This episode is transforming nervous habits and meeting unmet needs. Today’s caller, Morgan, has a big part of herself that she wants to change. Her needs in childhood were unmet by her mother and she created a nervous behavior as a coping strategy. If you bite your nails, pick your skin around your fingers, pull apart split ends, or any other nervous habit you would like to transform, this episode will help.
[For show notes, go here: Christinehassler.com/episode336]
Understanding the why behind a behavior doesn’t make it go away. We need to remember that a nervous behavior is a physiological manifestation of an emotion. It is an alarm system that alerts us that a need that wasn’t met in childhood is still not being met. When we have a nervous habit, it is telling us that we are trying to calm or suppress something.
Needs, especially in childhood, are real and important. If certain needs aren’t met at certain stages in life, it hinders who we are as adults. It doesn’t break us but it does impact us. There is a strong developmental need to feel nurtured, nourished, and to feel a calming presence. When we are children our nervous system is developing or imprinting.
Needs that are not met in childhood haunt us as adults. Any primary need we didn’t get met in childhood will continue into adulthood. Over time, we develop coping strategies to try to handle the anxiety around that unmet need. If we don’t get our needs met, our coping strategies come with little alarm systems that alert us that we need attention.
Anything is healable. The first step of any transformation is acceptance.
Consider/Ask Yourself:
Do you have a nervous habit you would like to break free from? Do you have shame around that habit? Did you grow up in a house with a parent or parents who had a lot of anxiety? Do you believe you can shift something or do you want to continue carrying around the story that you can’t?
Morgan’s Question:
Since childhood, Morgan has had a nervous habit of picking at her skin. She would like guidance on how to manage her anxiety in a healthy way.
Morgan’s Key Insights and Ahas:
She’s had a spiritual awakening recently. She grew up in a stable home. Her mother has an anxious personality and body image issues. She worried about her mother’s anxiety. She started picking at her skin because she wasn’t having her needs met. Her mother had conditions around giving love. She felt she had to earn love from her mother. She didn’t feel nurtured as a child. She doesn’t fully understand why she picks her skin. She feels shame around her habit. She doesn’t know what she needs for herself or who she is.
How to Get Over It and On With It:
When she begins picking her skin, stop and ask herself how she can nurture and nourish herself at the moment. Read Discovering the Inner Mother: A Guide to Healing the Mother Wound and Claiming Your Personal Power and Mother Hunger: How Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal from Lost Nurturance, Protection, and Guidance. Acknowledge that she loves her mother but there were needs her mother didn’t meet. Look at her skin and scars and have compassion for herself. Believe she can shift her behavior. Grieve her mother wound, do anger release, and let the resentment out.
Takeaways:
Think about the needs you did not have met as a child and consider how you can give them to yourself now.
Resources:
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Expectation Hangover, by Christine Hassler
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