My natural impulse is to give to the people I love. I always want to be available to help them out or do something to make them smile. The problem is, sometimes I end up giving too much because the person I am giving to, just takes and takes.

If you are a giver like me, knowing when to set limits for yourself is important. You can’t expect other people to just “get it” and know when they are overstepping or taking advantage of you and stop. If only it worked that way!

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about how you are not required to set yourself on fire to keep others warm. At the time I wrote it, I had been struggling with feeling guilty when saying no to an unreasonable request from family members. As basic as it sounds, understanding and internalizing the idea that having limits with others and enforcing them became a game changer for me.  

If you struggle with whether or not you are being “fair” with setting certain limits, ask yourself this question:

If a friend was in your situation and they were debating setting that limit with someone, what would you tell them?

I’m willing to wager you’d believe that they were being fair and reasonable…I bet you would even be proud of them for standing up for themselves. And if that is the case…don’t you deserve the same validation from yourself?

While setting limits can feel scary, choosing not to have them can lead to self-destruction. Seriously. When you don’t have limits or boundaries, the lack of them can cause some serious effects on your mental health, such as:

• Losing the ability to fully understand what you want or need.
• Becoming mentally exhausted and can’t fully show up for other people in your life.
• Having a hard time deciphering what is truly in your best interest.
• Having bursts of anger and frustration and not really understanding why.
• Putting yourself in a vulnerable position to be mentally and emotionally abused, such as someone gaslighting you.
• You find that your mood changes and mirrors what the other person is feeling, instead of holding on to yourself and what you feel.
• You find yourself worrying about what others think of you, rather than focusing on what you think of yourself.
• Becoming more anxious, depressed or just having an overall feeling of emptiness when forced to sit with your own feelings.

You are responsible for setting limits in your life. You are the only one who can determine what they are. Remember, what you allow in your life, will continue. And you have the power to determine how things go.

This is a very powerful quote that speaks to the fact that sometimes in order to grow and change, we need to be brave enough to leave behind the life we have created for ourselves. This can be a difficult thing to do, but it is often necessary in order to move forward.

What It Means to Outgrow Your Life

To outgrow your life means to move beyond the limitations that you have set for yourself. It means to shed the old skin that is no longer serving you and to emerge into something new. In life, this could be as simple as changing your routine or as drastic as leaving everything behind and starting anew.

Sometimes we become so comfortable in our lives that we don’t even realize that we are no longer growing. We become stuck in our ways, and we don’t allow ourselves to change. This quote is a reminder that to continue growing, we need to be brave enough to step outside of our comfort zones.

This can be a scary proposition because it requires us to let go of what is comfortable and familiar. But if we want to grow and change, sometimes this is necessary. It is only by stepping outside of our comfort zone that we can hope to achieve anything new or different.

Why We Need to Be Brave

It can be easy to get comfortable with the way things are, even if they are not ideal. But in order to move forward, we need to be brave enough to leave behind what is no longer serving us. This could be a job, a relationship, or even a way of thinking.

The benefit of being brave is that it allows us to grow and expand our horizons. When we are stuck in our comfort zone, we limit ourselves both physically and mentally. But when we are brave enough to venture out, we open up a whole new world of possibilities.

How To Be Brave

If you find yourself feeling stuck, it may be time to take some brave steps forward. But how do you go about being brave?

One way to be brave is to take small steps outside of your comfort zone. If you’re afraid of change, start with something small. Maybe try a new recipe or take a different route to work. These small changes can help you ease into larger ones.

Another way to be brave is to surround yourself with people who support your growth. Find people who will encourage you to step outside of your comfort zone and who will be there to cheer you on.

Finally, remember that being brave doesn’t mean that you’re never afraid. It just means that you’re willing to face your fears in order to achieve something greater.

So next time you find yourself feeling stuck, remember that you have the power to change your life. Be brave enough to outgrow the life you’ve built and see what new possibilities await you.

When we experience challenges and hardships, we tend to lose sight of all that we have already survived. In fact, we have survived 100% of all the struggles we have faced. Every time life knocked us down, we got back up. The chances of you surviving your current situation are great – even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.

You see, it isn’t our circumstances that define us. It is our response to it. The same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. How you choose to respond to whatever life throws at you is what matters.

It is human nature to want to avoid adversity and difficult times. But the truth is, our strength and resiliency grows when we overcome the things we thought we couldn’t. And it is only in those times of darkness can we become our own light.

For me, darkness as become an ally. When I am going through challenging times, I know there is something I need to learn. These hurdles in front of me aren’t there to stop me. They are there to push me out of my comfort zone and set me free. They are there to force me to level up for the next chapter of my life. Even if it doesn’t feel like it in the moment (and it often doesn’t), there is a reason and purpose for my trials and tribulations. What it is happening in my life isn’t happening to me. It is happening for me.

Darkness and adversity have a way of showing us what is really important. It provides clarity that we wouldn’t get during our good times. And while these times can create emotional chaos for us, that chaos can catapult us in the direction we want to go.  

 In a previous post, I talked about being at rock bottom and the invaluable things I learned about myself. Here is an abbreviated list:

• I became grateful for everything and everyone around me
• I took more creative risks than I had before
• I discovered who my real friends were
• I renewed my feelings of self-worth and purpose
• I was honest with myself about how I have contributed to my own suffering
• I decided to take complete responsibility, accountability, and ownership of my life
• I discovered just how resourceful I was
• I learned how to respond rather than react to things around me
• I understood that sometimes we have to completely fall apart so we can become better versions of ourselves

You can read the full post here. One of the things that I find helpful when I am really struggling with hard times, is to take a few minutes and just focus on my breathing. Be still and silent and just focus on breathing. Remind yourself that what is happening right now is just temporary. You aren’t always going to feel this way and it isn’t going to break you. You’ve come this far to only come this far.

A few years ago, I wrote a post about how trauma creates changes you don’t choose. Healing is about creating change that you do choose. Part of healing is acknowledging the role we have played in our own suffering.

How We Play a Role in Our Own Suffering and What to Do About It

Regardless of what created our suffering, we need to become aware of how we may have contributed to it.

Denial

Sometimes we deny that we are even hurting. Perhaps we are judging our feelings as “bad” so we deny that they exist because we feel they aren’t acceptable. Or maybe we have been denying the pain we have for years, and we’ve become numb to it.

While it is human nature to want to avoid pain and suffering, acknowledging the fact that you feel wounded will help you with acceptance. The more we try to deny that a feeling is there, the more it festers. Accept what you are feeling without judgment.

Blaming Others

It is also human nature to blame others for our suffering. While someone may have wronged you or you may have gotten dealt a bad hand, blaming them for your continued suffering is like giving all your power away. You cannot control external circumstances, but you always have control over your response to it. And that is your power.

Take complete ownership of your life, right here and right now. While you didn’t deserve what happened to you, you can determine how you think about it and how you respond to it.

Unproductive Thoughts

We need to be mindful of our thoughts. As they say, our thoughts determine our reality. We tend to perpetuate our own suffering by our thoughts and actions. We may get overly focused on past regrets or get caught in the “if only” X had happened loop. These thoughts are unproductive when they happen too often because there is no solution to making the situation better. What has happened has happened already and there is nothing that can be done about it.

Here’s a great example of how I have to manage my unproductive thinking patterns. I recently had blood work done by my family physician that had some minor abnormal results. I was really freaked out after googling it multiple times and researching what it meant for far too long.

I contacted my endocrinologist who listened to all my concerns and then challenged me. He looked at me and said, “Let’s run the tests again, and we’ll run some additional tests that will give us context to what the results might mean. But let me ask you this, what are you going feel if the tests come back normal this time or the other tests provide the context we need?” (The context was that these abnormalities were being cause by Tamoxifen, a drug I am on to treat breast cancer.)

I was silent for a minute and then said, “I don’t know. I’ve spent a lot of time freaking out about this and it may have been for nothing.”

He smiled and encouraged me to focus on other things that actually bring me joy. In the end, my blood work was fine. But boy did I get caught up in some unproductive thoughts! And they truly permeated my days, as I panicked about what it meant.

Get into the habit of challenging your thoughts. Ask yourself if they are productive in helping you achieve your goals and live the life you want to live. Ask yourself if they are making you feel empowered or a victim of your circumstances.

We Often Talk About It

When we are still suffering, it is reflected in what we talk about. I know plenty of people, who are still talking about how hurtful someone was to them over a decade ago. Or what a horrible boss so and so was, but they haven’t worked for him in years. Social media also helps us air our grievances to the world and get feedback that enforces our feelings of being victimized.

When you feel the urge to continuously talk about it, try focusing on something positive to say. Or perhaps what you feel grateful for. Try to shift the conversation away from your suffering for a period of time.

We Catastrophize

We all catastrophize situations from time to time. It’s easy to do when stressed out! But if you find yourself catastrophizing often, it is like adding fuel to the fire. You are adding meaning to something that might not even be true.

Be mindful of these feelings and let them come and go, like waves. Don’t judge yourself for having them. Challenge yourself by asking if what you are feeling is really true. For example, if you lost your job and you feel like you will never another one, as yourself if that is really true.

We Believe We Are Alone

When we are suffering and going through difficult times, it’s easy to fall into the pattern of believing that we are alone in it. The truth is all of us experience some form of suffering in our lives. But when we become overly focused on our own suffering, we may isolate ourselves and not get the support we need from others. Or we may become so focused on our own suffering, that we don’t show up for other people going through difficult times, too.

Reach out to the people in your life and connect with them. Offer encouragement or do something nice for them. Allow them to do the same for you. Healing ourselves from past traumas is necessary for us to have deep, meaningful relationships. Otherwise, if you don’t heal what hurt you, you will bleed on people who didn’t cut you.

We tend to gravitate towards people who are like us, or people who we aspire to be like. As they old adage goes, birds of a feather flock together.

In a previous post, I talked in depth about how important it is to surround yourself with the right people. The right people can not only be a great support system but can inspire and encourage you to reach your full potential.

Who we choose to spend time with matters. As social beings, we pick up on personality traits, preferences, and mindset of those we spend the most time with. The people we hang out with or call our friends often become reflections of who we are.

Preferences

When you spend a lot of time with people, you become like them. You begin to adopt their likes and dislikes. This can be a really good thing, but it can also be a big distraction. For example, if you want to become someone who focuses on being in shape, it can be helpful to befriend people who like being active, too.

On the other hand, if they don’t prioritize healthy food choices, like to drink excessively and sleep in late, you may find yourself falling into those habits, too.

Mindset

Not only do likes and dislikes, or how you spend your time, get affected by the people you spend the most time with, but also our mindset and how we think, too.

If your friend circle is positive and has a growth mindset, you will begin to be more positive as well. You’ll face challenges with a can-do attitude.

So, make a list of the qualities you value, whether it is positivity, success, perseverance, creativity, integrity, or something else. Then find friends who reflect those qualities.

Ambition

When you surround yourself with friends who have similar goals, you will find it easier to stay disciplined when working on your own goals.

Think of who you want to be and what you want to achieve. If you want to start a successful business, seek out people who have their own businesses and spend time with them. If you want to be healthier, then find people who care about their health. As you hang out with people who are focused on pursuing their goals, you will automatically feel more inspired and energized to work on yours.

On the other hand, if you spend time with someone who is lethargic, makes excuses, and doesn’t take care of themselves, it will be much harder for you to stay focused and committed to your goals.

Surround yourself with people who resonate with your values, goals, and mindset. The people you spend the most time with, whether friends, family, or coworkers, influence you more than you think. So, choose the influence on your life intentionally. Spend time with people who inspire you to be better, and you will find it a lot easier to become that person.

When we have felt pain often in our lives, we tend to guard our hearts and egos from additional suffering. Many times, this will show up in our life unconsciously.

For example, if you have been cheated on before in relationships, you might be on guard with your current partner because on some level, you expect that it will happen. So, you are already mentally prepared for it. But with all the energy and effort your mind puts into preparing for the worst-case scenario, you create a buffer in your relationship. This buffer may prevent you from creating a deep connection with your partner, or even push them away.

If we have low expectations, we won’t get hurt if things don’t go how we’d like them to. But at the same time, when we enter a relationship with that kind of mindset, we close off the possibility of creating the relationship that we truly want.

Whether we are conscious of it or not, what we believe about ourselves, and our situations determine the results we get in our life. I’ve written many posts about the law of attraction. What you believe, you create.

Painful experiences tend to breed defense mechanisms in us. And it’s understandable! As humans, we naturally want to avoid pain. When we have been hurt enough, we want to avoid it at all costs. But these defense mechanisms are sneaky because they happen on an unconscious level.

What is a Defense Mechanism?

Defense mechanisms are an unconscious strategy we use to protect ourselves from feelings of anxiety, threats to our self-esteem or ego and things we don’t want to think about or deal with. Not all defense mechanisms are harmful, as they can help people get through painful experiences or channel their energy in a more productive way. It is more of a short-term strategy for managing the anxiety.

These coping strategies can become harmful when they objectively prevent us from having the life we want, and we use them often for a long period of time. When we settle into that coping mechanism as “just a way of being”, it can become problematic. 

Types of Defense Mechanisms

There are many types of defense mechanisms that people employ at various times for various reasons. Here are a just few that are common.

Projection

Projection is an unconscious way to take unwanted emotions or traits you don’t like about yourself and attributing them to someone else. A classic example of this is when someone is cheating on their partner, and they become suspicious of their partner cheating on them.

Passive-Aggressiveness

Instead of telling someone they hurt you directly, you may withdraw and give them the silent treatment. At a later date, you might lash out at them for something minor, but sprinkled into that response is leftover hurt from the initial injury.

Denial

Denial is one of the most common defense mechanisms. We have all been in denial about something at some point in our lives. When we don’t want to accept facts and reality as they are, because it is painful or scary, we tend to go into denial about it. You see this a lot with addicts and friends and family of addicts.

Displacement

Displacement is when you take out strong frustrations, feelings, or impulses onto someone who isn’t a threat. If you had a tough day at work and your boss was overbearing, you might come home and take out your frustrations on your family. You can’t act that way to your boss because you’ll get fired, but your family is less of a threat.

Intellectualization

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I definitely used intellectualization as a defense mechanism. Instead of sitting with my stress and emotions about actually having cancer, I went into full researcher mode. I sought to understand everything I could about breast cancer, and the kind I had to educate myself. While that is important and you need to be your best health advocate, I spent so much time doing it as a way to avoid the stress and scary feelings I had about the diagnosis.

Rationalization

Not only does rationalization allow us to protect ourselves from uncomfortable feelings, but it also enables us to protect our self-esteem. By explaining an unacceptable behavior or feeling in a rational or logical manner, we avoid sitting with the real reasons for the behavior. Instead, we rationalize the behavior with our own set of facts.

For example, if you asked someone out and they said no, you might tell yourself that you weren’t all that interested in them to begin with.

Bonus: Sublimation

As a defense mechanism, sublimation is considered to be a mature, positive strategy for dealing with anxiety. This is a healthier coping mechanism as it redirects strong emotions you have onto something that is appropriate and safe. For example, if you feel overwhelmed with your job instead of losing it at the office, you channel those feelings into exercise or a hobby later in the day.

How to Identify Defense Mechanisms

Defense mechanisms are mostly done on an unconscious level, so it may be tricky to spot immediately. Below are three strategies to help identify and address ones that you find ineffective.

Be More Mindful

Try to slow things down and see if you can recognize similar patterns or ways of responding to stress and anxiety that you have. Defense mechanisms can become a habit-forming, so pay close attention to how you are responding when faced with emotional situations.

Add More Tools to the Toolbox

Defense mechanisms are coping strategies. If you don’t know other ways to cope with unpleasant feelings, you will naturally go back to what you have done before. Enlisting the help of a therapist can help you be more mindful of when you are using ineffective strategies and help you come up with new, helpful responses.

Have Accountability

Chances are there are people in your life who have noticed that you employ defense mechanisms every now and again. Ask them to point it out to you when you do it. As you become more conscious of what you’re doing, you can ask yourself whether or not you really want to respond in that way.

I feel like as a society, we feel the need to comment on everything. Social media amplifies those feelings by having a built-in audience who is ready to engage with us 24/7. When we feel wronged, we tend to look for validation that we were indeed wronged in some way.

While this can feel satisfying at times, sometimes the best response is no response.

Staying Silent

If you are in the middle of an argument, sometimes it can be good to sit back and let the other person vent. This gives the other person permission to let their emotions out. Once the emotional level has balanced again, you can start engaging in the conversation.

If someone is truly venting, avoid interrupting them. Often, we feel like we have given the other person enough time and space to vent, and then we begin cutting them off. We might say “okay, calm down,” or “enough”. If they haven’t been able to release their emotions fully, the situation will most likely continue to escalate.

In this situation, maturity is holding onto your emotions, but staying quiet, even when you don’t agree. Soon enough, when they have let out enough emotion, you will be able to have a productive conversation.

When You Shouldn’t Respond

Sometimes someone says something hurtful because they want attention. You see this a lot on social media, and I have seen it on our YouTube channel. We’ve all seen those trolls or haters who love dropping negative comments across the anonymous space of the internet. Coming across a negative comment directed towards you can rile you up. But it’s important to remember that by responding, you are often giving the person exactly what they want. By engaging with them, you might lose credibility and get stuck in a position where you have to defend yourself.

In this case, no response is often the most powerful response.

Take 5 Minutes

If someone makes a comment or says something that really pushes your buttons, try taking a pause before responding. Avoid immediately responding when you are feeling emotionally triggered. Take a few deep breaths, go for a run, release some steam, and then return to the situation.

The key to navigating difficult or hurtful situations is to understand that not everything requires your comment. You can’t control what others do or say, but you can control how you respond.

Remember, when you respond to someone who is trying to insult you, you give them power. Rather than reacting, know your self-worth. This might mean staying calm and ignoring insults or passive-aggressive behavior, because you know that other people’s words or comments do not determine who you are.

There comes a point in an unhealthy relationship when you are just “done”. For me, that feeling came at the most unsuspecting time. For years, I put up with some pretty horrendous behavior. Like certain behaviors that should have definitely been a deal breaker for me. Why weren’t any of those things the catalyst that caused me to say I was done? Because the truth was, at the time, I really wasn’t done.

I’ve written extensively about self-worth and unhealthy dynamics in relationships. The journey back to knowing my worth, value and loving myself took a very long time. The main reason why we stay in relationships that aren’t good for us, or relationships we have outgrown is uncertainty. We are uncertain about what life would look like without our partner. Or we are uncertain about how we would make it financially. Perhaps we are afraid of being alone. In some cases, we stay because we are chasing inconsistent love and affection from our partner. I’ve stayed for all of the reasons above.

My mindset shifted when I stopped focusing on what my partner was doing. Yes, he was being hurtful and horrible. But I needed to start understanding why I was okay with his shitty treatment. What did I believe about myself and what I deserved?

That internal focus helped me see that I wasn’t just a pushover in my romantic relationships. I was like that with family, friends, and colleagues, too. I accepted bad behavior and treatment because on some level, I believed I wasn’t worth being treated well.

The more work you do on fixing your mindset and the relationship that you have with yourself, the way you value yourself will change. And when you start to see your own value, you will find it harder to stay around people who don’t.

One of the things that also helped me was changing my environment. Instead of just spending time with people who didn’t respect me or my time, I started spending more time with people who inspired me, challenged me and were nice to me. The more time I spent with those people, the more motivated I felt to change my life and experiences.

How will you know when you are “just done” in any relationship?

For me, I spent some time working on how I viewed myself. I gave myself the kind of love and support that I gave to other people in my life. I began to understand what was important to me and what was acceptable treatment in a relationship. I developed a kind of maturity where I wasn’t afraid to walk away from people and situations that threatened my peace of mind, self-respect, values, morals or self-worth.  

I wasn’t angry or demanding that my partner change. I wasn’t willing to hold out for him to make the changes I wanted him to make, either. He could do whatever he wanted. I knew I would be okay on my own. If he couldn’t give me what I needed, deserved, or wanted in a relationship, it was okay. I didn’t need to stay in that relationship anymore. I developed an abundance mindset and knew that the Universe had so much more to offer me. All I had to do was trust the process and let go.