Does everyone hate me?

Moving from "does everyone hate me?" to "how do I feel about my life / myself".  Hillary reflects living through the lense of others for a lot of her life, and how she softened into embodying and believing some of the following statements:

- "I am not who I think I am, I am not who you think I am, I am who I THINK you think I am"

- "What people think of me is none of my business"

- "If you're trying to please everyone, you will end up pleasing no one" (and Hillary would add: "especially not yourself!"

Referenced in this episode:
Hillary McVeigh

Giggly Squad

Follow along with more of Hillary's work on Instagram @kayloecreative and on Substack @kayloecreative

Read Kayloe Quarterly Run One

Ready Kayloe Quarterly Run Two

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning and welcome back to Softening for the Type A girls like me. Alright, just gonna keep the traction moving. Um after I recorded the last episode about why soften, um I mean I trust what came through is exactly what should have come through, but I also had this lingering thought of like, oh, I wish I had said this. Um and honestly, I have so many things that I want to say and I want to share right now. Um, and so that's not a foreign feeling at the moment. And honestly, for a type A girl like you and me, that is something that I have had most of my life is leaving a situation and replaying what just happened and then being a little critical of I could have said this, I should have added that, I forgot this. So softening for me, especially present day, this is a big one that I'm working on that is so fun to play with, and it's yeah, I I feel new to it, so I kind of have like beginner's excitement, but also it's something I've been doing ever since I was a child. But you guys, just everything in life can be a practice, and everything in life you can get better at or worse at for lack of awareness and practice. So, one thing that I'm loving playing with is what is right in front of me, what wants to come through, really getting in the energy, getting in the flow, and then being aware of what comes up and what I think of and letting it flow through. So, yeah, another way of softening is I don't overplan. Um, I also soften into what feels good at the time or what feels bad, just softening into self-awareness, and I'm gonna talk a lot, a lot, a lot about somatics and body scans and body awareness because that has been a game changer for me in softening. So much of softening is literally for me about the body and how the body feels and paying attention to the body. But we will get into more and more details as we deepen and soften into the softening. The thing that was still lingering after the last episode is that I started kind of getting into storytelling mode and then I pivoted off a little bit adjacent, but a little bit of a rabbit trail. One really key point that I decided to just make a whole episode on is this feeling for me that for me it corresponds with type A and being critical and hard on myself, and I don't know if it will resonate with you. But interacting with friends or families or strangers, walking away, I did get to this point, and walking away and self-critiquing and playing it over your head, and wondering if you should have said something different, or if there was a more ideal way to communicate, or did they think this or that? But ultimately, for me, as I've started digging into it and doing work on it, I have this underlying fear or repetitive thought that is so deep down there and honestly feels so immature that I ignored it for a long time. But just wondering after interacting with people, even my really closest best friends or loved ones or family, leaving and wondering, do they hate me? Do they think I'm awful? Do they think I'm dumb? Do they think I'm stupid? And so a lot of my life, I have been even leaving an interaction and being like, do they hate me? Not or did they think I was dumb? Not how do I feel about that situation? Am I proud of how I talked? Oh never. I was not there. I was really constantly making decisions in life and interactions and just the way that I presented myself, the way I dressed, the way I spoke, for wanting to make sure that other people didn't hate me. And so, as you can imagine, especially like I shared in one of the intro podcasts, especially when I had lots of different circles, I was in really conservative church circles, and then I was also in corporate America in Progressive Portland, and then I would have different friends from different circles. And so if I had this underlying motivation of do they hate me underneath it all, I was constantly trying to please whoever I was in front of, which really led to inconsistency in myself and like a social performance anxiety because I'm not present. I'm trying to think do they like what they're hearing? Do they like what they see? Am I making them comfortable? So, yes, it's obviously a form of people pleasing. Is there a correlation between being type A and people pleasing? I think there's a pretty strong case because if you think about it, there's a lot of parallels and a lot of similarities. For me, type A is like I want everything to be just so, I want everything to be right, I want everyone to feel good, I want to feel good at all times, I want to control things so that I can guarantee success for me and for others. I'm very others focused. So maybe other type A's are not as others focused as I am. But the way I'm wired, having that underlying belief or question constantly, do they hate me? Do they hate me? And it was not until literally recent last year that I had enough awareness of that that I could turn it on myself. Well, do I hate myself? And that's where we get into the unlocks, and that's where we get into productive work. But going into situations, always having do they hate me under the surface, I was performing. I was putting on different masks based on who I was talking to. So don't worry, really soon, there's gonna be an episode all about why being type A is the best thing ever. Okay, maybe I don't need to swing the pendulum that far, but being type A is lovely. Being type A has so many gifts. Being type A helps our friends, being type A helps ourselves, it helps us succeed. There is so many wonderful things about being type A. So I just want to caveat that right here. Hey, we're gonna spend some time talking about how lovely it is to be type A. Also, I'm not trying to create an energy of complaining or woe is me. I never ever want to go into that energy in this space. Or as we talk and as I encourage you to dig in and to soften and to release things, it's not because it's bad. It's because we want to come into our fullness of expression and our fullness of self. So back to me sitting across from a friend saying what I think they want me to hear. So I recently heard, and I know it's a quote from someone else, but I'm in a coaching space with Hillary McVeigh right now, and it's amazing. If you've never heard of Hilary McVeigh, go follow her. I'll link her down below. Um, I'm in a coaching cohort. I was not following her, I just found her really intuitively through one of her podcasts, and it resonated. And I was like, this is for me. I'm signing up, and it has been so super amazing. That is more another form of softening. I had softened enough and healed enough and was open enough to trusting my intuition, trusting my gut, that it's true, the things that you hear, the universe brought me exactly what I needed to expand into my next level through this really cool coaching community that I'm in right now. But Hillary McVeigh quotes someone else who I cannot credit right now, because to me it's a Hillary McVeigh quote. Um, but there is another credit. So we will give credit to where credit's due. If you go look at some of Hillary's work, she will credit the correct person, correct source. But recently Hillary shared in our coaching space. I am not who I am. I'm not who hold on, let me get it. I'm not who I think I am. I'm not who you think I am. I am who I think you think I am. And that I mean, I could hear that probably on repeat for three hours straight, and I would just keep feeling it deeper and deeper and deeper in my body. That hit so hard for me. You know, those things where you hear and you just say, Yes, that is it. That is how I've always felt. And hearing it actually spelled out that way and deeply resonating with it as a type A, I can also quickly see how silly and how foolish it is, how convoluted it is, how it's like you don't even know what someone else thinks of you, you're not even considering what you think of you. You are trying to contort into what you believe their viewpoint of you is. How exhausting! No wonder I felt so uptight, anxious, heart-racing, just having a normal conversation with a friend. The amount of hours I've spent rehearsing in my type A-ness before I'm going to just have a coffee chat with someone, because, like I said, if everything is compartmentalized, I would have to spend time thinking, okay, who am I going to talk to? What do they know? What do they not know? What would they like? Especially if I was in like a life transition. I can think back to breaking up with my high school college boyfriend and literally trying to make the decision if I wanted to stay with him or if I didn't want to stay with him based on who would be pleased with that decision and who would not be pleased. Now, present day, I can see so many things wrong with that thought process. Unfortunately, that is how I made so many of my huge life-directing decisions. And then inside whatever decision I decided, it would contort who I was around, who I felt comfortable being around. It made me very um, I'm a very loyal friend. However, if I made a decision that I perceived a certain person wouldn't be happy with, I kind of just moved on and cut off that relationship. Um so definitely not authentic, definitely not genuine, definitely not a way that I would recommend living life or having good, deep, nurturing, fulfilling relationships, but possibly you can relate, being type A, trying to keep track of everything, back to that correlation with people pleasing. Um, yeah, just like I said, so much of my type A would come out in extreme hypervigilance and people pleasing because I just thought if I could do everything right, everyone will be happy, and my own gate to happiness was held by other people. I will be happy if they are happy. So, so much of my healing has been a return to self. Return to self is a huge theme for me, and I have a whole framework around that. And there was a huge phase of my life where return to self was all that I focused on, and it's still a really big theme when I get a little off-kilter, or when I find myself being in a situation and leaving, or even in the situation and hearing that inner voice saying, Do they hate me? But do they hate me? Would they like this better or that better? I now at least have the awareness where I can be like, Oh, okay, time to return to self-return to body. That is one form of softening. Guess what, honey? If they hate you, that's their problem. I heard, I think it was on Giggly Squad, shout out to Giggly Squad. I went through a really hard, gnarly season, and one of my forms of softening was just listening to Paige and Hannah giggle and just be giggly girls because I just anyway, it resonated. And if you're in a hard ass season, softening for you can be to give yourself permission to like let it be light for a minute. Not everything has to be hard. Um, in therapy, I had a whole process around holding joy and grief at the same time. I don't want to get too far off track because these are all big boxes of their own magnitude that I'm opening. Um, but back to Giggly Squad and laugh and take breaks from healing and dance it out and just do whatever feels light to you as well when you're digging in. That is softening. Healing, softening and healing is also finding enjoyment. Softening and healing is that it doesn't always have to be hard. Softening and healing is giving yourself pats on the back for what you are really, really good at and not just ignoring the negative. So I think it was Hannah Berner from Giggly Squad said, in a very cute and funny way, as they do, however, it was straight up wisdom. She said, What people think of me is none of my business. And I heard that and it resonated deeply, but I could also feel it wasn't true for me yet. It resonated as something of, oh, I want to believe that about myself. Like, yeah, what people think of this podcast is none of my business. What people think of my creative work is none of my business. What people think of my healing journey and the place I'm in and the way that I'm emoting, it's none of my business. What people think of my relationship is none of my business. I was not at that place when I originally embarked on, I think I've been healing my whole life. I've always cared about self-development. But in this return to self-phase, when things really, really, really deepened and changed drastically and opened up to a whole new place. And when softening really came online for me and inner power and intuition guiding me really came alive. Now, when I hear what people think of me is none of my business, my whole body response says, Yeah, absolutely, none of my business. Because we can even take it back to what I was sharing when I was okay, so that I'm not who I think I am, I'm not who you think I am, I am who I think you think I am. It's showing that we create our realities through other people's lenses, and it's also showing that we don't know what other people are actually thinking. I'm not actually who you think I am. Most often, other people actually have a much more positive view of us than we think they have of us, you know? Like, okay, girls, you let's do like an immature one that we can all relate to. I don't need to label it immature because it's relate relatable. And again, softening into healing, I'm speaking to myself right now because I caught myself in that. Softening into healing means we do not need to be a hundred percent perfect all the time and a hundred percent mature all the time. So, taking away the immature label, let me use an example. We all know this because we're critical of ourselves as women, and then if you're a type A woman, you are hella critical of yourself. So picture it this way: you know how you are getting ready in the mirror with girlfriends, and the whole time you're like, I wish I had her hair, I wish that my pants fit that way. Oh my gosh, I thought my jeans were cool, but she has those jeans, and those are the cool ones. Like, why did I even get these? The comparison game and the shiny object syndrome that the other person, like, they look so attractive, they don't have dark circles under their eyes, they are so fit, they eat healthy, they have perfect kids. Look how well behaved their kids are, they don't use iPads, they don't do screen time, and everything looks so appealing. It's also just classic grass is greener, right? On the other side. While if you voice any of that, if you say, Oh my gosh, you're getting ready together in the mirror, and you say, Oh my gosh, your hair looks so good. Mine looks so bad today, and yours looks so good. More often than not, when you voice it, the other person says, I was just thinking about how I loved your sweater, and my sweater is so dumb. I was just thinking about how you put together the coolest outfit of the night, and I didn't even think about what I was wearing. I was just thinking about how you shared that your husband does X, Y, and Z, and I mine has never done that, and I wish that I was loved in that same way. So the picture that I'm trying to paint, and hopefully that's relatable, and you can fill in your own examples where you've been on the receiving end of that, where you thought that you just looked puffy and ugly and gross that day, and then someone says, You are glowing and you look amazing today. We are not who other people see us as. Does everyone hate me? Am I going to be alone? Am I gonna be shunned from the community forever? It's that ancestral, inherent thing that just is in human DNA currently where we want to belong. Even the people who say they don't want to belong, that is their belonging. They don't want to be in the norm or the status quo or in the X, Y, and Z. They want to identify with the outcasts or the anarchists or the rebels. That in and of itself is its own club. We as humans long for closeness. We long for connection. We long for purpose. And as I'm saying this, I'm feeling the softening in my body because that's not something that I would have admitted years ago. I would have said, I'm fine on my own, I don't need no one, no one can hurt me. Yeah, say whatever you want to me. Doesn't matter to me. It obviously did, based on the honesty that I've shared here. I was living my life. Every interaction, down to the person at the grocery store, if they said, Are you doing anything fun today? My instant knee-jerk reaction is, What is their version of fun? What should I say to please them, to make them feel comfortable, and not even checking in with myself or not even bringing myself into the equation, living life like it's all about and for other people, and thinking that that is the right thing to do, and it's not. I was gonna say, obviously, you don't want to piss people off. However, I'm going to throw in the truth that if you are living authentically, then you will piss someone off. There is no such thing as pleasing everyone. And this has been kind of fun as I've been sharing these kind of bullet point quotes that I've had in my mind that have felt aspirational to me, that did not feel safe in my body and did not feel true of me, that have now become resonant and become true, different ones are coming up from different parts of my past and my journey, which is really cool. So one I have not thought about for a really long time that just came through is if you are not making someone upset, you're not doing it right. Or if you're trying to please everyone, you're pleasing no one, or you're making effect with no one. And I used to hate that. I remember hearing that pretty early on in my business. I used to hate that because I'm type A. I get 100%, I get A pluses, and that means that I want to please everyone because if I put out a product or an offering, I want a hundred percent. Give me a hundred percent, let me sell out, let me have it be full. I don't want less than that, and so at the beginning, I did want to please everyone, be everyone's type, but as specifically through business, as my business grew, I found a lot of success by niching down, and that meant turning people away. That meant by knowing who I was serving and saying no to others. Was I pissing those people off? No, I still don't like to be super divisive, but this podcast, case in point, I have gotten to a place where I've moved through letting my body feel that it's safe to be myself. I've seen real returns and success in following my true desires, my true passion, my true core, my true gut, and seeing the beauty and the magic that comes. And so then it just becomes not only natural, but it also becomes a non-negotiable. Like, why wouldn't I want to do what feels good? Why wouldn't I want to give myself the thing that I actually truly desire? And then there's another side of it that's not as fun and hurt a little bit more, but I'm thankful for it because it's landed me here, feeling more secure in choosing my own voice and my own path and my own decisions. But I have also just had to grow up to the reality of I'm the only one responsible for living my life. When I was trying to make decisions through my perception of other people's viewpoints and what they would like or what they would dislike, A, I mean, there's a lot of ego and immaturity there in assuming that I know what other people think. So that's kind of obvious, but to me, in my anxiety, it was not obvious at the time. But also I would build resentment with people because I was in my mind bending over backwards with my own life, my own decisions, my own time spent to make them happy. And then if they didn't seem appreciative of that, or if they didn't respond in the way that I assumed or made up in my mind, I've just had a lot of growing up and pain and real life experience to move through where I've other people just live in their life. You know what I mean? If other people are living their life to the best of their ability, however they want to. Like I know you have a situation like this in your life where you made a decision, like you and a friend, you thought you were on the same page, and you were like, I want to do this, but no, I'm gonna do this because we said we would do it together, and then they let you down, or they didn't show up, or they actually booked a trip instead of going on the thing that you thought you were going to do together. You get those real-world examples for me. I know at least I went through a season where it felt like an ongoing theme where I just was really, really seeing clearly, oh yeah, other people out there clearly fully have given themselves permission to do what they want and do what serves them the best, and they're letting me down in the process. And look, they're just continuing on and living life. So, why am I not giving myself the own that same permission? Or even to turn around the topic of this podcast, always wondering, do they hate me? Maybe you need to turn it around and be like, do I actually hate them? Not really, not in the extreme, but hopefully you feel that lightheartedness of what I'm saying. Bring yourself into the equation, soften into it's not about what other people think about you. I've now gotten to that space where I can hear what other people think of me is none of my business, and I can actually feel it, baby. And yes, it's not like I'm immune to it. As we heal, as we soften, as we practice these things, I'm sure you've heard it before. Like, change starts with awareness. You're not gonna change something you don't even know is a problem or it's not a problem. There's lots of people out there living lots of different versions of life, and they're fine with it. Something that might be toxic or unhealthy or really life-sucking to you is fine for someone else and let it be fine. Let it be fine. So it's not about what people think of you or how they perceive your life. It's about what you think of you, it's about how you perceive your life. You're the one going to bed at night in this life. You're the one waking up in the morning in this life. Even if you have kids and a partner, it's still about your experience and your perception of your health, of your beauty, of your surroundings, of your role in society, of your social, economic class. So many of these are just imaginary things that we've created. Beauty, beauty is real, it's also fake. It is truly in the eye of the beholder. That is why that old, old, old quote is still around to haunt us and to bless us. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder because the beholder is the only one whose experience matters in that moment. There's so many ways that this concept plays into business, obviously, into your personal life. Um, but that's just what I wanted to offer today. Something that came up after the last recording, like I said, was man, I just want to talk about that feeling I used to have all the time. Like, what weight to carry around? Like, I just talk to the mailman and I walk away. I'm like, do they hate me? Do they think I'm awful? Do they think I'm a waste of space? So, however, this landed in your system, in your thoughts, in your mind, take a minute to actually write it down or take a walk with it or journal it out, um, or breathe it out, or just close your eyes and see how your body feels if you're newer in this space of tuning in and somatic work. That's how it starts. Is awareness, like I said, it just starts from trying, it starts from going with your gut. What does your body want to do right now? When I say, does everyone hate me? How does that land in your body? Does it sound silly or does it hurt in your chest? Let yourself explore paying attention to these things. And as this episode ends, just yeah, that's just my little suggestion. I was gonna say challenge, but it's not a challenge because we soften here and it's easy. It's easy to give yourself space to see how something lands before you just go off to try to achieve the next thing. You're not hated, you are loved. If you're still in that space I used to be, of living life to make sure not everyone hates you. There's a much more free, softer way, and I'm so excited for you to start exploring and land in that space. Okay, thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you all more soon.