How to recognize martyr moments and three solutions to move beyond martyrdom.
I’m back!! During my break from the podcast, I spent time celebrating birthdays and soaking in the last weeks of summer. I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about new ways to connect to you through this podcast. You’ll notice a lot of new changes over the next month. The topic this week is one I’ve spent A LOT of time thinking about. The topic is “martyr moments.”
What is a martyr moment? We all have them, but sometimes we don’t realize when they happen. We let those thoughts of negativity pass through our minds over and over until they become martyr seasons and martyr mindsets. In this episode, I’ll share three reasons why martyr moments happen and three solutions to help you break away from this pattern.
About a few other things…
If you are ready to re-prioritize and re-potentialize, leaving behind those martyr moments, join the 5-Day “I Am On The List Challenge” happening at the end of September. Join a group of women working together on action and accountability through doable ways. If your to-do list is a mile long, and you’re never on it, it’s time for that to change. This challenge will get you started the right way!
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TRANSCRIPT
Have you ever had a martyr moment? That’s what I call when you experience this trigger in your circumstances that make you go into this internal space; it’s hard to describe, but I think the best way I can explain it is by sharing the thoughts that might be swirling around your head. Thoughts, like “People are the worst,” and “Nobody ever seems to care about me.” “Nothing ever seems to work out for me.” And “Everyone’s against me.”
We’ve all had martyr moments, me included. Today, I’m going to talk about how we fall into martyrdom and what we can do to make those moments stay as moments instead of them becoming full on mindsets.
When I think back on my own list of martyr moments, honestly, that list is quite long, but there’s one example that really is rising to the top right now. Back when we had two little kids and one of them screamed almost all day. And the other child liked to make her scream all day.
And on top of that, Brad was working around the clock. We almost never saw him Monday through Saturday and half of Sunday. He was at work and this stretch of a busy season, if you haven’t accountant in your life, typically goes on for four or five months of the year. And we were smacked up in the middle of this busy season and yes, while things were very chaotic, we’d still try to make it so on Saturday mornings, I could go out for a little run by myself because normally I push two kids and a giant stroller running miles and miles on my own every day.
I needed that alone time. It gave me the only time I had throughout a week to myself, which I’ve learned over time is very important for my mental wellbeing. So Saturday morning comes and in my head, I know I get to go on a run. And Brad and I preparing breakfast for the kids and then getting them ready.
As we’re doing this, I noticed that he’s looking at his watch and packing his backpack. And it looks like he’s just about to slip out the door to go to work and I pipe up and say, “I thought I was going to go for a run right now.” And we kind of have one of those moments where you’re both looking at each other, but you both had totally different expectations of what was just about to happen.
And you’re both right. And you’re both wrong at the same time. But in that moment, all I could see was someone who was insisting on being at work at an arbitrary time. All I could see was someone who, while a wonderful dad and father, was never around and did not understand the toll physically, mentally, spiritually, that I had been through, and the burdens I was carrying. I just saw someone who didn’t care about me having my own time.
And in a matter of 30 seconds, we quickly negotiate me being able to just go out for a very short run. And as I’m leaving the house in a huff and puff, I scream, “I never get time to myself!!” and slam the door.
That’s the moment I can think of when I think about an example of martyr moments and I’m sure some come to your mind too. So going into our discussion on this, how about you think of one of those? Maybe it happened yesterday for you. If so, great. Embrace it. Let’s learn from it together. Maybe it’s one from a few years ago, either way, bring that to mind so that you can have this moment of yours to better learn from and to figure out what was really going on there.
I want to start this by saying that martyr moments are totally normal and it’s part of being human. I’ve learned. It’s okay to let those rush hard emotions come in and to process them better in the moment, the grief, the anger, the sadness, the frustration that you might need to process. And honestly learn from me and my own personal experience of years of outrunning, sometimes literally, hard emotions that the more you push them away, the more martyr moments will sneak up for you.
So, yes, while it’s so normal to have martyr moments, what we don’t want them to become are seasons of martyrdom and then whole mindsets of martyrdom. So martyr mindsets, where it’s almost just a part of your makeup, the way you think and navigate the world.
I’m going to tell you why this is a topic that is front of mind for me right now, as I’ve been thinking a lot the last few months about this community. I know that I want this community to be made up of women who are ready to leave martyrdom behind from how they show up in their families and work to how they view their own capacity to change where and how they want to.
I want women who are ready to work through these martyr moments and leave them behind.
What I’m going to do now is teach you some of the reasons I personally see behind martyrdoms, sneaky ways of creeping into our lives and what you can do to make these martyr moments less common and less controlling. The first reason I see martyrdom really coming in is when we feel stuck. Think about your martyr moments and how in those moments you felt like the decisions were made for you. And in what ways you didn’t feel like you had a say in how they were playing out or handed to you.
Back to my slam the door moment. I felt super stuck and yes, I kind of felt captive in my own home just because of the sheer amount of hours I had to be there. But I more felt stuck in the bigger picture of my life because of Brad’s huge work responsibilities at the time.
That meant that my own responsibilities at home were completely on my shoulders. And even if I wanted this family and these responsibilities, I felt like it was just expected of me rather than something I had been able to choose myself. And that led to resentment. That really surprised me. It led to martyrdom.
Here is our solution to feeling stuck. It’s to SHOW UP.
If martyrs typically get into this mindset of not getting to choose for themselves, the way we can get past these martyr moments is to become choosers. When we feel stuck, it’s imperative that we take back our agency, our ability to choose for ourselves.
The sad thing about life is that we can’t control other people. I mean, sometimes, but very rarely. And when we do, there’s usually some dire consequences to that, right? Like harmed relationships for one.
But most of the time we can’t control their people. And oftentimes we also cannot control our circumstances; but there are still things that we can control with our choices. And I’m going to share more about that in a moment. And there are ways we can create choices, even within our tricky relationships and circumstances.
I have a term for you now that I want you to memorize and refer back to and use in your life. It’s re-potentialize. This is where you insert more possibility into your life and your choices.
If you only see one door coming in and out of a room and you’re stuck in that room and you see just one door. That’s the only choice. It’s the only way in that’s the only way out. When you re- potentialize instead you were looking for a window, a trap door or a fire pole.
Now re-potentialize is a term that I was introduced to in my optimized coaching program. And this is where you just zoom out and you look at your situation with objective eyes and you ask yourself, do I really not have any choices or are they just hard to see.
Let’s go back to my example of slamming the door.
If I were to re-potentialize that, then I would have seen that I actually had more choices than I thought I did. I couldn’t change the fact that Brad was working constnatly. I couldn’t change that I lived far from family. I couldn’t change that I didn’t have enough money to hire on some help. But I could still see, if I’d given myself the opportunity, which in time I ended up being able to do fortunately, but I could have seen that yes, I could ask for help from a neighbor. I could teach my kids how to do some more chores around the house, or I could just accept a messier home for the season.
I might not have been able to choose my situation, but I still could create choices that would help me feel more whole, so I could better meet my situation.
So what about you, in what ways do you feel stuck? And how can you still show up better for yourself by re-potentializing your situation and creating choices for yourself? How can you show up for yourself?
The next big reason behind our martyr moments is that in those moments as martyrs, we tend to feel very dependent on how others’ actions are controlling our lives. And as a result, we feel very unsupported.
We all have expectations of the people that we have in our lives, from the person delivering mail to the person who is like your life partner. And they’re humans are humans and expectations are often not met.
And if we are very dependent on how others’ actions are shaping our lives, those unmet expectations will lead to us feeling unsupported because we’re waiting for other people to help us.
When I slammed the door, it was because of this in many ways, I felt like I was completely on my own. And because all of our family’s weight was on my shoulders I didn’t see a way to have time for myself. I did not have great supportive habits going on. I was going to bed at very late hours. I was struggling to feed myself consistently and many, many other examples like that. Even just taking time for myself.
Just as we learned that re-potentializing and creating choices to show up for ourselves is the antidote to feeling stuck, when we are feeling unsupported, the antidote is to support ourselves.
We can’t control other people. We can’t control our circumstances very often. So instead we control the controllables. We step up to support ourselves in ways we need.
And for me, this goes back to habits. And when I think about habits, I’m thinking about supportive habits, starting with the basics of how was your sleeping, how are you moving your body? How is it going with having a little bit of time for yourself to rest and relax?
When others can’t support you the way you need it, control what you can control and step up to better support your self. Step up and support yourself. Here’s one way I would encourage you to start: create the supportive habit of putting your phone down earlier at night. Even five, 10 minutes earlier at a time, it really will help you.
I’ve got one more pointer for you, but first let’s take a break to hear a word from our sponsor.
It’s a new school year, but if you have little ones who will be at home instead of at school, I’m so pleased to announce that this month’s sponsor is Learning with Kelsey. As a mom and licensed preschool teacher, Kelsey knows what your little kids need to learn successfully at home.
Whether you want to add in more fun with some crafts, or you want to exclusively teach preschool pre-K or kindergarten at home, or maybe just simply want to supplement what they’re learning at school. Go check out the specialized boxes from Learning with Kelsey. You can choose from a variety of ages and needs and get a box of lessons, activities, and materials–my personal favorite par–that are perfect for your little ones, whether they need to work on math or their letters, or are simply eager to craft. They’re all there for you. I use Kelsey’s boxes last year to homeschool my kindergartener. And they honestly were a sanity saver, not just a time-saver or a money saver. They were a sanity saver.
I want you to save. I want you to save some time and money. And get Kelsey’s boxes by going to about progress.com/learningwithkelsey and she’s generously given you 50% off your first month or your first box with the code ABOUTPROGRESS. That’s one word, all caps at about progress.com/learningwithkelsey.
Alright, the two pointers we’ve shared so far to combat those martyr moments are to one show up by creating choices, and to step up by creating supportive habits.
The final pointer is to speak up. I want to frame this first by explaining how we can fall into it’s opposite, which to me is silence.
Martyrs tend to wallow in their anger and sadness, to feel that resentment oozing out of them. Maybe their actions show it constantly makes slamming doors and acting disgruntled and all that. But martyrs mumble, they don’t speak up. And if they happen to it’s in a flight of resentment and anger, it’s like me screaming before I slam the door.
This is because martyrs tend to feel silenced. And I know because I have realized through a recent breakthrough I’ve had on my own that a lot of my own internal suffering I’ve had since I was a little kid, goes back to this feeling like I’m being silenced. That was the same of my slam the door moment. I felt like I didn’t have a voice, or if, if I spoke up that it would be selfish of me to share, that I need time to myself instead.
I felt silenced. And because of that, when that anger and resentment came out, it came out as a scream, instead of me speaking up for myself.
You know, oftentimes as women, we feel like we’re not allowed to share the hard and share our opinions and to use our voices in ways that might make people a little uncomfortable or might make life less easy for them. We’re not even talking about like politics here. We’re just say like, I need more help around the house. We’re afraid to say those things because it makes people uncomfortable. We’re asking them to do things that are not so fun or easy for them either. And this is happening even in the best of homes, even within the best of marriages and partnerships and wonderful families and friendships and working relationships.
One of these weird comparisons I have is the British Royal family, which I am a big Angliophile,so just bear with me for a moment. But the British Royal family has the saying “don’t complain, never explain.” They silenced themselves to keep the peace. And if you’ve been around the world any time, the past two years, then you know that that’s not working out so well for their family right now. That silence has created suffering and resentment, which has created a lot of discord in the Royal family.
So when we through other people’s actions or their words, or their expectations of us, when we get this message to sit down and to shut up, it leads to suffering and it leads to martyrdom. So think about how your lack of a say, or your choice to be silent to keep the peace, or the message to be silent, how that is contributing to you feeling resentful or angry or sad or stuck and unsupported?
It goes back to the other two, right? So to move on from a martyr moment where we feel like you’re being silenced, you need to speak up, you need to use your voice.
We just went to Sister Act a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve got that in my mind. She, she sings “Raise your voice!”, and that’s what I want you to do.
Raise your voice and speak up. Ask for help, share more of what you want and what you need. Speak up and tell a friend that you’re having a hard time, speak up and ask someone for something you need, speak up and say what you think and what you believe.
Now. A lot of us resist this because we think “I’m not a loud and blunt person. I don’t like attention. I don’t have strong opinions.”
That’s okay. You don’t have to carry a megaphone to speak up. You don’t have to take on a whole new personality to be heard. You can still be you. And you can still speak up.
So, how can you do that for yourself?
What ways do you typically feel like those martyr moments come. Where you feel silenced in one way or another. And through speaking up, how can you be better step up and show up for yourself? They’re all connected.
Listen, you will have martyr moment. It’s okay to be human. You can’t snap your fingers and make all your hardships go away. You can’t even snap your fingers and make these martyr moments disappear the second you recognize them. But what you can’t do is choose who you want to be as you face your hardships, as you face these martyr moments and what you’re going to do to better move through them instead of luxuriating in them and getting stuck in them.
I have a challenge for you. And this is the challenge. I’m really excited for it. We are going to do this, I think most episodes from now on it’s going to be called the Do Something Challenge. And this came directly from you and your ideas. So here’s your challenge from thislesson:
When you face a martyr moment, I want you to take a deep breath and say this to yourself.
“I can show up step up and speak up in the ways I want and need to right now.”
And then just take one little step to do that. And I’m going to say the next messy step to do that.
Let’s paint this challenge into two scenarios where you possibly feel that martyr moment creeping up.
The first one, let’s say that all the ladies in your neighborhood go out to a fabulous dinner and they have a blast and you were not invited.
And you know you weren’t invited because they posted pictures all about their great time on internet and you never received an invite. And you’re feeling that sadness of, “Nobody cares about me and I never get the night off. Where are my friends? I have no friends.”
So in that martyr moment, take the deep breath and say, “I can show up step up and speak up in the ways I need and want.”
That’s where you zoom out and you see it from objective eyes. What’s really going on here. You ask yourself, why does this hurt? It hurts because I want _______ what, what do you want? I need ______, what do you need? And then you think about what is one messy way I can give that to myself right now.
Maybe I’m realizing I need to choose to speak up and invite someone on a play date with me or out to lunch. Maybe I see that I just need more time to myself. So I’m going to show up a little bit better for myself and come up with a way for me to create a break for myself. Take the deep breath and give yourself back that ability to choose for yourself.
The last scenario I’d give you is if you’re in a major season of overwhelm. You have all the to do’s coming at you and they’re all on your plate. No one else seems to be able to help you right now. And you feel burdened by all that needs to be done.
Take that deep breath. “I can show up step up or speak up for myself in the ways I want and need right now,” and ask yourself, what do I need?
Maybe you actually need help. So speak up and tell your boss or a family member. Maybe you need sleep. So you decide to step up for yourself and get some more sleep. And part of that means you have to de-prioritize and take things off of your list. Those are those two scenarios for you and as you’re contemplating them, maybe you’re thinking about just priorities in general and just like, “Oh my goodness, I’m terrible at prioritizing myself.”
If that’s you, I’ve got an amazing challenge coming your way. It’s called the, “I Am On the List Challenge!” We last did it informally in January and I’m going to make it formal. It’s going to be five days of fun, prizes, and teaching, and this community level of us coming together and women learning how to prioritize themselves and put themselves on the list in small and doable ways. To join that challenge, go to about progress.com/iamonthelist.
I hope this episode gave you the hug and kick in the pants that you need to grow. I’m going to quickly review what we learned today. And as always, if you like to see this review on a beautiful graphic every single week, those on my “Go Getter Newsletter” get that.
So here are the progress pointers that we reviewed.
1) We all have martyr moments. We just don’t want them to become martyr mindsets
2) Martyrdom arises when we are stuck, under-supported, and are being silenced.
3) We can beat martyrdom by showing up, stepping up and speaking up for ourselves.
And our Do Something Challenge for this week is that when you see a martyr moment creep in to take that deep breath and say, “I can show up step up and speak up in the ways I need and want right now.” and then take that next, messy step.
Now about that Do Something Challenge. If you would do it, I want to hear about it! So share about it on social media and use the.hashtag #dosomethingchallenge. And then when you do that, you can be featured on the show as a Progressor Spotlight that we’re going to start doing more often.
So again, use the #dosomethingchallenge on IG when you do the challenge.
Did you notice some big changes to the podcast? Well, our changes go beyond just a new introduction and music bridges, and a new tagline. During my two month break from the show, I did a little breaking of the podcast, and now we’re in the remaking process. And the biggest and most important part of this remaking was digging in deeply to your feedback on the show.
I have made shifts to better match what you wanted and needed in this. That means shorter episodes, more practical application, this new Do Something challenge. We’re not going to do themes anymore actually. And more!
I want you to know that this has always been a community, not a fan club. I have set that since day one. And one of the exciting shifts we’re going to have is featuring more and more of your voices on the show and hopefully in every episode. So to start, I have a huge favor. I would love for you to use your voice, raise your voice, and submit a specific progress related question that you have for me so that I can answer them directly on the show to do that.
It’ll take you less than five minutes altogether. Go to about progress.com/callin that’s C A L L I N. And you just leave me a quick voice message and tell me a scenario that you’re facing and ask a question that I can help you with. You’re going to notice more changes as we move forward in the show. And I cannot wait to hear what you think.
Just two quick reminders. Don’t forget to call in and don’t forget to get on the I am on the list challenge at aboutprogress.com/iamonthelist.
Thank you so much for being here and for listening now, go and do something with what you learned today.
