Hey there, it's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson, and in this weekly vlog, we're going to talk about the distinction between being self-centered and self-caring. I think this actually cuts to the heart of why a lot of people have a hard time with their recovery, their Bright Line Eating® program, their 12-step program, their therapy, their personal growth journey, whatever form it takes, and they abdicate themselves. They don't focus on themselves for fear of being selfish or self-centered. In our society, I think women especially are indoctrinated, are inculturated, are raised to not be. Maybe one of the worst things you can be growing up as a woman in our society is to be excessively focused on self. You're supposed to be other-focused, caring, nurturing, responsible, helpful, contributing, giving. I think men are socialized this way perhaps too, but not as much. Not as much. Let's talk about it, because when I first started learning Internal Family Systems and I got exposed to the word the self in a positive light, the self is the highest expression of personal growth in IFS.
If you're grounded in self-energy, you are aligned, you are true to your highest, most glorious being. The beingness in you that is at one with God and the spheres and all of your protective and wounded Parts are not running the show. You are grounded in the energy that is self-responsible, that is self-aware, that is compassionate to self and others. You're calm, compassionate, confident, clear, curious, courageous, creative, all the things, right? All the Cs. You're operating from a place of clear choice. That's the ninth C that they just added.
I was taken aback because this word "self" is not a word that I was raised to think that highly of. Now, I don't mean by my parents. My parents actually raised me to have a strong sense of self, but I was really raised in 12-step rooms from the age of 20. That's really where I learned how to behave responsibly in the world after I crashed and burned on drugs and alcohol. In the big book of Alcoholic Anonymous, it says selfishness, self-centeredness that we think is the root of our problems, driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion. We step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some point in the past, we made decisions based on self that later put us in a position to be hurt. So, the selfishness, we think, is the root of our problems. Anyway, I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but that's basically what the book says, selfishness, self-centeredness, that is the root of the addict's problems. And so, I was sort of raised to think that selfishness was not a good thing, that I had to get rid of self and become more other-focused, other-centered, not self-centered, other-centered.
But I was also taught in 12-step rooms to focus on myself through a fourth-step inventory. So, focus on myself, at least to that extent, focus on myself to look at my defects of character, so-called, and enough so that I could ask my higher power to remove them, but then really focus on others, focus on the newcomer, focus on being of service, service, service, service. Now in Bright Line Eating, most of the people that come here are women, and a lot of them are caretakers in various forms. I would say that our population probably skews more toward the codependent than the excessively. I think that a lot of people in Bright Line Eating have a hard time focusing on themself enough to get with the program. Have a hard time focusing on themself, sing on themselves enough to carve out enough time to weigh and measure their food, to plan it ahead of time, to do the food prep they need to do to attend Bright Line Eating things online and to make phone calls and connect up with other people. It amounts to a fair chunk of time that it takes. But for a lot of people, it's easier to run on old habits, which involve centering others at the expense of oneself. It's an interesting conundrum to be resistant to self-focus to the extent that you stay sick, because being other-centered can actually be a form of taking, rather than giving under the guise of giving. But in reality, you're taking what you're taking from others is self-worth identity, validation, approval.
If I just do for you, will you love me? Will you approve of me? Will you let me belong? Will you make me feel good about myself? Will you give me an identity, please, because I am so there for you. Ultimately, it's a guilt trip. Ultimately, it's manipulation. Ultimately, if you're giving not from a place of fullness, but from a place of neediness, then it lands to the other person as a little sticky, slimy, it doesn't land well. If you're giving to the point of not having enough time to take care of yourself, invariably, that leads to resentment, it leads to burnout, it leads to frustration, and it leads to unhappy relationships. I'm just thinking about this difference of being self-focused versus other-focused. Where's the nuance? This is not the kind of topic that you can take a sledgehammer to. We need a scalpel here to sort of carve out the distinctions. It's so nuanced. The important topics in life are so nuanced.
Nuance is my favorite word. You've heard me say that before. Nuance is my favorite word. The more society advances, the more I think we just need to be looking at interesting, hard problems both in ourselves and in society through the lens of nuance and subtlety. Here's what I think. I think that when it comes to being self-focused versus other-focused, a couple things, a couple principles are apropos. The first is that there's an order of operations here. It really is the put your own oxygen mask on first before you help others. Helping others from a place of depletion doesn't actually fundamentally help at the end of the day. We've got to take care of ourselves first. It's man on man defense. That is how the world works. Ultimately, when we're talking about grown adults, it's man on man defense. In other words, we are each charged with the care ultimately, of one soul in this life, and that's our own. That is who we're responsible for first and foremost. If we have extra leftover to give awesome sauce, and there's a place for that, and we'll get there in a second. But first, we've got to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves and exquisitely, because we're an instrument, we're a tool. We're a servant. We're potentially, ideally going to fit ourselves to be of service to others. That only works if we sharpen the saw, which I believe is Steven Covey's seventh principle, is we've got to sharpen the saw. We've got to engage in self-care. That's the first thing is I think there's an order of operations. It's not should I be self-centered or other centered. I should be self-focused first to make sure that I'm good and I'm taken care of. Then with any resources or bandwidth left over any material, resources, emotional resources, mental resources, time, I should be giving to others first, and then the other. So, that's the first thing.
The other thing is I think that different people have different levels of need in terms of how much self-care takes time-wise, energy wise. Some people just kind of run on self-sufficiency easier. I'm a high needs person in terms of self-care. I've got to do a lot of things to run smoothly, meditate, take care of my food, et cetera, et cetera. Other people, other people can get through life fine without meditating every day. I'm not one of those people. Other people can get through life fine without thinking hardly at all about what they eat. I'm not one of those people. So, people are going to differ in terms of the amount of self-focus that it takes to get themselves to a good place, to where their cup is full. And they have some that runeth over to give to others. That's okay. And honestly, if you're so constituted in this moment where you got to focus on yourself a hundred percent to get yourself good, that's okay. If you fail to do it, you're leaving that job to others. Then your net/net is a take from the world. It's not a give. There's no benefit to anyone if you neglect yourself, if it's going to take a hundred percent of your focus just to get yourself right, do that. Do that so that you're not relying on the world to do it for you.
People are going to vary in how much time they take and effort they take to get themselves. Then after that, there may be some leftover and give with it. And so, you can take a look at your interactions with others. Are you a net giver or a net taker? When people haven't done their work and they're egomaniacal or they're dripping and weeping in self-pity or neediness, either way, they're either what we would call too full of self or not enough full of self. Then they end up being a net take on us. We end up being not really enjoying their company because they just are demanding our attention and not seeing anything interesting and going on and on about themselves. Nobody wants to be around somebody like that. Or they're trying to give to us in a way that's not thoughtful or sensitive to our needs, and it's fundamentally needy for them. And really, they're taking to give, but they're taking.
What we want to do, ideally is take care of ourselves and then be a net giver, even if it's just a little bit, some of us can give a lot after we've taken care of ourselves. We can give a lot, right? I think those are the two principles that stand out to me is see yourself as having the primary job of taking care of yourself. Do that first, then take care of others with what you've got left over. But there's some self-words that are in the mix here. We want to be not self-absorbed, but self-centered in the sense of, I am centered in myself. I am grounded in myself. I am inhabiting myself. We want to be self-aware and other-aware. We want to be self-responsible. These are some more nuanced words than just, I mean, self-centered is an interesting one. You can flip that one around. I think self-absorbed is the one that has the most negative connotation in our society, but some degree of that at certain times of day, I guess when I'm meditating, you could look at me and say, boy, look, so self-absorbed. Okay, for half an hour a day, I certainly am. Eyes closed, completely inside. Self, yes, self-absorbed. But ideally, I would like to not be called self-absorbed in the entirety of my life. Self-absorbed for a little bit, and then other-focused throughout other parts of the day. And then just keeping in mind that being other focused at the expense of self is not a net give. It's a net take from everybody around to everybody around.
And so, oh gosh, for those of us who have given give and give at the expense of self, it's a bit of a wake-up call. Hey, it's time to be a little bit more self-centered. Get centered in yourself. Get centered in yourself. Get grounded, get centered. Get clear. Do your own work, and then give from the excess. So, is Bright Line Eating a selfish program? No, it's a self-caring program. It does involve shining the light on self and ideally getting aligned within self so that we have extra to give to others. Those are my thoughts on self being self-focused versus other-focused. I'd be curious for your thoughts, put them into the comments. I would love to hear. It's an interesting topic. That's the Weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
