"Please remember to put your own oxygen mask on before helping others"

Imagine you're on an airplane. You are listening to the flight attendants explain that there might be a time when oxygen is limited and masks will drop down. At the end of the demonstration, they will always state "Please remember to put your own oxygen mask on before helping others." That makes sense, right? While you might have a pull to help with your child, parent, partner, friend, seat-mate, it is critical that you put your own mask on first. Why is that? Because if you don't, YOU WILL PASS OUT.

I use this analogy a lot in my therapy sessions for people who can be "too selfless" -- I will get into what that means in a moment -- as a way to remind my clients that being selfless in certain situations or far too often can actually lead to detrimental outcomes. For example, if you have passed out from lack of oxygen, you are unconscious and I'd imagine the person you had wanted to help is pretty freaked out. Helping them right after you have helped yourself is a way more effective way to keep everyone safe.

Selflessness is our culture has been portrayed in many different ways. In pop culture, it can be heroes who sacrifice themselves, loved ones who sacrifice themselves, etc. In news media, it can be people who are consistently putting other people's needs before their own. All of this is great, but it crosses a line when people's automatic response is selflessness without looking at or thinking about the actual situation. It is as if one's own needs are totally skipped over - the response is to follow the other person's needs/wants without consideration of your own. We are left with the "too selfless" phrase from above.

Selflessness can be a piece of survival. For example, with parenting, you need to set aside some of your own needs in order to keep your baby alive. However, you do not need to set aside ALL of your needs. This is a common misconception. "My former life is over now that I have had kids" or "I could never do that anymore" -- while your life may have changed, it does not mean it's over. It is critical to maintain relationships, hobbies/interests, and other elements of your identity while being a parent. As I mentioned in a previous post, I work predominantly with young adults. I am regularly seeing a lot of young adults who are struggling to find adult relationships with their parents because many of their parents "gave up" lives, careers, friends, etc to become a totally "selfless" parent. Now that their adult child can survive on their own, it is very hard for them to remember other elements of their lives. This is a horrible process for them that can lead to crises of identity, but it also is difficult for the adult children too. Many of my clients feel that their parents pressure them to hold all of their lives' meaning, thus falling into previous patterns. One example from this week was an adult child (not my client, but related to them) was saying that they were uncomfortable where they were living and wanted to go and stay with their parents. The mother reported that she would risk getting COVID-19 and even said "I would happily get it and die" to make her adult child more comfortable. Now ask yourself, is that an equatable exchange? While maybe there aren't as extreme examples prevalent in your life or in your loved ones' lives, it can be a relatable concept.

*Now I want to take a moment to mention a very critical piece of this. Many of my clients are in their early/mid 20s which would place their parents in the generations of late Baby Boomers and early Gen-Xers. I know that many opportunities, especially for women, were out of the control of many of these parents - although I do believe there likely was some wiggle room that was not taken (and reinforced by culture to not take it as well) at the time.*

I also see this selflessness in romantic relationships and friendships. While some of it is good - you will have to compromise to watch movies or listen to music that your partner/friend likes that perhaps you hate - there is a slippery slope. You should note: Are they also doing those same things for you and with the same frequency? Is the "putting them first" coming up more and more frequently? As stated previously, in our culture sometimes we can get the message that selflessness=love ("I would die for ____"), but we want to be careful at when/how frequently these acts are coming into play. Are you noticing that you are losing your own interests, friends, patterns, etc for a new relationship? Are you still able to put on your own oxygen mask first?

Another slippery slope in regard to selflessness is also related to our emotional wellbeing. When we are constantly putting our own needs/wants on the back burner, we can entirely stop emoting about them. For example, if you feel that someone needs your support more than you do, you might say "I can't feel this now" or "I shouldn't feel this way because they are struggling more than I am" -- this will then, in turn, mean that you are turning off some of these feelings. When we turn these feelings off enough times, they will start automatically shutting off (or not starting at all) without us putting in the work to do it. For example, I have a client whose partner is struggling with alcohol addiction. She often says, "I'm okay. I am more worried about him." -- and while you want to respect that yes, he may need more outward support than she does right now, that doesn't mean that she needs NO support. There has to be a balance. If she were to hold space for her own emotions, she might be able to notice that there are some days that she might need to bring in reinforcements to help because it is too hard for her alone, or she might be able to note that she does have enough oxygen to help that day. We want to be noting these things before we reach the point of no oxygen.

The "no oxygen" point looks different for each individual. Some people have outbursts of anger; some people have outbursts of "well look at all I have done" when things don't go their way; some people feel an emotional break down; some people go totally numb; some people isolate; and then some people start to develop depressive thinking such as, "I am not good enough" or "I do not deserve ____" because they are so used to not having their needs met (even if they were contributing to that outcome). It's never too late to change the game! Putting yourself first when you need to is not being selfish.

One last important thing to note is how we want to start incorporating this into our daily lives so that it is a regular thing. We do not want this to come out as an in-the-moment reaction to feeling slighted. Sometimes if we have developed selfless patterns, people can start expecting that we will continue to do those things. What we want to do is preemptively start to discuss how we can change up those things so that we aren't throwing our hands up in the air in frustration if we have decided to not do the expected, selfless act. If you set aside time to devote to making choices for yourself [see below for some suggestions], you will eventually find it easier to do. You will also start to see that there are likely many times when you haven't had to be selfless but you have done so because of the pattern or expectations you have created for yourself.

Tips for making choices - breaking out of the "overly flexible" or "too selfless" mentality [if you are really uncomfortable with this, it can help to have a conversation with your partner/parent/friend and mention that you are going to to try to do this and you would like their support]

1. Decide that for a whole month with your partner/friend/family, you will be the one to decide which restaurant/take out place to go to or order from.

2. Every other night for week, you will decide what show/movie to watch or activity to do.

3. Ask your partner/parent/friend/roommate to do something for you that is not required of them - for example, ask them to rub your back, make you a snack, listen to a song - WITHOUT the expectation that you will immediately do something in return.

*For many "too selfless" people, these items are incredibly hard. You might say, "well, I don't actually care" -- that is likely due to not having a voice or a choice so many times (regardless of how that came to be), that you have lost your opinion. We want to get it back! Even if it feels silly or that you don't actually care - just choose these things!

And finally, know that I see you. It is incredibly hard. I will be speaking more in a later blog about attachment and how that plays into selflessness. We often learn to be selfless due to survival, reinforcement, or reaction in childhood/late adolescence. For some of us, we have to work to relearn how to put ourselves first (even just some of the time), and that can be difficult. Just starting the work is the important part. And remember, most of the time, people love you for far more things than your selflessness - and more often than not, they want you to treat yourself the way that you treat them!