"I'm Fine": The Lies We Tell to Keep the Peace

We say it constantly. To our partners, our kids, our coworkers, our friends. "I'm fine." But what are we actually saying? We're saying: my feelings are too much. My needs are inconvenient. It's easier if I just disappear a little.

In this episode, we get into one of the quietest and most costly shrinking behaviors women do, swallowing their real emotions to preserve relationships, keep the peace, and avoid being labeled dramatic, difficult, or too much. Because somewhere along the way, we learned that being easy to deal with was more important than being honest about how we actually feel, what we need, and what we're afraid of.

We dig into why emotional suppression becomes a survival strategy, what it costs when we abandon ourselves to manage everyone else's comfort, and why, by the time the lid finally blows off, it was never really about that one moment anyway.

If you've ever held it together so long you scared yourself when you finally didn't, this one's for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Today we are talking about relationships of all kinds. Relationships, lives, all kinds. Romantic, familial, social, all of the above. All the things. Specifically, when relationships require chronic self-abandonment and how women especially tolerate emotionally unhealthy dynamics in the interest of preserving the relationship. So would you like to shed a little light on your perspective on this topic? Sure.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

I would say, generally speaking, and we've talked about this in other episodes, I feel that women are rewarded from the time we're little girls for being accommodating or emotionally available to help others and to sacrifice ourselves. And for some women, especially women who grew up in a situation where there was instability or chaos, where it was very unpredictable, that self-sacrifice, it can evolve into a way of life, right? So if you think if I can just help this person in this way or love them hard enough or stay strong enough for them, or just clear the way for them, clear the path, or anticipate enough, whatever it is, protect them hard enough, whatever it may be, then maybe no one will get hurt. And it sounds really great, but then we realize what are we doing? We're sacrificing ourselves, we're chronically emotionally patrolling all angles of the perimeter of everyone else's life, like an exhausted security guard, and then we abandon ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

This episode's gonna dive into why women tolerate these emotionally unhealthy dynamics, how that emotional suppression becomes a survival strategy, and why a lot of times I think this is the question that many women ask themselves or have heard asked by others that well, why don't you just leave the relationship? Why don't you just leave that person or take that person out of your life? Why that can feel unsafe, and what healthier connection actually requires. As always, we're not here to shame, we're not here to judge, we're here to help you understand why we were taught as women to tolerate relationships that slowly disconnect us from our true selves.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Most NDAs keep people quiet.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Ours does the opposite.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Around here, NDA means no dicks allowed. Not men, the behaviors that keep women small. This is the podcast for women who are done shrinking and ready to rise. I'm Amanda Kachurka. And I'm Elizabeth Cipola. Welcome to NDA.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

There's pressure that many women feel to maintain relationships at all costs, even when those relationships are exhausting, one-sided, emotionally unsafe, slowly or sometimes not so slowly, eroding their sense of self. To your point, we're rewarded for being accommodating, forgiving, emotionally available. And we learn very early that conflict of any kind threatens that connection.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

As I was trying to get in the right headspace for today's episode, I was thinking I definitely would never describe myself as being someone who's conflict avoidant. Because one thing that I've recognized in myself over the years of my existence from some of my earliest memories is this really intense instinct to become almost like a fierce protector of people I love. I mean, obviously my children and husband, right? But what I'm talking about is other buckets of people in relationships. So my closest friends, the people that I work closely with, my employees, anyone who reports directly to me, even strangers sometimes, if I sense vulnerability, it's almost like my nervous system is constantly scanning for who's hurting or who needs protecting or who's about to get blindsided and they don't know it. I feel like if I stay strong enough for everyone else, then their pain can be prevented. I I don't know. I was just trying to think about that because I don't necessarily think it always comes off in a way that people avoid conflict because I wouldn't describe myself that way. I just wanted your reaction to that.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

I think caring deeply about people is not the question. The question is where you learned that other people's safety, healing, emotions, stability, etc. are your responsibility to carry. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

Which connects beautifully to today's topic.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

So I guess it just comes out differently in each of us, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:48

For sure. Protection can become a way of controlling uncertainty, preventing abandonment, proving your value. So, I mean, we've talked about your drive to do some, if not all, of those things at different points in your life.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

It's just been coming up for me a lot lately in recent weeks, especially that I have to really take a hard look at within myself in an honest way, is how I think sometimes, at least for me, when I'm protecting everyone else, it almost becomes my way of disconnecting from my own emotions. It's almost like when I'm the protector, then I don't really leave myself room to be protected. That's just something that I has really been coming up for me lately that I've really been noticing.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

I think those are good examples of how it can manifest differently. But I think the bottom line is that as women, we learn to maintain connection via the channel of managing other people's emotions first. So it's always us. I'm gonna say second, but it's not actually second. It's probably more like, I don't know, 12th, but you probably yes. So in practice, what does this look like? I think in relationships, there's staying attached to potential instead of reality. I think becoming the emotional manager of the relationship where you're minimizing your own needs and avoiding difficult conversations or avoiding owning up to how you're truly feeling for the purpose of preserving the relationship and keeping the other person emotionally regulated, which again, not your responsibility. It can be unequal emotional labor. I'm sure we've all had friends who just emotionally are very draining for us, and we may not even realize it until we leave a conversation with them and feel completely exhausted and mentally and emotionally drained, tolerating disrespect, being the safe or supportive protector, if you will, to use your example. Anytime you're walking on eggshells, I think in any relationship, these are behaviors that if these are things that you're noticing in yourself. And again, we encourage you to just sit with your feelings and take notice and get curious and ask yourself why five times? Why am I feeling this way? To get to where it's coming from. And I'm sure you've got some that are very longstanding and maybe some that are newer, that if you really sat and thought about it for a few minutes, you'd be like, oh, wait, I'm putting myself on the back burner for the benefit of this other person.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

And one type of relationship this has been really coming up strong for me within is one that I would imagine some of our listeners might be able to relate to. And that is my relationship with my children. And they're not itty bitty anymore. They're 20 and 18, two sons who are 20, a daughter who's 18. And I've noticed something really interesting as their mom about myself. And it all has to do with how I'm showing up in that relationship in a way that is abandoning myself, right? So I personally have an incredibly hard time letting my kids see too much vulnerability from me. And it's not because I don't have vulnerability, because trust me, I do, but there's almost like this unconscious part of me that wants to protect them by trying to show them how strong I am almost constantly. It's almost like if they see me strong enough, steady enough, capable enough, it'll somehow transfer to them and the world won't hurt them, which logically is not how this works because unfortunately, emotional immunity is not genetically transferred last I checked through aggressive maternal overfunctioning. I don't think so. Damn it. I wish it were. I think I should break it to you, but so I took a big step in one of my relationships this week just a couple days ago, and I actually shared with my daughter how I was feeling about something she did and how it made me feel, and that I was hurt by it. So that was a big step for me because normally I would never share that, nor would I want her to ever know that I felt badly because that would be a sign of weakness.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

How how was it received?

SPEAKER_02 9:10

She looked at me and she said, Really? Are you serious? Are you joking? Because she's not used to me doing that. And I said, No, I'm really serious. And then my eyes started welling up with tears. Then I felt like an idiot if I could be totally truthful. And he said, Oh my god, mom, you're crying. And I'm like, No, I'm not crying. So then we both started crying.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

It was a thing. Yeah. That raises an interesting point because, and it actually ties nicely to a shrinking behavior that was submitted by a listener recently, and we'll get to that. But this concept of displaying emotion and suppressing our emotions in order to preserve attachment, preserve the relationship, preserve how that person views us. And women constantly, we've talked about this, I think, several times at this point, where women are often lumped into this description of being overly emotional or dramatic or fill in the blank with whatever word you want. Whenever we show any kind of emotion, so we're just trained to suppress them. But the problem is when you do that, it's like shaking a bottle under pressure, right? You keep suppressing, suppressing, suppressing, and it just builds and builds and builds. And then you have an emotionally charged situation and the lid blows off and you can't help it. And so that looks differently for different people. I'm an angry crier personally. If I've been bottling up a lot of angry feelings and they don't have anywhere to go, they explode and I start crying, which you've witnessed actually. Yes, I have. Guilty. Uh so I do want to talk a little bit more about that when we talk about the shrink this segment. But at what point does the compassion become a pathway to self-abandonment? How do we recognize when we're on that path?

SPEAKER_02 11:01

First of all, I'm still learning that. So I just want to be 100% honest. This is something I'm still thinking about. I don't want to have our listeners think that I'm the expert because this is just real talk for us to create some important conversation. But my two cents is that it becomes self-abandonment when we realize that nobody really knows who we are. When you feel invisible, when you feel like no one really knows not only who we are, but what our needs are. When I feel a longing for someone to take care of me, that's when I know. Now I don't know how that resonates with you, but for me, that's how I know.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

I think that's actually a very, very good indicator. Another indicator for me is resentment. Anytime I'm feeling resentment toward another person, that's a good indicator for me that I've minimized myself in some way. Just paying attention. Again, we talk a lot about paying attention to the cues and paying attention to how you're feeling. And that takes practice. We're certainly not going to sit here and say, hey, if you start paying attention to your feelings, you're going to magically fix all your problems right away. I wish it were like that. I'd love it if that was that easy. I mean, maybe not, because then that wouldn't give us space to have this podcast. So I digress. But I do think that's another good signal for me to pay attention to is that resentment.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

Yeah, I like the resentment. That's true. Getting curious, why am I feeling resentful? What's behind that? I guess the word I would use to describe for me, it's almost like when I start to become almost emotionally invisible. Yeah. And it happens very quietly, at least for me.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Yeah, I think it does for a lot of women, actually. And I think we end up having these emotional side effects. The resentment, like we mentioned, exhaustion, burnout, feeling lonely, even though you're in a relationship, again, whether it be romantic, friends, family, whatever, but still feeling lonely, feeling like you're not understood, like people don't really see you. And then as that wears on over time, you also start seeing things like really extreme loss of boundaries and difficulty answering the question of what do you actually want or need because you've lost yourself so much in the relationship that your needs are virtually invisible to you.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

Yes. We don't allow ourselves to create space to even think about it because we we want to take care of others. I I was just talking to one of my dear, dear friends just the other day, and just all the different hats she's wearing, all the different balls in the air that she's juggling, caring for aging parents, trying to take care of her husband, trying to take care of her children, the pets, her siblings, you name it. And it's like she's resentful, she's frustrated, she's ready to pop. And I see her desperately needing space and desperately needing to take care of herself, but almost like I can't. There's no time, I don't have time. We don't give ourselves permission. And I'm not judging her, no, because every person listening to this podcast, and you and I can relate to that.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Yes. Oh my gosh, absolutely. I I've I've had so many people in my life who I watch them from a distance, and and it's interesting because my perspective of them has changed over the years, where I went from the mindset of, oh, this person is so caring, and they're such a a team player or such a wonderful friend and so caring and always looking out for other people and all of the things. But now that I have done a lot of work on myself to recognize those tendencies in me in certain relationships, I almost feel sad for people who constantly feel like they have to be caring for everyone else and never leave time for themselves. It's so it's gone from uh an admiration to a little bit of sadness around what are you leaving behind because you're so busy taking care of everybody else.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

And what are you afraid of? Because what you're describing, and when I think of my dear friend and so many of us, is when we're trying to take care of everybody else and be the strong one or have everything together and anticipate what everyone else needs, and just saying, yep, sure, I'll do that. Yep, sure, I'll do that, even though we're ready to break, is if I'm being honest with myself when I get like that, what am I afraid of? I'm afraid of not being able to protect the people I love. I'm afraid of feeling helpless, I'm afraid of being vulnerable, I'm afraid of what would happen if I fall apart too. So it's like, okay, keep piling it on, keep piling it on. And yeah, feeling sad for people like that, that makes a lot of sense and having compassion because it's almost like you don't really even realize that you're operating out of fear. It's like autopilot and you're losing yourself. Yes, so every minute of each day that you keep operating out of fear.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

It's so true. I think this actually is a good transition to the shrink this segment. So I want to share, and this person would like to remain anonymous. So we're gonna call this person, let's call this person Bethany. So Bethany has submitted a shrinking behavior and said, I was struggling with this this week, being mad and getting emotional. I struggle with being able to express my feelings when I'm mad without showing a lot of emotion. I was really pissed off at someone for something they did and how they talked to me, but I didn't say anything in the moment to try to avoid confrontation. So I stewed about it and I was really in my feelings. And then when my husband asked what was wrong, I completely lost it. This resonated with me so hard because I have been in this situation so many times. For me, this is usually a professional situation, not personal, but I completely understand where it comes into the personal side of things as well. As I mentioned before, I'm an angry crier. I have inherited genetically a short fuse. And when I see that exhibited in others, I'm always like, man, that's a really unattractive quality. And so over the years, I learned to suppress my anger because who wants to deal with somebody expressing angry feelings? That's not fun for anybody, including the person expressing them. So okay, instead, I'm gonna avoid the conflict. I'm gonna not say anything, I'm just gonna keep my mouth shut. So the anger is getting deferred instead of expressed. That deferred anger doesn't disappear, it just builds. So by the time I finally speak, I'm no longer communicating from the perspective of just the current issue. I'm communicating weeks, months, years of accumulated resentment, hurt, exhaustion, disappointment, self-betrayal. There's that underneath it, whether you're aware of it or not. And that's why the emotional intensity, I think, feels so disproportionate to everyone else who's on the receiving end of it. And why I perceive it as so disproportionate to the situation is because it's not just that situation, it's literally everything that you've been suppressing kind of blowing up all at once. What I've learned, again, through a lot of help with my therapist, is the advice is not to stop being emotional. The advice is to stop waiting until your nervous system is so overloaded before you allow yourself to say something. Because if you only permit yourself the ability to speak, once something becomes truly unbearable, your body's gonna be sounding all sorts of alarms. Absolutely. And again, guilty of this myself, we confuse as women calmness with legitimacy or credibility. We think, oh, if I cry, I'm not gonna be taken seriously. If I express anger early when I'm feeling it, I'm dramatic. So they suppress the first five, 10, 15 signals that your body's giving you of like, hey, something's wrong. And so practically speaking, it's a matter of learning to intervene earlier and lowering the threshold for honest communication. So that's things like, hey, this didn't sit right with me. I need to address this before resentment builds. I'm noticing some frustration around this. I actually do have a concern here. I've been minimizing my reaction. This really upset me. Saying this really upset me is allowed. Yes, you're entitled to your own feelings for God's sakes. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

And the feeling doesn't define you, by the way. That's another thing. It doesn't mean or being a whiny baby or any of the things that we tell ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

That crying that you're experiencing when you're angry, that's not a sign of irrationality. That's your body screaming, I can't take anymore. Literally, I can't take anymore. So it's the adrenaline, it's the frustration, it's the fear of conflict, it's the invalidation and the anger that produce the tears. And so again, instead of, and I'm laughing because I do this to myself so often, you start managing other people's perception of your emotion instead of staying connected to the point that you're trying to make.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

This is something that I have really struggled with for a long time. And for many, many years, it actually heavily prevented me from expressing what I truly felt about situations because I was so scared of being perceived as too emotional. And never until my therapist pointed it out to me, at no point did it ever occur to me that maybe if I just started expressing what I was having a problem with earlier on instead of letting it all build over time, maybe I wouldn't actually feel the need to cry. Right, because maybe it would be addressed much sooner. Right. Yes. So all of this to say, Bethany, thank you so much for sending that. I hope some of what I said has made sense to you and is worth pursuing and something you're gonna try. So again, just recognizing when you're feeling those signals. And there are definitely, and I think Elizabeth made a phenomenal point a couple of episodes ago, when you start to communicate more honestly and authentically, there are gonna be people who have especially really close, like familial relationships who are gonna have adverse reactions to you communicating your emotions. And just remind yourself that when they have those reactions, it's coming from a place of, well, you're easier for me to deal with when you're not honest. I think that was our boundary episode. It was, yes. So it is not your job to be easy for other people. No, so that's my shrink this.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

Love it, love it. I feel like I shared mine earlier in the episode, actually, where I I caught myself wanting to continue. My shrinking behavior that I've historically always demonstrated in my relationship with my children, where I have been afraid for them to see those softer parts of me. If I'm feeling sad or if I have a need, I'd say that is something that I caught. And that pattern of shrinking behavior is just catching and noticing how uncomfortable for me personally being vulnerable feels, even with people that I love so deeply. And so I'd say I'm pretty proud of myself because I have caught it. And it's funny, this podcast that we do, we're doing it because it truly is a labor of love, and we truly just want to build a community of listeners that we affectionates, just to get these important conversations out there. But by doing it, it's helping me as well as one of the co-hosts, because I am much more self-aware of shrinking behaviors. And I'm proud of myself because for this week's example, I noticed it. I acknowledge the fact that my children don't need a mom who's invincible, they need someone in their lives who is emotionally real and safe. And I just feel like for me, for that example that I gave earlier, it's important because I think being the protector is something that has become my identity. And that's not really authentically who I am. It's my survival armor, and I'm ready to shed it.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Yes, love it. Thank you. Love it so much. I think this is a topic that a lot of people can relate to, a lot of women can relate to. So if it is, we would love to hear from you. Send us a note on Instagram. We are at NDA underscore pod. If you have something related to this or another shrinking behavior you'd like to share, we would love to hear from you so we can continue to share them on the episodes and we can all learn and grow together. Also, make sure that you are subscribed to NDA so you never miss a future episode. That can be done on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, anywhere you get your podcasts. But I think my takeaway today, and what I would share with Bethany, who submitted the shrinking behavior for today, your emotional expression is not weakness. Right. And as we said, many, many women are not taken seriously when they express emotion because the people around them benefit from them staying quiet.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Yes. It's not a responsibility to be a constant source of convenience to them.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Discomfort in others does not mean that you were wrong to say something about how you feel.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

Absolutely not. So love what we're doing here with this podcast, Amanda. I am so proud of us. Me too. So proud of us. And every day I feel like we hear from someone else who's really vibing with these conversations. And I just want to say, we said it earlier in our first two episodes. It's been a it's been a minute, but I just want to say, welcome to the rise with jazz hands. We haven't said it in several episodes, but uh welcome. And we just appreciate you spending time with us.