ways. That's when the spark comes back. Outside, nothing changed. But inside, you changed. Your relationship to your circumstances changed, your thinking changed, and that changes everything. The woman I work with who actually come back, who stop being angry and reactive and start being present, what they do is to become courageous to see things as they are. They decide that their own clarity matters as much as everyone else's comfort. They get honest about what they want in their relationships, in their careers, in their lives, and then they have the conversations to make that known. They set boundaries. And I'm not talking about mean boundaries. I'm talking about honest ones. They stop apologizing for having preferences, for having needs, for wanting to be fulfilled in their work and their relationships. They start making decisions based on what's true for them, not just what's practical for everyone else. And yes, sometimes that creates friction. Sometimes people react. Sometimes things shift in ways that aren't comfortable. But the alternative is staying trapped, staying angry, staying disconnected from yourself, and that cost is too high. So before we close this episode, I want to leave you with a question, and I want you to really sit with it. If you knew that your dissatisfaction was actually trying to tell you something important, that it wasn't a character flaw or a sign that you are ungrateful, but actual information about what you need, what will it be telling you? Where are you living out of alignment? Where are you ignoring what you actually want? And what will become possible if you started paying attention to that? The truth is that you don't have to blow up your life to come back to yourself, but you do have to be willing to see clearly what's happening, to get honest about what you want and to let that matter. And that's the work I do with women like you. In a research session, we get really clear on what's actually happening, not the stories you're telling, but the reality. We get honest about what you want from your career, your relationship, your life. And then we create a real plan for how you come back to yourself without dismantling everything. The solution isn't to burn it all down. You just need to come home to yourself. If you're ready to do that work, if you are tired of being angry and reactive and ready to be present again, the link to book the research session is in the show notes. Your spark isn't gone. You just stop paying attention to it. And when you turn back toward yourself, when you start listening again, everything changes. Thank you for being here. I will talk to you next week. Much love.