I NEVER identified as a successful person or even an ambitious person. Mainly because I grew up in a home with a super critical father, where nothing I did was ever good enough. He always raised the bar and wanted more and more achievement. He never told me I was good at anything even though I tried constantly to prove my worth to him. To get a little crumb of his love.
My dad was a teacher and had many regrets about his own life and lack of achievement. So he put extreme pressure on his children to make up for that. We weren’t allowed to play at age 5 instead we were forced to study.
I was years ahead of school when I started. I naturally enjoying learning and reading but being forced to work instead of play created some unhealthy patterns with in me. Unconsciously, I began to see that my dad’s explosive temper was a little calmer when I achieved something. I would even get love from him like hugs and cuddles.
His extreme need for perfection in his children wasn’t just about my education either. It extended to my body too. I started to get little comments from him and family members from a young age when my body began to change.
As an empathic sensitive child it stung so much when people I loved commented on my appearance. Shaming me for my body changing. It felt so unsafe so at the age of 11 as I had started puberty and periods I began to diet. And everyone let me .
In fact they celebrated me and gave me crumbs of love when I lost weight. I would work out and exercise to change my body to try an avoid the mean comments. My days as an early teen were obsessive about three things school achievement, having the perfect body and chasing love from family members, friendships and it even started to stretch to any boys that would give me some love.
I wish I could say that this constant need to fix and improve myself to get love from others ended in childhood but it followed me well into my forties! Even after years of therapy , inner healing and even as I became a coach helping others with their healing journeys.
Prior to getting therapy this NEED to chase for approval was showing up in a couple of ways. I was chasing romantic love from unavailable men that would treat me very well. I shared my story in this blog and also had a disordered eating pattern. This meant that I would go through periods where I would become obsessed with losing weight and following a diet to reach a goal. I would reach the goal and still feel not good enough or not worthy so I would put weight on again often more than before. The extreme self-shame would set in and I would emotionally eat to soothe.
I was normally trying to lose weight to gain someone else’s approval. A man mainly or family as a function was approaching. Never for myself. When I hit a rock bottom I began to do inner child work , go to therapy for complex PTSD trauma from my relationship with my dad and work with coaches on my relationship with men.
I managed to heal this and find true love. Soon enough people start to ask me how I changed from an extreme pattern and before I knew it I was recording my podcast Heart’s Happiness to teach people and then I created a course and soon enough it became my full time job.
Many unconscious wounds were still under the surface and now I had to earn money from being me which I had never felt safe to so I yet again chased outside validation but it became more dangerous…
It got so extreme that when I had miscarriage I couldn’t actually stop myself overworking as I was trying to chase money to feel safe and secure. Or I was trying to sign clients to feel good enough. I started to realise the patterns of people pleasing , being overly responsible for other people and this chasing of validation was actually making me ill.
I had a number of health issues that were serious because of the ways I would chase external goals at all costs and betray my own needs. Here are some of the ways this was showing up:
1. Chasing money to feel safe and secure
Running a business is unpredictable journey. My nervous system would get sooo overwhelmed with fear because of this. I was either in front of the TV emotionally eating because I was in a freeze response or working so much doing all the things that business pros tell you to do to reach your goals. This was my version of a fight response. Pushing myself and nothing I did was good enough. Even when I earnt money this feeling would never go away so I would push myself even more. This caused extreme burnout and even led to a miscarriage.
The lack of safety and security reminded me of the feeling from childhood and how unsafe I felt with my dad. Money felt the same which is why I chased it to try and feel safe with it. I have seen this pattern with so many clients who have become entrepreneurs too especially those that had complex ptsd / relational trauma as children.
2. Rejection and shame loop
The world was mirroring me back my sense of failure and rejection I had felt as a child. I would send out an email or post on social media for my business but the lack of engagement or sign ups would trigger this deep shame of not being good enough and of failing. Just as I had as a child.
I would do more and more. Learn more about what to do in business. Do more self development. Give more to clients and create even more free things to prove my worth.
Everyone is on their own journey but I felt like it was my responsibility to help everyone to heal and if I wasn’t able to persuade them to do this I felt shame and blame as a child. The really sad thing about this is that I would miss meals, not hydrate and not take care of myself physically and emotionally because I felt like I had to do more, which added further to my illnesses as my body was clearing saying no as Gabor Mate shares in his book ‘When the body says no’.
Even my miscarriage led to this same loop of feeling like failure so I would self medicate with the overworking and the emotional eating from childhood.
3. The addiction to self-improvement
Pattern in my family had been addiction. Alcohol mainly but on my mum’s side it was overworking and codependency (need to please others). In 2015 I began to find self help world. Spirituality, healing and all the things and it was amazing to find things that could ‘fix’ me. But like anything when we do it in it's extreme it can become toxic. For me this constant need to fix and improve myself meant I was just not enjoying the present moment. Because I just didn’t feel safe in it. I was married to the man of my dreams LITERALLY. I manifested exactly what I had wrote in a dream journal but that pain of not being enough was still within me. Unconsciously I was chasing that fix!
4. Self-betrayal
This was the hardest pattern to face. The goals to achieve success to gain approval from others meant I would literally ignore my own needs. Whether they were emotional like giving myself space to grief following my loss or physical not overworking and nourished my body with food and water. My clients needs were more important than my own. I would over give in my client relationships and be overly responsible for their transformations. Neglecting the inner child within me again and again just like she was as a child. Not feeling safe to slow down, so I could heal.
5. Self-harm
After my miscarriage I had many blood tests and worked with various professionals that told me the lifestyle I needed in order to follow my dream of being a mother. But in all honesty I was in the constant loop of eating and drinking things that I knew were bad for me. The reason it just didn’t feel safe to put myself first because of the unconscious patterns that still lived with in me.
So at the beginning of 2024, I FINALLY slowed down and started to notice the patterns that were ruining my health, slowly killing me and stopping me from enjoying my life now. Not always chasing some goal or some external achievement.
Here are some tools I began to embed:
Somatic practices
A lot of my sabotaging behaviours were due to a feeling of unsafety. So I used somatic tools like breath work, orientation to my environment, self touch and other body based techniques. To notice that in this present moment I am actually safe. I also invested in somatic practitioners to support me to slow down and feel safe so I could slow down the overworking as it felt so scary do that.
Healed my relationship with money
I loved the book by Kate Northup - Money Love Story to support me at looking at the relationship with money and our nervous system. I learnt to feel safe with or without money and this calmed down my nervous system survival behaviours. Ironically this actually made me more money as I was making calmer decisions.
Faced my shadows from past
This was the hardest part I started to OBSERVE my dysfunctional patterns like high functioning anxiety… a book that really helped with this is by Dr. Lalitaa Suglani.
This was so I could disarm the unhealthy behaviours and introduce new ones. I did more inner child healing and used IFS to parent my protective parts of my ego.
The results are that my body is healing from various diseases. I am for the FIRST time in my life feeling safe and secure regardless to the world around me. I feel aligned with my purpose and my work without that need to chase approval. I feel safe in this present moment and finally can try again for a baby. My biggest dream I was deflecting.
I want to remind you that if you also love to help others to not forget the most important thing YOU! It is just not sustainable without you and your health. You are worthy of feeling safe secure, peace and joy right now regardless of the external success or goals. It may not feel safe to put yourself first or put that goal down.
But actually that brings the goal towards you with ease, as you are in alignment. It feels so good to help clients get their Heart’s Happiness lives now with balance and be able to give that to myself as well. The inner child within me needed that and I am sure yours does too.
If my story resonates with you and you’re ready to take the first steps toward deep self-healing, I invite you to join my masterclass, Tend to Your Roots on Wednesday 29th January at 11am. This transformative session is designed to help you reconnect with your inner self, heal old wounds and create a sense of safety and security from within.
This is your opportunity to pause, reflect and begin the journey toward living in alignment with your true self. Find out more here.
Sending lots of love and healing vibes always
Manpreet xxx
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