S4:E5 - This is for the Woman Who's Fed-up of Surface-Layer Bullshit!

You can have people around you constantly and still feel like nobody fully sees you underneath it all! Especially, when you don't fully recognise your bloody gorgeous self!

In this episode, we’re talking about the kind of loneliness that doesn’t come from physically being alone, but from spending years shape-shifting, masking and becoming who everybody else needed you to be just to feel accepted.

We’re diving into emotional loneliness, people pleasing, nervous system survival, craving depth, feeling misunderstood and the exhausting reality of living half-hidden from the world around you.Because eventually everybody knows the version of you that survives…but hardly anybody knows the version of you that’s real, including YOU!!

Soooooooooo many spiritually sensitive women are carrying loneliness that actually began with disconnection from themselves.

So come and join me, and let's get FULLY CONNECTED to self again! xxx

Transcript

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Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the Witchy Woo Podcast. I am so excited to be in your ears again. And today's episode is for the women who have ever sat down in a room that is full of people but still somehow feel completely alone. And of course, that doesn't mean physically alone because they're surrounded by people. I think that that can be the strangest thing about this type of loneliness. Because often the women who carry it are surrounded by people, you know, they may have family, they may have children, friendships, relationships, online communities, you know, they may have people that are in contact with them all day, every day. And yet, underneath all of that, there's still this kind of weird longing and aching that sits quietly underneath everything else, and it almost feels like homesickness, you know, not for a place that you can kind of fully explain, but a longing for more. And I think this is perhaps one of the most understood feelings that spiritually sensitive women can experience because so many people instantly think that loneliness means that there is a lack of love or that you know that everything isn't okay, the people in their life aren't very nice to them, for instance, but that isn't always true at all. You know, you can be deeply loved and deeply love the others in your life, but still feel lonely. You can be surrounded by people and still feel completely unseen. You can have the most beautiful friendships and still feel as though nobody fully knows you under the surface. And I think that part of the reason that this can happen is because so many of these beautiful women spend years becoming these, you know, like these versions of themselves that feel acceptable to everyone else. They kind of alter themselves in order to fit into the box that they think other people want them to fit into. So they learn to soften parts of themselves and hide parts of themselves and edit parts of those selves, just laugh things off and tone things down and become easier to digest. And after years and years of doing that, you can end up in this really strange position where everyone knows you, but hardly anyone truly knows you. And sometimes that can be that you don't truly know yourself as well because you can spend so long wearing this mask, being someone for other people, that you can lose sight of who you are at your core as well, and it can create a loneliness that, as I say, is just really difficult to explain because it's not loneliness in the traditional sense. Because from the outside, your life may look full, it may look perfect, but internally there may be this constant feeling of I don't know where I fully belong. Or perhaps you're even at the stage where you don't recognize that as the feeling, it's just that there's this constant undertone within your energy of just feeling off, just not feeling quite right. And I think a lot of spiritually sensitive women carry this feeling from childhood as well, you know, feeling different somehow, and not necessarily better than anyone else, not like in a special kind of ego way, just different from other people. Like you're observing the world slightly differently from everyone else who's around you, you know, like everyone else has been handed some kind of secret manual, and they have these this secret information for how to kind of exist comfortably in the world, and you somehow miss that memo. But I think a lot of women who are very intuitive and very empathic and emotionally deep can spend years trying to translate themselves into spaces that were never really built for them in the first place, especially if you grew up hearing that you're too sensitive, that you're too emotional, you're too intense, or dramatic, or quiet, or weird or spiritual, or just too much or too little. Because eventually you stop fully showing yourself and you start managing yourself instead. You know, you start to manage how emotional you appear on the outside or how passionate you appear on the outside, you start managing your reactions so that they're more socially acceptable, or managing your needs so that even your basic needs being met isn't something that you require. And managing your truth. It may be a case of other people not being able to see the real you, but sometimes it's actually more than that where you lose sight of the real you as well, and you get stuck in that cycle of life, you know, you get caught up in the cycle of doing things and going about your daily tasks that you get swept under the rug and something to be dealt with at a later date. And it can be exhausting to go through that because your soul knows when it is living fully hidden, and it's your soul that's communicating to you on that level, kind of telling you something's off, it's making you feel a longing or a sense of not belonging in spaces, and you can feel that on a soul level, but often our human doesn't quite pick up on the cues as quickly. I think many women become so disconnected from themselves that they mistake that disconnection for loneliness, and so they seek it externally. So if they're feeling lonely, sometimes it is the loneliness of not knowing yourself, and so you try to surround yourself with people because you're interpreting it as needing that external validation, needing the external friendships or relationships, but really it's you, you know, it's you that you need to connect with, and I'll be honest, this hit me really, really hard when I first realized this about myself, when I first realized just how disconnected I had come from myself, and I won't go too far into it, but it all stemmed from being in an extremely abusive relationship, and my needs obviously within that relationship weren't met, and I had lowered my standards so low that I didn't expect anything, you know. A day without being physically assaulted was a win for me, and I throughout that time my needs became very much centered around what this other person needed. It wasn't about my actual needs, it was like I had internalized their needs because when their needs were met, they were less likely to then attack me, so it all became about them, and in doing that, I completely lost who I was. I remember when I came first came back and I'd got this person arrested, and I I was very proud of myself for being strong enough to stand up to him in court, but before that, I remember when my nan saw me for the first time after a little while, and we never went a long time without seeing each other, but we'd it perhaps been a couple of months since I'd last seen her, and I remember her saying to me that when she looked in my eyes, she felt really, really sad, but because it was like there was nothing there. Where you know, before she always saw this kind of bright sparkliness within me. She said it was like there was no depth in my soul when she saw me, and I can really feel what she meant, and that was I had lost connection with myself because I had buried myself, my true self, so far down so that I didn't stand out at all in any way, so that I could just serve this other person's needs. I didn't have that connection with myself, so I had that loneliness, but again, I made the mistake of perceiving that loneliness as wanting someone in my life that was nice, that was loving, but actually that loneliness stemmed from not having myself, not having the full me. So it really did, as I say, hit me hard when I first realized that. And there have absolutely been periods in my own life where I have thought, if I just found the right people, you know, the right friendship group, the right relationship, the right community, then this feeling would disappear. But underneath all of that, there were still parts of me that I wasn't allowing to fully exist. You know, parts that I made smaller and I silenced and parts that I thought were too much. And it took quite a while for me to feel safe enough to be able to show all those parts of myself. And I think so many women are walking around carrying those younger versions of themselves who did learn early on that authenticity wasn't always safe. So they adapted and they became who they needed to become in order to survive. And really, women are bloody amazing adapting, but that can really work against us sometimes because we can become who everyone else needs us to be. You know, the easy one, the fun one, the strong one, the calm one, the helpful one, the emotionally available one, the low maintenance one. And meanwhile, inside of us, we're sat there thinking, does anybody actually see me though? And in reality, the answer is well, no, because how could they see the real you because you're not allowing them to? And that can be a difficult pill to swallow, but the journey to reconnecting with yourself can be such a beautiful one, and I think this is why so many spiritually sensitive women crave depth so badly, like the amount of people I'm the same, I hate small talk, you know. Put me in a room and I'll have a beautiful deep conversation, and we may be crying, we may be hysterically laughing, but put me in a room and want me to talk surface layer, I cannot stand that. And I think it is, it stems from this place of living in that artificial space for so long where I wasn't deeply connected with myself, and now my soul needs more than that in order to kind of feel feel anything, you know, not having those surface-level conversations or those performative friendships, you know, the endless small talk, you know, as I'm from England, and you know, we'll talk about the weather and what someone had for tea, where they're going on holiday, all that kind of thing. It it can feel just not enough. We need that real depth and that real honesty and the real emotional intimacy and the real conversations where you can really kind of breathe, exhale fully, and stop performing for five minutes. Or to you if we speak in any other format, that I am a work in progress. I believe everyone is a work in progress, and I am nowhere near healed. But what I have found is I have come quite a long way since I was that young girl who you know had no connection with herself, didn't have a clue who she was or what she wanted, and needed to reconnect with myself. It was only when I was able to reconnect with myself at the core that I was actually really able to have full relationships. And I am married 10 years this year. My husband I could not adore anymore. He is the perfect man for me, he is my other half, he completes me, he is my soulmate. I have no doubt if I'd have met him earlier, then I wouldn't have been connected with myself enough to be able to offer him a deep enough part of myself in order for us to fall in love. So where we will often turn externally, in my mind, I don't think that will ever work if we are looking, you know, if we're feeling that loneliness, and so we crave attention and relationships with other people. In my mind, I don't think that's ever going to fully work until you have reconnected with yourself. And of course, my healing journey has transformed even more since being with him because he has offered me that safe environment to be able to expand and grow and bring healing to myself. But it did require me to be connected with myself, and not just we're not just talking in romantic relationships. Obviously, this is in friendships, this is in familial relationships, and you really reconnecting with yourself can have a huge impact on those relationships that you've had for a long time because those people will know you one way when you were disconnected from your true self of you know, your true sense of identity, and now they have to relearn and restart that relationship with the new you who is in touch with what she wants and is in touch with her at her core. And I think that's why so many women feel emotional during the healing work that I do with them, during the Akashic journeys and the deep conversations, or even conversations that I have after the podcast, for instance, in when a subject has come up and it's touched someone's heart, because for a moment, if they are feeling disconnected, they can feel seen. Whether that is by themselves or whether that is by someone else who has been in a similar situation to them, and they can be seen fully for who they are, and no expectations are placed on them. And there's something that's really incredibly emotional about finally feeling visible after years of kind of shape-shifting yourself into survival. I do think that loneliness can become like a protective wall sometimes. Because if you've experienced enough rejection or disappointment or betrayal, part of you starts believing that having closeness to other people isn't safe, so you crave that connection, but also you have this huge battle going on in your mind because simultaneously to this, you're kind of trying to keep people at arm's length because you don't want to be hurt, and that's such a painful place to exist in. There's so much conflict and so much hypocrisy within your own energy, the wanting of the intimacy, the wanting to be understood and wanting that closeness, but also fearing what happens when you allow other people to get too close to you. And I think many women don't realize how guarded they actually are emotionally, and it's not because they're cold or they don't care or anything like that, but it's because somewhere along the line they learned that their vulnerability came with consequences. And I think the healing journey starts with honesty, having that honesty about where you've been abandoning yourself to fit into spaces that actually don't nourish you. Honesty about the relationships where you feel drained instead of safe. Honesty about the environments where your nervous system can never fully relax. Honesty about the parts of yourself that you're still hiding because you're scared that they'll make people around you leave. Because I don't think the answer is becoming somebody different. I know the answer isn't becoming somebody different. The answer is coming back home to yourself again. And I realize that saying that that sounds all lovely and poetic, until you actually start doing it. Because coming home to yourself often means grieving all of the pieces that you left behind, all of the places that you abandoned yourself before, the friendships where you made yourself smaller, or the relationships where you silenced yourself, or the environments where you learned to disconnect from your own truth. And of course, there's grief in that. We don't just grieve losing people, we grieve those parts of ourselves that we left behind, and that can be difficult to deal with, but there is also freedom in finally recognizing that maybe you were never too much, maybe you were never the problem at all. Maybe you were just trying to squeeze yourself into spaces that couldn't hold the fullness and the beauty and the sparkliness and the gorgeousness of who you are at your core. And I think many spiritually sensitive women, many empaths, need fewer surface-level connections and more spaces where they can safely be fully themselves. And that doesn't mean that they need to be in loads of spaces or need to have loads of relationships, loads of friendships, because actually having like one meaningful relationship with yourself, with someone else, is far more fulfilling than having loads of surface layer relationships outside of you and not feeling that connection with yourself, you know. And some souls, like if you're listening to this, I'd imagine you really do crave that depth, and there is nothing wrong with that. I would say there's true beauty in that, in fact. So if you've been listening to this episode and there's been kind of this ache that's sitting underneath like your life for a little while, this strange loneliness that you can't fully explain. I just want you to know that you're not alone and you're certainly not broken, my lovely. Perhaps there's some part of you that is simply trying to, you know, guide you back towards yourself again, back towards the truth of who you really are, and the parts of you that you may have buried in order to survive, back towards the spaces where you can finally kind of unclench your jaw and relax a little and stop feeling the need to perform who you think you need to be. Because there is nothing lonelier than abandoning yourself in order to be accepted by someone else, and there's nothing more healing than finally allowing yourself to just exist fully in. Embracing yourself for who you are, all of you, your light, your shadow, your beauty, your sparkliness, your everything, living that to your fullest. So I want to say thank you for sitting with me during this podcast. I say sitting, you could have been doing anything, but for being with me, for allowing me to be in your ears for this time, for this nearly half hour, oh no, 22 minutes so far. So thank you for joining me. And I would love, love, love as always to hear your thoughts. Hear if there's something that, you know, has struck a chord for you, either if it's something that you're feeling now or it's something that you have felt, you know, in the past and you've done the work to reconnect with yourself. I'd love to just hear your story to connect. So please know you can reach out to me at any time. You can send me a friend request on Facebook, Kylie Anna. You can email me at Kylie at witchywoo.net, and yeah, I'd love to hear from you. So until the next time, I'll speak to you soon.