The Nice Girl Syndrome (11 page)

One way of discovering what your needs are at any given time is to check in with your feelings. Your feelings will tell you what you are lacking, if you pay close attention. Unfortunately, many Nice Girls are as out of touch with their feelings as they are with their needs and have difficulty identifying what emotions they are experiencing. This may be a direct result of focusing on the feelings of others too much, or of having been a means of surviving childhood experiences such as neglect or trauma. Because of this, you may now experience such a jumble of feelings that you have difficulty identifying them or you may as an adult be numb to your feelings.

In the course of just one day, we all experience myriad emotions. Learning to identify each and every one of them can be a daunting task. Therefore, it is best to focus on only a few primary emotions, at least in the beginning. According to most experts, there are eight or so primary, or basic, emotions: anger, sorrow, joy, surprise, fear, disgust, guilt/shame, and interest (some also consider love one of the

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primary emotions). These are considered primary emotions because we are born with the potential, or biological readiness, for them. All other emotions are considered secondary, or social, emotions because they are learned. These are usually some combination of the basic emotions. For our purposes, we are going to focus on five of the primary emotions: anger, sadness, fear, guilt/shame, and joy.

We often become disconnected from our primary emotions by diluting them and giving them other names. For example, many people, instead of saying they are afraid, will say they feel “anxious” or “worried.” Instead of saying they feel sad (or even knowing they are sad), many people will say they feel “tired.” And instead of say- ing they are angry, many people will say they are “uninterested,” “bored,” or “frustrated.”

The best way to discover how you are feeling is to begin by ask- ing yourself which of the five primary feelings you are experiencing (anger, sadness, fear, guilt/shame, or joy) at intervals throughout the day. It is safe to say that at any given time, we are all experiencing at least one or more of these primary emotions.

Just asking yourself which feeling you are experiencing won’t neces- sarily help, if you aren’t in touch with your body. Your body is your best barometer to tell you which emotion you are feeling at any given time. Emotions involve body changes, such as fluctuations in heart rate and skin temperature, and the tensing or relaxing of muscles. The most important changes are in the facial muscles. Researchers now think that changes in the facial muscles play an important role in actu- ally causing emotions. For example, we tend to feel sadness in our body in the following ways: frowning or a mouth turned down in a “sad” face; eyes drooping; a slumped, hunched posture; using a low, quiet, slow, or monotonous voice; heaviness in the chest; tightness in the throat or difficulty swallowing (from holding back tears); moist eyes or tears; whimpering, crying, tears; feeling as if you can’t stop crying or that if you ever start crying you will never stop; feeling tired, run-down, or low in energy; feeling lethargic, listless; wanting to stay in bed all day; feeling as if nothing is pleasurable anymore; feeling a pain or hollowness in your chest or gut; feeling empty.

Conversely, joy is usually manifested in the body in the follow-

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ing ways: smiling; feeling excited; feeling physically energetic, active, “alive”; feeling like laughing or giggling; having a warm glow about you; feeling “open hearted” and loving.

E
XERCISE
: C
HECKING
I
N WITH
Y
OUR
B
ODY

1. Look in the mirror and notice what expression you have on your face. Does your face look angry? Sad? Afraid?
   

2. Now sit down and take a few deep breaths
   

3. Check in with your body. What emotion is being expressed there? If there is heaviness in your chest, what emotion might that be? If there is an uneasiness in your stomach, what might that be saying about how you are feeling?
   

4. Notice any tension in your body—in your shoulders, your neck, your jaw, your stomach, your hands.
   

5. Take a few more deep breaths and ask yourself what emo- tion is connected to this tension. Is it anger? Fear? Sadness?
   

6. Now, taking the information you have gathered both from the expression on your face and the tension in your body, what emotions do you think you are feeling?
   

   Remedy #8: Make It a Practice of Checking In with Your Feelings Several Times a Day
   

   Start by making sure you check in with your feelings at least once a day. The best times are when you get up in the morning and when you go to bed. You can even do it when you are driving to and from someplace (as long as your emotions don’t become so strong that they interfere with your driving).
   

   Take a few minutes to center yourself. Take some deep breaths and clear your mind of any thoughts. Go inside yourself and ask yourself, “What am I feeling?” For simplicity’s sake, check for the following emotions: anger, sadness, fear, and guilt.
   

   1. Start by asking yourself, “Am I feeling angry?” Check in with yourself and allow any angry feelings you might have to surface. If the answer is yes, simply list (in your head, out
      

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      loud, or on paper) the reasons you are feeling this way. For example, “I’m angry that .” Or “I’m angry because .” If the answer is “no,” proceed to the next emotion.
      

   2. Now ask yourself, “Am I feeling sad?” Again, allow the feel- ings of sadness to bubble up and list all the reasons you feel sad.
      

   3. The next question is, “Am I feeling afraid?” Allow the feel- ings of fear to come up if they are there. If they are not, go on to the next feeling.
      

   4. Ask yourself, “Am I feeling guilty?” Allow the feelings to surface and list all the reasons you feel guilty.
      

   5. You do not need to do anything about the feelings that have surfaced. The point of the check-in is to help you to keep in touch with your feelings.
      

Now you are ready to connect your feelings with your needs. The following exercise, based on a process by Laurel Mellin in her Solutions Program, will help you make the connection.

E
XERCISE
: F
EELINGS AND
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EEDS

1. Check in with yourself several times a day by going inside and asking yourself what you are feeling.
   

2. When you find a feeling, look for the corresponding need. Ask yourself, “What do I need?” Often the answer will be, “Feel my feeling and let it fade.” Answer in the simplest way instead of confusing the issue with too many details or com- plexities. For example, if you are hungry, you need food. When you feel guilty, you need to apologize.
   

3. It may take trying on several needs before you find the one that is true for you. You may also have many needs attached to one feeling. For example, if you feel lonely, your need may be to call a friend, to get a hug from your partner, to connect with yourself.
   

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4. Be on the alert for answers that are not truly responsive to you. For example, “I feel sad, therefore I need some candy,” or “I feel angry, so I need to hit him.” Tap into your inher- ent wisdom and relax into a more logical, self-nurturing answer. Ask yourself, “Okay, what do I really need?” For example, “Express myself (write, sing),” “Get physical (walk, stomp),” “Develop a plan,” “Learn from it (next time I
   

will ).”

Many Nice Girls deprive, abandon, control, shame, or ignore them- selves just as their parents did to them. You may be so used to being deprived that you continue to deprive yourself. You may be so used to being ignored that you ignore yourself.

For instance, if you were neglected as a child or if you were given the message that your own needs didn’t matter and that you should always put other people’s needs first, you may now neglect yourself. This is because we often treat ourselves the way we were treated as children. In fact, as adults, we often treat ourselves
worse
than we were treated while growing up.

An important aspect of self-care is discovering all the ways you treat yourself the way your parents treated you as a child.

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XERCISE
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D
EPRIVE

Y
OURSELF THE
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ARENTS
D
ID

1. Make a list of the ways you neglect or deprive yourself of what you need.
   

2. Write down every example you can think of regarding how your parents neglected to take care of you. Include ways they deprived you emotionally, as well as physically.
   

3. Take a close look at your list and see if there is a connection between the way you treat yourself today and how you were treated by your parents.
   

You do not have to stay trapped in repeating the depriving behavior you learned from your parents. You can become the

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responsive, nurturing parent to yourself that you deserved all along.

The reason women began focusing on others in the first place may have come from their past conditioning, but there are also reasons they continue this behavior today. In other words, there is a payoff for continuing to focus outside of ourselves. One of the main reasons is that often, by focusing on the needs of others, we can avoid fac- ing what we are feeling. This is particularly true whenever we obsess about someone else, such as a partner or a child. In fact, it is safe to say that whenever we are obsessing about anything, we are avoiding ourselves. For this reason, I suggest you do the following whenever you find yourself worrying about someone else constantly. Ask your- self these two questions: “What am I trying to avoid?” and “What am I feeling?”

The following exercise will also help you discover the payoffs you can experience whenever you focus outside of yourself.

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XERCISE
: P
AYOFFS TO
F
OCUSING
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UTSIDE OF
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OURSELF

1. Take some time to think about what you get out of focusing on others more than on yourself or to the exclusion of your- self. For example, one answer that may come to you is that it is just a habit. That is a valid answer but try to dig a bit deeper to find some actual
   payoffs
   —specific benefits that you experi- ence when you focus outside of yourself.
   

2. Make a list of the reasons that you come up with. This may be difficult at first but keep working on it until you come up with some answers. The following example of reasons written by my client Lily may help give you some ideas:
   

   • It is a habit. I just do it automatically without thinking.
     

   • It makes me feel good to help someone else.
     

   • I think it is selfish and self-centered to think of myself.
     

   • I don’t think my needs are important.
     

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Now I invite you to go even deeper to examine the
benefits
of focusing on the needs and feelings of others or for your caretaking behavior. Here is what my client Lily wrote:

• I realize that one of the reasons I feel good when I help some- one else is that it makes me feel superior to them.
  

• I also realize that thinking about others keeps me from paying attention to myself. I am constantly critical of myself, always finding fault. Focusing on others gives me a break from my negative self-talk.
  

• I somehow need to justify my existence and I do this by help- ing others. I have so much self-doubt, so many feelings of not being “okay,” and helping others temporarily takes those feel- ings away.
  

Contrary to the old saying, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” Nice Girls need to start treating themselves the way they treat others.

1. Make a list of all the things you do for those you love, espe- cially acts of kindness and nurturing (examples: “I make sure I tell my daughter how proud I am of her,” “My husband likes clean sheets so I change our sheets a lot more often than I normally would.”
   

2. Now list the reasons for your doing these things (examples: “My mother never told me she was proud of me and I don’t want my daughter to doubt herself the way I did.” “It makes my husband feel loved for me to go out of my way to change the sheets.”)
   

3. Go over your list and think of similar ways you can nurture and take care of yourself. In the previous examples, the answers might be: “I need to think of reasons to be proud of myself and allow myself to feel that pride.” “I really feel good when I have a manicure and pedicure. It really raises my spir- its every time I look at my nails. I need to give myself the gift of having an appointment every week.”