00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 140, "Still Being a Martyr." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:22 

Well, hey there, my friends, welcome to the podcast today. This is Tanya. Okay, so we are working on being a martyr still. Last week when we finished I thought, you know what, I gave some really great examples of how being a martyr can show up and I love those examples because I know that for me they helped me to see more clearly. Oh, I see how this shows up. I could see patterns of that in my own life. But I wanted to talk today a little bit more about how it shows up. Different ways it can show up. I have 10 ways that it shows up in our actions and then I have 10 ways that we can start to work through this and come out of the other side and stop being a martyr so much. 

01:08 

I think it seems to me that being a martyr is kind of a natural tendency for a lot of people, probably not all. If you are one of those amazing people who have never stepped into this, hats off to you, my friend, because I look back at a lot of my behavior over the years and I'm like "whoa, very very much stepped into this place" not all the time but often enough that it makes me a little bit uncomfortable to think of the places that I went and the havoc that I reached in my relationships, and so hopefully that this will be helpful for a lot of y'all to see a little bit more. 

01:46 

So I want to start off by giving a little bit more concrete of an understanding of what it means to be a martyr. So a couple more definitions. I know I gave you some last week but let's talk about two more. "A person who assumes an attitude of self sacrifice or suffering in order to arouse feelings of pity or guilt, those kinds of feelings in other people." So trying to intentionally make people feel bad, feel sorry for us. Here's a second definition that's very similar. "Someone who always seems to be suffering, who may even exaggerate bad things that happen to get sympathy or to make others feel guilty." So there's a whole sense in here of whatever I'm doing as a martyr. I am seeking to make somebody else feel guilty for their behavior. I'm trying to make them feel sorry for me, like making them think that I do all the work. I do all the hard stuff. 

02:45 

So this is what's interesting. The primitive brain I think kind of likes this behavior. And there have been times when I look back in the past and can identify times where I was really being a martyr and it's like I could see myself doing it, but I couldn't stop it. That primitive brain pulls so strongly that even though my prefrontal cortex, my thinking part of my brain, was saying, "whoa, whoa, whoa, like this is not good." My primitive brain was just like, "yes, I need this," right? And obviously there's a payoff because if there was not a payoff, then my primitive brain wouldn't want to do it. Remember, my primitive brain seeks for pleasure. There's an element of pleasure in being a martyr. Now, I'm not saying that it's a good kind of pleasure, but there is an element of pleasure and that's why our primitive brain likes it. So for me, I can recognize that a lot of my payoff was this feeling of being one-up, right? Of being better than putting myself in a place of judgment of other people." Look how good I am because I'm doing this and these guys are horrible. They're not good because they're not doing this or they're letting me do all the work." It puts me in a place of comparison and of feeling superior. 

04:05 

Now, none of these are places that I want to be and even when I was doing them, they were not places where I wanted to be. But it was such patterned behavior that I didn't even really realize what was going on, except for those times that I would have that feeling like I knew what was going on, but I couldn't stop, but it was kind of slight. But what this really does is it gives a false sense of self-worth. I think the more we may struggle with our self-worth, the more we feel we need to go to these kinds of places to create that for ourselves. And that's not a very healthy place to be. What it does also is that it keeps me in a state of blame so that I don't have to do the work on myself. I don't have to take responsibility for me if it's always somebody else's fault. 

05:00 

So like I said, in the past there was a piece of me that sometimes knew that I was doing it and yet I still just kept doing it.  And this is because that primitive brain is just so strong and it's very persistent. This is one thing that we don't always talk about. The primitive brain wants what it wants and we don't always just turn it off really quickly. It is very persistent in continuing, continuing, continuing to ask for something. If you've ever tried to change your eating patterns or your eating food that you eat, you notice that your brain will keep coming back to certain things over and over and over. So for me, this primitive brain piece always showed up in me wanting to make sacrifices and doing all the work myself because I wanted of others to see how good I was. This was this false sense of self-worth that I was working on and creating. And I realized at one point that when I was showing up as a martyr that I would rather do the work myself. I would rather clean the kitchen myself. 

06:12 

In my instance, in the example I gave last week, I would rather cook all my own birthday dinner and clean up and buy all my own birthday gifts. I would rather do the work than do the work on myself, which is much harder. And that means that I was willing to look at my issues, willing to look at that darkness, willing to look at the problems that I was having and the patterns that were creating this. This is the work that reveals my darkness and my judgment and my insecurities. Because I'm going to act as a martyr, oftentimes based on my insecurities, trying to receive satisfaction, trying to receive some security in those areas where I am insecure. 

07:04 

Alright, so today we are going to start off by talking about 10 ways that being a martyr can show up in our actions. And just pay attention to how these come up for you. Obviously, we're all experts on ourselves and we get to decide, "oh, I can see that I do that, but it wasn't coming from a place of being a martyr" or "it was." You get to figure that out on yourself or if you want help from a coach, I can help you with that as well. But this is where we just sometimes have to stand back and take a good hard look at what's going on and be really honest with ourselves because it's easy to want to not tell the truth to ourselves. 

07:44 

And because when we see these things about ourselves, it can be very uncomfortable. But until we start being willing to feel the discomfort of seeing what we're creating and seeing these parts of us that we don't love until we're willing to see it. We're never going to move past it. So here we are 10 ways that martyrdom shows up in our actions. 

08:07 

So number one, we may be angry and resentful because the relationship is disappointing us. Okay so first of all, remember the relationship is a circumstance, right. It's our thoughts about the relationship that create the feelings. But what we're doing here when we feel this anger and resentment is we are blaming the other person and not taking responsibility for ourselves. We're blaming the relationship. We're blaming how the other person is reacting or responding or creating. We are not taking responsibility for our thoughts about it that actually create our feelings of insecurity or our feelings of dissatisfaction. So be very cautious about that as well. 

08:53 

Number two, we talk to the wrong people. We are not talking to the person that we are having the relationship struggles with. We're talking to our friends, we're talking to a sibling, we're talking to our co-workers, we're talking to whoever else, but we are not resolving the issue with the person. That is a sign that we are being a martyr. 

09:15 

Number three, we whine, we complain, and we see ourselves as the victim. So we, in this, when we're in this place, we are choosing not to see how we can create something different, how we can promote a different outcome or allow a different outcome. We just want to be in this victim kind of space, and we're not looking for solutions, we're just looking for reasons to blame. 

09:43 

Alright, number four, when someone gives us a suggestion of what we can do, our reaction is rejection. We reject those suggestions very quickly by justifying our own behavior. There is always an excuse for why I behaved the way I did and for what I'm creating. 

10:06 

Number five, we become a storyteller, just one negative story after another, and oftentimes what we'll do is we will rehearse  in our minds how we're going to tell this story to other people. We may think of how others will feel when, I know a big one for me back in the day was I would always think, "oh I just, I wish I would get a terminal illness and then they will feel bad," or "if I got in an accident and was was severely hurt, then they will feel bad, right?" I would become this storyteller, I would start creating things. We don't figure out strategies to solve the problems, we just try to create these stories that make us the martyr, that make us the victim, and we fantasize about these kinds of stories. 

10:56 

Another indication is that we don't set boundaries, we don't ask for what we want, and we don't follow through with consequences when that, when what we do want, and when we have done that, sorry, when we have asked for what we want, we don't follow through with consequences. And we aren't clear on what's okay and what's not okay. So we're not setting clear boundaries, but then we're upset when the boundaries that we have in our head are not being kept. 

11:28 

Number seven, we keep saying "yes" to things even when there is no appreciation, because gosh darn it, complaining can feel good, right? So we find ourselves complaining and complaining and always saying "yes," but then complaining. So a healthier person, we'll just stop helping. They will set boundaries and they'll say listen, "I'm not going to do this anymore because I don't appreciate how I'm treated or what's going on." A person who likes to be a martyr will keep saying "yes" because it gives them an opportunity to complain that nobody appreciates them or nobody loves them or whatever their take is on it. 

12:08 

Alright, so number eight: they take on too much and then they refuse offers for help. They won't delegate it because gosh darn it, I'm the only one who can do it this well. I'm the only one who has the vision. I'm the only one who knows what should be happening here. And so they won't delegate but then they're always tend to be upset because they've taken on too much. They won't let other people help but then they're overwhelmed. 

12:36 

Alright, number nine. They will tend to stay in unhealthy relationships. Again, it's an incredible opportunity to complain and to show that "look at how good I am. I'm staying in this relationship even though they treat me this poorly." So there's a lot of complaining about the relationship but rather than doing things again to make the relationship get better or stepping away from the relationship because it's so unhealthy, they would rather stay in and have something to complain about. 

13:12 

And number ten, here's the tenth indicator: if you tend to be a person who is consistently dissatisfied with a job or with a relationship. Again, we go into this place where we don't put forth effort to find solutions. We talk and talk and talk and complain and always dissatisfied but we don't try to find solutions, but the constant dissatisfaction. 

13:39 

So this is not an exhaustive list by any means but hopefully that gives you a really good idea of the kind of mindset going on behind being a martyr, the kinds of things. A lot of it is wanting to be in this place of being able to complain and not be happy with how things are happening and people thinking that, "oh, woe is her because she has such a hard life, because she's married to this person, because her children treat her that way, because her boss treats her this way." So always looking for that kind of a thing. And I'll tell you what, this kind of mindset takes a huge toll on our relationships and on our own self-respect. Because what we're doing is we are abdicating responsibility for our own happiness. We are giving our power away, the power that we have to solve problems. We're stepping into emotional childhood, not taking responsibility for our feelings, not taking responsibility for our actions, but blaming them on somebody else. This makes us feel very helpless and powerless. We feel like nothing we do is right and we want to make others feel guilty for not appreciating our efforts. 

14:59 

Now, I'll tell you what short-term this can feel very powerful. The reason it feels powerful is because we are manipulating other people's emotions. When we step into this martyrdom place, we're manipulating other people's emotions. Short-term, yes, that feels powerful but long-term it's very disempowering and we erode our own self-respect and that is because ultimately this kind of behavior is based in fear. It's based in thoughts such as "I'm not good enough" or "I'm not strong enough," something like that, right? It erodes the relationship we have with ourself and then it also erodes the relationship with the people for whom we are in this martyrdom relationship with because it destroys trust it destroys intimacy and it  breeds resentment. If I am digging a hole, it only gets me deeper into the hole and the sooner I stop digging the less work it's going to be for me to get out. 

16:15 

And this is why I want to bring this idea to the forefront. I think a lot of middle-aged women really step into this place of martyrdom. We've done it for a long time and we are very good at it and we probably don't even recognize it a lot of times when we do it. So I just want us to become more aware of looking at a lot of our behaviors that are not helping. We want desperately to have these connected, emotionally intimate partnerships, and yet we are oftentimes engaging in these behaviors that destroy our ability and the other person's ability to have that relationship that we desire. Because I'm wallowing in a place of lack of self-worth and self-pity and victim mentality, and I'm also pushing away the other person by all of this behavior that doesn't allow for intimacy and vulnerability. 

17:21 

So one of the biggest problems with being a martyr in the sense that we've been talking about is that we lack healthy communication skills. We might be very skilled in sulking, in whining, in walking away, in blaming, in talking behind the other person's back. We may be very skilled at avoiding discussions, being too busy or too tired to talk, deliberately inciting the other person, throwing an adult temper tantrum, not taking responsibility. If we're a martyr kind of person, we are probably very good at all of those, but those are not healthy communication skills. We are not good at communication. And so we have to start moving into better communication skills. So let's talk about 10 ways that we can move out of being a martyr. And we are going to talk about some communication stuff in here. 

18:19 

So the first thing, number one, courage up and admit it, my friend. We have to be willing to look. We have to be willing to dig deep inside ourselves and acknowledge if we see these kinds of behaviors, these kinds of ideas, these kinds of attitudes going on. We have to have the courage to see it. Because awareness is always the first step in making change. We can't change something if we don't know it needs to be changed. 

18:50 

Alright. Number two, if you start seeing these kinds of things, you, we have to be willing to identify our specific patterns. Start looking at how you show up as a martyr. What are the consistent things that you do? Do you give the silent treatment when you get angry or frustrated? Do you talk behind the other person's back, you know, turning to other people a lot? Do you avoid discussions? Do you sulk, whine, leave, blame other person? That kind of stuff. Do you throw tantrums and get upset and angry and make yourself completely unapproachable and don't even approach the other person, right? Are we doing those kinds of things? So start to identify your specific patterns of how you show up. And all of us are going to do it different ways. Alright. So look at what you do. 

19:41 

Number three, choose better communication. Now, we want to avoid what's called passive communication. Passive means that I am ignoring my own needs and desires while seeking to meet the desires of the other person. So meeting the desires of other people while ignoring my own, that's called passive communication. We want to avoid that. We also want to avoid aggressive communication. This is where I would bulldoze the other person's point of view with my own demands. Not even listening to theirs, not giving space for them. I'm just demanding what I want. We also want to avoid passive aggressive communication. This was my personal specialty, right? These were subtle behaviors meant to annoy or inconvenience or anger others, saying "yes," and then turning around and doing "no" or saying "no" and then turning around and doing "yes." Passive aggressive communication. So we want to avoid passive communication, aggressive communication, and passive aggressive communication. 

20:50 

Now what we want to choose instead is what's called assertive communication. This means that we ask for what we want and we also listen to what the other person wants. We see and honor everyone, ourselves included. I think a lot of times in our society we often have hit this place where we think that we should always be on the back burner, that everybody else's needs should come first. And that would be the passive communication, right? What we're looking for is assertive communication. I can see and honor your needs, but I also see and honor my own needs. 

21:30 

Okay, another piece of communication that we want to move into is using "I" statements rather than "you" statements. What  this does is it avoids a place where the other person can get defensive. So instead of saying something like, "you make me do all the hard work and that's not fair," which is a place of blaming, right? We want to move into a place saying something like, "I feel like I always have to do the hard work and I don't think that's fair." Notice the I's instead of the you's. This is taking responsibility for my thoughts that I have to do the hard work. I don't think that's fair. My feelings, that feels like it's not right to me. Taking responsibility for that rather than blaming the other person, those I statements are a huge part of communication and keeping things from escalating because as soon as anybody gets blamed, walls come up and defenses start building for sure. 

22:35 

Number five, another piece of communication, set healthy boundaries. Okay, it is okay and it is important. Important to be able to say "no" so that you can then also say "yes" to what you want to. It's okay if there's more than you can handle to say "no." It's okay. We have to set healthy boundaries when there is behavior that may not be okay, that interferes with our personal needs or doesn't align with the goals and the values that we have in our life. It's totally okay to set healthy boundaries. I have three podcasts on, I think it's seven, eight, nine or eight, nine, and ten that talk all about boundaries. Lots of stuff on boundaries, but setting healthy boundaries is an important part of starting to step out of being a martyr. 

23:27 

Number six, express your wants and your desires. We cannot keep expecting people to read our minds. We have to be open and honest with what we want, what we desire, rather than just thinking that everybody wants it. I know with the example that I gave you last week about my birthday dinner, my want and my desire was to have, I mean, I didn't even mind making the food myself because I like to make the food, but I wanted people to come and sit down and have dinner with me. But did I ever express that? No. I just expected and thought that they should be doing what I want, even though I had never communicated that. So not a healthy place. So learn to express your wants and your desires. 

24:18 

Number seven, make time for self care. It is really difficult to engage in all these other behaviors we're talking about that are healthy when I am not taking care of myself, when my spirit does not feel strong. Make sure you're getting to bed on time. Make sure you're eating healthy. Make sure you're taking care of your body and make sure that you're reading things that rejuvenate you. Make sure that we're not engaging in too much buffering that's going to drag us down or make us feel poorly physically or emotionally. Right? 

24:56 

Number eight, stop shoulding on the other person. When we keep saying "you should be doing this, you should not be doing this," that puts us in a place of being demanding and controlling. And these kinds of expectations are not helpful communication for any kind of relationship. We have to stop thinking the other person should or should not behave a certain way, especially when we're talking about adults. Adults get to behave how they want. And for us to be thinking that we can tell other people how they should and should not act, we got to step out of that and we've got to start respecting other people enough to allow them to behave how they want. 

25:40 

Number nine, take responsibility. Start choosing to see your part in the circumstance. What am I adding to this? And do not allow yourself to blame other people. It is so easy in our society to blame other people for things. A lot. But we have to start taking responsibility and saying, "well I did this." So like if I do a consult with someone and they decide not to work with me, it's not a place for me to start saying, "well they didn't see how important it was." It's for me to say "I didn't help them see how important it was." We have to start taking responsibility. Responsibility for finding a solution rather than just whining about the problem. Take responsibility. 

26:34 

And the last one, number 10. If this just feels heavy for you, get some help from a coach or a counselor. This is what we do, okay? We can help to create awareness of the patterns that you are exemplifying in your life with going along with this. You may not even see them because you've been doing them for so long. And that's okay, that's totally human. I know, I look back at my behaviors and I'm like, "I had no idea I was doing it really for a long time." So my job as your coach would be to help create awareness of your patterns to help you see what's going on so that you can make adjustments to those patterns. Until we see them, we can't change them. 

27:27 

Oftentimes, this kind of behavior is rooted in self-worth beliefs. And as a coach, I help my clients with that to work through some self-help, self-worth beliefs, help them figure that out. I can help you see where there may be some control issues, places where you're trying to take control, where it would be important to let go of that. As a coach, I can help you to feel empowered by learning to control yourself and take responsibility for your actions. Places that you may not be seeing. This is the trick about so much of this is we want to be good people. And a lot of times we think we are, but we're doing things that are destructive and we don't even see it. We don't even know what's going on. And this is why working with a coach can be so valuable because we can help you see these things. 

28:25 

And the last piece of this is that I can also help you see false thoughts and beliefs. And we all have them. We all have thoughts and beliefs that have hung around for a long time and we just don't even see them. We don't even know that they're there. And this is something that's fascinating about our our brain that was reiterated to me by a coaching session that I had with my coach this last week. She was talking because I was talking about a situation where I was filling in the blanks and I was saying "well he's doing this and he's doing this and he's doing this," and she's like "whoa whoa whoa," right? Just notice that those are all thoughts and that what your brain wants to do is it wants to fill in the blanks. Our brain wants a complete story. It wants a beginning. It wants a middle and it wants an end and if it only has one piece of that it's gonna fill in the rest with things that are not necessarily true. 

29:21 

So we have to really pay attention and I can help you see that. Just as my coach helps me see it I'm trained to help you see it and I will tell you I don't see my own stuff very often. Well sometimes I do but not as often as I would like to. That's why I work with a coach. I can help you see things that you won't be able to see. Here's the the big crux of all of this. Choosing to be a martyr eventually destroys all hope of a healthy relationship with ourselves and with the people in our lives. When my car needs an oil change, I just go get the oil changed. When it needs a tune-up, I go get a tune-up on the car. When there's a strange noise going on, I take it in to get it looked at. I don't just keep driving it and hoping that my oil light will go away or my check engine light will go away. I don't just keep driving it. I don't just hope it's going to fix itself because I know it won't. When I need help figuring out what's going on with my car, I go get help. 

30:27 

Now if I had the skill set, I could probably do some of that myself, but it would take me a very, very long time. And one thing that helps with working with a coach is that we can move through this process a little bit quicker, which is of great benefit, I think. But here's the other thing. When my relationships need help, when I need help with myself, I get help, right? We don't have to do it all by ourselves. It doesn't make us better. It doesn't make us stronger. It doesn't make us more righteous if we're doing it all by ourselves. You can have faster progress with a skilled professional helping you out, helping you see, helping you learn to respond from a place of love rather than fear. And when we really start moving into a space of love for ourselves and love for our relationship, then we start moving out of being a martyr. This, my friends, is why this coaching is so valuable. It helps us see things we don't see. It helps us understand how to move into a healthier space. That's what I am hoping that we are doing here together. It's what I hope that I'm helping you to see and understand yourself better so that you can move into a better place, a happier place, a more content fulfilling place with yourself and with your relationships. And the more we start to see this kind of behavior, we choose to see this sort of behavior in our lives, the more we will start cleaning it up and the more real satisfaction we will find in life. And this is the joy of middle age. 

32:19 

This is what makes growing up so worth it because we're in a place to start seeing things that we've never been able to see before. Okay, my friends, that is gonna do it for me today. Wish you all the best. If you need to get in touch with me to set up a consult and talk about coaching, You can go to tanyahale.com and there's a place on there where you can set up a free consult with me and we will talk about all the things and we will help get you where you need to go. Have an awesome day and I will talk to you later, bye. 

32:54 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.