Infinite Awakening

Navigating the Emotional Void: Overcoming the Imbalance of Overgiving in Relationships

• Dr. Donna • Season 3 • Episode 1

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Have you ever found yourself giving more in a relationship than you're receiving, until the scales tip and you're left feeling empty? This is the silent crisis of overgiving I'm unraveling today, sharing not just the raw truths but also the steps to restore balance and self-worth. A journey of self-discovery awaits, as I delve into the personal cost of seeking validation by putting our partner's needs ahead of our own. We're peeling back the layers on how this pattern can eat away at the core of our emotional well-being, fostering unbalanced partnerships that leave us drifting in an emotional void. 

With the new year comes a call to action. It's time to embark on a transformative journey towards healthier relationship dynamics - this episode is your roadmap. We'll dissect the reasons behind overgiving, like the fear of rejection and the hunger for approval, and why it's crucial to confront them head-on. Whether through therapy, coaching, or deep inner work, it's about finding the courage to express your own needs and set firm boundaries. Let this be the year you reclaim your voice and strive for a more reciprocal exchange of love and support. Tune in for an enlightening discussion that might just change the course of your relationships.

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Dr Donna:

Hello, this is Dr Donna and welcome to a new season of my podcast. I am very excited for this season because it's going to be a little bit different. I'm not going to focus on guests. I love the guests, but sometimes it's hard to get people scheduled and committed. But I want to focus on everything that I wanted to tell my clients throughout the year, whether I was doing readings for them or coaching for them or a combination of both. I want to share everything I've learned. So this podcast is becoming like a diary or a journal that everyone can read and it's dear my precious clients and when I say precious clients, I really mean that, because my clients have taught me so much about life and the world and how we think and the influences from society and our upbringing and the pressure that we have amongst our peers and thinking that everybody else is succeeding and we're not, and everybody else is happy and they're not. I just said I want to share the truth and the truth is that we're all in this together and everybody's going through something, whether they showed or not, some people smile through it. I remember the day after planning MySenseFuneroy I had to go to work and put a smile on my face because I had to keep my physical, in-person practice together. So a lot of times we think one thing is happening when something else is happening. And I want to share something very important today and it's really about more about this over giving.

Dr Donna:

I've spent a lot of time specializing in over giving because I realize my clients are over givers. Like me, I'm an over giver in recovery. I've spoken to prior podcasts about the difference between over giving and people pleasing, meaning that people pleasing is looking for external validation and over giving is looking for internal validation. Both of their sources are trauma. Trauma causes us to respond in different ways and over givers don't approve of themselves easily at all and we feel like we have to give our way into accepting ourselves and we have to over give so that we'd be proud of ourselves, we feel like we're doing enough, we feel like we're worthy.

Dr Donna:

And I want to talk about one specific part of over giving. It's for the people who over give and their romantic relationships. When I say over giving and romantic relationships, there are so many ways it is done. It's done physically, where you're constantly, you know, satisfying your partner physically, intimately, and you may not be getting your needs met and you won't even say anything. You're just like I feel good, pleasing my partner, and what ends up happening is that you start feeling this emptiness. A lot of times people say I feel emptiness in my physical relationship and where I'm not really intimate therapists you know, but the topic comes up a lot and what I found is that, whether the person is mostly female, even when they're a male, they feel the need to really please their partner, to win approval, not just from their partner, but to feel worthy of their partner's approval, to the point where they deny their own needs or they pretend to be satisfied when they're not.

Dr Donna:

That is a big issue with over giving and romantic relationships. A lot of people are having unsatisfied intimacy because they're so busy trying to win their partner over and feeling that they're doing enough for their partner to where they put their needs to decide. And over givers always put their needs last. They do it in many ways and usually when I talk about over giving, it's about giving money, giving time, you know, fixing other people's problems. But when it comes to relationships, and especially for women, they're in relationships that they don't need to feel satisfied about. If they are an over giver, I would say probably a lot of women find themselves in this, whether they talk about it or not, and there's already a discomfort for women to discuss their own intimate desires and to really be able to put themselves first too, because that's another thing that women aren't taught, that we get to put ourselves first. We're supposed to take care of everybody else and then we're last. You know, the men, the children, the parents everybody gets taken care of, and then what's left we get. So this over giving transfers into relationships. It transfers into everything.

Dr Donna:

How you do anything is how you do everything, and I've seen it a lot where they start feeling empty and depleted, like why don't I feel good that I'm giving so much to my partner? And the reason why is because you're not giving anything to yourself and you're so busy trying to satisfy them, which will turn their partner into a selfish partner. Because you're not complaining, you're not saying anything, the partner is getting their knees met and you're just hoping that the partner will see what's missing and meet you halfway. But that isn't how it works. It's communication which fixes the gap and so that you can get your knees met also. But if you're not speaking them and you're just worried about meeting their needs so that you can feel good about yourself and have them feel good about you. Guess what happens? You will stay in that cycle and one day you'll be frustrated and you'll be in tears and I've seen that too and you're thinking, wow, I gave all of this, I give all of me in an intimate way, and I don't get any of those needs met in return, and it's simply because you're not asking for them.

Dr Donna:

And a big mistake that people make in relationships is that they think that their partners, that everyone, speaks the same universal language about love and relationships and communication and there should be assumptions and you know, if the person loves you, they will know what you need, and that's not true. You have to speak it. Part of being in a relationship is clear communication and if you're an overgiver, sometimes you don't clearly communicate because you don't know if you should speak up. You don't want to rock the boat, you don't want to be disappointed in yourself, you don't want anybody to be disappointed in you. That's part of the trauma response of being an overgiver. So you say nothing and what ends up happening is that you just feel dissatisfied and you can leave that relationship and you go to another one and the cycle will repeat and it will keep on repeating and it may even get worse, because the universe is trying to get your attention. One thing that overgivers do not understand is that the universe is trying to speak to you and say you must speak what you need, and in order to do that, you have to heal the parts of yourself that makes you an overgiver, so that communication is easier. You have better boundaries, you have expectations and you don't feel selfish or uncomfortable having them.

Dr Donna:

So one big way that overgivers give in relationships is giving away too much intimacy and getting very little in return. Not getting their own satisfaction, but worrying about satisfying their partner. Another way that overgivers give too much is that they carry the relationship in many ways, not just intimately. They're carrying the bills, whether it's a woman or, you know, a man. A lot of times I'm finding that even women are carrying the bills, even when the man works, and they do it because it's nurturing. I will take care of him and I don't want to ask him for anything. So I would just do the bills and you're hoping that one day he just volunteers and pays the bills. But that's not going to happen. You're gonna have to speak up with that too, and a lot of times in In relationships in general, for people, whether they're overgiver or not, they're so scared to speak up because they're scared of losing the person.

Dr Donna:

So there's abandonment issues. That comes into play and with overgivers, yes, there could be a banishment issues along with over giving, and there usually is a fear of losing the person If you put your needs first and then you're disappointed in yourself. So overgivers do Carry the relationship. They do most of the chores. They'll work a job, just like their partner, and they come home, they take care of the kids, they do the cooking, the cleaning and never ask their partner to do anything. And they're tired and they're running ragged and they're taking care of everything. They're doing all the laundry, and laundry for one person is a lot, and just think for two people or more in the household it's an awful lot of work and the Overgiver will not say anything. They go. I don't want anybody mad or upset, I just can't handle that stress and so I just do it.

Dr Donna:

And so the overgiver is lacking in sleep, they're lacking in support, they're not taking care of their health, they're not taking care of themselves. There's no self-care because they're doing everything and not speaking up and they're hoping one day the partner will just get it. But why should they? If you're doing everything, you never say there's a problem. They just go. This is how you want to love them. So they let you love them very few you know whether it sounds crazy or not are going to say hey, you're doing everything, I'm just going to take it over for today. Who wants to do housework? Who wants to do laundry? Who wants to fold clothes and cook and clean? And you know, even people are tired of taking care of the kids. If you're willing to do it and you're not saying anything, don't be surprised if your partner never speaks up.

Dr Donna:

So the overgiver is giving away too much intimacy, not receiving enough. They're carrying the household and sometimes they're carrying the bills and overall they're carrying the emotions. They're holding their emotions in and they're taking care of everybody else's emotions in their life and they're definitely taking care of their partners emotions and babysitting those emotions and coddling those emotions and Putting theirs to the side. Overgivers give away so much and so many ways to where they're usually drained to plead it. They can get depressed. Overgivers can end up in a depression, wind up needing medication or therapy or just kind of you know, walk through life as a emotional zombie and Feeling sad like no one cares. But the truth is is is it that no one cares? Or you didn't tell them that you need care? See, it really comes down to.

Dr Donna:

The overgiver has to step back and say look at my patterns, what am I doing to myself? Why am I treating myself this way? And start saying I need to speak up and use my voice? And if you can't speak up and use your voice, ask yourself why. What is the trauma behind the fear of speaking up? Is it fear of rejection, abandonment, being put down? What are the triggers? Are you going to be disappointing yourself because you just didn't carry it all? Because overgivers like to do it all? Overgivers are fixers, helpers, they sacrifice or to scapegoat. They're all these different things and Everyone around them gets taken care of and the overgiver doesn't.

Dr Donna:

So the overgiver struggles with using their voice and Asking to receive. They're just hoping that it happens on their own, that they will be seen. But when you're an overgiver, you really don't let people see you. You're kind of hiding behind. I need to be this great person so that I, like myself and other people will like me. So overgivers can also be people-pleasers very much so, and Usually there's some people pleasing going on with overgiving and it could be a emotional double whammy of Wanting the approval of others and the approval of yourself, because overgivers are hard on themselves and have high expectations of Themself, and when they don't meet their own expectations they're frustrated and they start feeling like, oh, I'm not worthy of something good happening until I meet my own approval.

Dr Donna:

So overgiving has a little bit of perfection, perfection going on, and that perfection carries in everything. And it carries in relationships, definitely. And yes, the overgiver is trying to be perfect to their partner in the relationship and so they just do everything so that the partner sees them as perfect. And if the partner sees it, they go, hey, I must be perfect. And perfection is a trauma response, and when a person wants to be perfect is because they feel like that's the only way that they're worthy of love or admiration from their self or other people.

Dr Donna:

So if you're overgiving in your relationships, ask yourself why. But first write down the ways that you feel like you're giving too much to your partner and how little you're receiving in return. Write that down and ask yourself what am I going to do about this? How am I going to start healing the roots of this problem? How am I going to start making changes so that I can get my needs met? And a lot of times it requires some type of healing, some type of therapy, coaching, counseling, energy work, courses. I offer courses, but I it means really going inward and doing the work to know why are you having these patterns? The patterns won't stop from outside of you. They're only going to stop from the inner work that you do. So you have to ask yourself what inner work are you going to do to change this? When you make that decision, then you can start peeling off the layers.

Dr Donna:

And, yes, first your partner is going to be shocked when you speak up and they're going to think, whoa, I thought you were happy all this time. You're not happy and it's like you have to own it and say, look, I just didn't want to speak up because I didn't want to rock the boat, but now I'm at a point where I could use my voice and I need you to hear me. And when you start asking for what you want, it takes a moment. The energy has to shift, because now you're asking for something different from the universe, instead of just pouring into everybody and your partner and the universe you're asking to receive. It takes a moment and it takes a commitment to yourself to do the work. Now, when you decide to do the work, it won't be easy at first. It's going to bring up triggers. It's going to bring up pain. It's going to bring up hurt, embarrassment, trauma. It's going to bring up abandonment. It's going to bring up all sorts of stuff. Trust me, I know I had to do the work and I've done the work with people and my clients.

Dr Donna:

So what I would say to you is if you want anything to change this year and today is January 1, 2024, a lot of people are going to make New Year's resolutions and say New Year, new me. It starts with the inner work of understanding who you are and why the things you do you do no judgment. This is a no judgment zone. We don't judge. We just help ourselves to heal. What is the phrase? When you know better, you do better. So don't even look at what you should have done differently in the past. Just start now with committing to make change and doing the work that requires it. So I'm going to leave it at that with this topic, but remember there's three ways that people over give in their romantic relationships intimately, financially and carrying the household and carrying all the emotions. So thank you for listening to this podcast and have a great day.