Podcast Episode #57 - Why Do Everyone Else's Needs Feel More Urgent Than Mine?
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[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome back to yet another inspirational podcast episode, brought to you by yours truly, Carina. I'm your truth speaker, truth seeker, truth keeper, and I am so glad that you're here with me today Have you ever noticed how quickly you respond when somebody else needs something? Your child says, "Mummy, I'm hungry," and you're already opening the cupboard.
Your partner goes quiet, and you notice immediately. A friend sends, "Are you free for a quick call?" And before you've even replied, [00:01:00] you're mentally working out where you can squeeze her in. But your own body says, "I'm tired. I need something to eat. I need five minutes when nobody speaks to me." And your response is, "In a minute, after I've done this, once everything else is sorted."
So what if the problem isn't that you're bad at knowing what you need? What if you've simply learned that everybody else's needs are urgent and yours can wait? I've been thinking about this a lot this week because there's a pattern I keep noticing in the women I work with who are incredibly good at taking care of life.
They can tell you what everyone around them needs, who's overwhelmed, who hasn't eaten, who needs picking up, who's in a bad mood, what needs organizing, [00:02:00] what needs remembering. And they are not inattentive women, quite the opposite. Their attention is extraordinary. It's just very often pointed outward, and then at some point in the day they realize, "Bloody hell, I'm starving.
My jaw is killing me. I've got an absolute banger of a headache, and I'm absolutely exhausted. I cannot bear one more person asking me a question." And the conclusion is often, "I'm so bad at looking after myself." But I'm not sure that's the most useful way of seeing it because maybe the issue isn't that you don't notice yourself.
Maybe you notice and then immediately desi- decide you can wait. There's one particular moment I keep noticing in conversations with women, and you can ask, [00:03:00] "What do the kids need?" Immediate answer. "What does your partner need?" Usually another answer. "What needs doing this week?" And there may be an entire internal spreadsheet ready to go.
But when you ask, "What do I need right now?" And there's often a pause, sometimes quite a long one. Not necessarily because you have no needs. Often, your body has already told you that you're hungry, you're tense, you're tired, you want some quiet, you don't want to have that conversation tonight, that you need help.
The information is there, but between noticing the need and responding to it, something happens. It gets negotiated. Can I wait? Is it really that bad? I'll do it after [00:04:00] this. It'll be easier once everyone else is settled. And I think that gap is really interesting because we often talk about listening to our body as though the problem is hearing it.
But what if you heard it perfectly well already? What if the harder part is believing that what you heard deserves a response? Can I offer you another way of seeing it? Maybe you're not bad at knowing what you need. Maybe you've learnt that your needs are negotiable. Think about how differently you respond to other people.
If your child tells you they're hungry, you probably don't say, "Hmm, are you hungry enough? Could you push through another three hours? Maybe wait until you're shaky and furious, and then we'll decide whether food is justified." No, you [00:05:00] feed them because hunger is information. But with yourself, now that's a different thing.
You notice hunger and think, "I'll eat after I finish doing the dishes." You noticed exhaustion and think, "I'll rest when the kids are in bed." You notice you're overstimulated and think, "I just need to get through bedtime You notice you don't want to do something and immediately begin searching for whatever your reason is good enough.
And slowly your own signals become things you acknowledge but don't necessarily answer. That's a very different problem from not knowing yourself because it means your body hasn't failed to communicate. You haven't lost some magical ability everybody else possesses. You may simply have become [00:06:00] very practiced at saying, "Yes, I can hear you, but not yet."
And when not yet happens often enough, your needs can start having to become louder before they get your attention. Not just tired, but completely depleted. Not just hungry, but shaky and irritable, like proper hangry, mad. Not just needing quiet, but suddenly wanting to lock yourself in the bathroom because somebody as- has asked you where the scissors are for the twentieth time .
And maybe the question isn't why am I so bad at self-care? Maybe it's why does my need have to become urgent before I respond to it? And this can make a lot of sense through a survival lens because if [00:07:00] you learned early that paying attention to other people helped lifed-- life feel more predictable, then your attention had a very good reason to travel outward.
So it's like, who's upset? What needs doing? What mood is everyone in? Can I help? Can I make this easier somehow? Can I stop something becoming a problem? And maybe being helpful bor- brought approval. Maybe being low maintenance made things easier. Maybe noticing other people quickly helped you avoid conflict.
Maybe later motherhood, relationships, work, and the sheer amount of emotional and practical labor you carry strengthened that pattern even more Your system gets very efficient at responding to the world around you, and none of that means you consciously decided my m- my [00:08:00] needs matter less. These patterns are usually much quieter.
It can simply become normal that everybody else gets answered first. So when your own body interrupts with, "I'm tired," "I'm hungry," "I bloody well need some help here," and, "I've really had enough," there can be this almost automatic assump- assumption of, "Yes, but later." And the important thing here is that later may sometimes be completely necessary.
Sometimes you genuinely do need to finish school pickup before you can lie down. Sometimes the toddler needs feeding first, God forbid you didn't. Sometimes life requires us to delay ourselves. This isn't about responding instantly to every sensation like your body has become a tiny, demanding CEO. It's about noticing when [00:09:00] postponing yourself is no longer an occasional necessity, but your default setting.
Because when you see that distinction, self-care starts looking very different. It doesn't have to begin with a morning routine, a massage, journaling, or finding two uninterrupted hours that nobody appears to own. It might begin much earlier with responding to yourself before the signal becomes an emergency, eating when you notice hunger rather than when you can no longer concentrate, admitting you're tired before you're flattened, recognizing that you need quiet before everybody in the house starts irritating the living daylights out of you.
You know, not perfectly and not every time, but just beginning to understand that my needs [00:10:00] don't become more legitimate because I ignored them for longer. So if there's one thing I want you to remember from today's conversation, it's this: Your needs do not have to become emergencies before they deserve a response.
And the question I want to leave sitting with you is this: What happens inside you when you need something at the same time somebody else needs you? Ooh, yeah, that's a juicy one to sit with. And this week, don't try to become brilliant at listening to your body. Just notice one very small moment your body asks for something, and then notice the thought that arrives immediately afterwards.
In a minute, after this, I just need to, dot, dot, dot, once everyone is s- else is sorted, dot, dot, dot. [00:11:00] Don't change it. Don't judge it. Just notice, what did I need, and who or what did I answer instead? That's enough. And if this episode has made you wonder how many other tiny automatic ways you might be putting yourself second without even realizing it, that's exactly why I created my free six-part private audio series, Six Hidden Ways Women Quietly Abandon Themselves, because self-abandonment rarely announces itself.
It can look like coping, being responsible, being independent, overthinking, being the person everyone can rely on. And that's what makes these patterns so difficult to recognize because they can look like you. The series will help you start spotting them while they're [00:12:00] actually happening in your everyday life so you can begin separating what is truly you from what you may have learned to do to stay safe, useful, or connected.
And if you've spent years thinking, "This is just who I am," and you're starting to wonder whether there's more underneath that, I'd start there. You will find the free series in the show notes below. And until next time, your body isn't another person asking too much from you. It's you. With love, Carina.