The Strong Woman’s Hidden Breaking Point And Why No One Sees It

Kathleen Flanagan (00:02)
You're the one holding everything together, but inside you're the one falling apart. You're the strong one, the one everyone depends on, the one who figures it out, the one who doesn't get to have a bad day. And you've gotten really good at it. So good no one sees what it's costing you because behind closed doors you're tired. Not just a need sleep, tired.

So tired. And you're doing everything right, but something still feels off and you don't even have the words for it. So you keep going. You keep pushing. You keep telling yourself it's fine because slowing down that doesn't feel safe. And I started noticing something. So many women are living like this, holding it all together on the outside while quietly unraveling on the inside.

And it made me realize we need to have a space where you don't have to do that anymore. So I created a community on school.com forward slash I am the light sanctuary forward slash about. It's a place where you can drop the mask, where you don't have to perform, where you can finally just be held for a change. If that's something your heart has been craving, come join us. Now let's talk about what's really going on here.

Hello everyone and welcome to the journey of an awakening spirit. I am Kathleen Flanagan, your host. You're the one everyone calls, the one who figures it out, the one who doesn't fall apart. But lately, something feels off. You're not broken, you're not failing, you're just empty and you don't even know why.

So what's happening is you feel emotionally exhausted, but you keep pushing through it because you figure that's what you do. That's how you learned how to survive. That's how you learned how to do what you're doing. You look successful on the outside, but you're completely disconnected on the inside. Lived my entire life wondering why the inside and outside were so far apart. Didn't understand that until recently. And then you can't slow down without exam-

anxiety creeping in. Lived that one my whole life too. That's why I'm still going through some interesting things which we will talk about in a little bit. And you feel alone even when you're surrounded by people, whole life. And you wonder quietly, why doesn't any of this feel like enough? How many times have I said that to myself? This isn't burnout. This is just a misalignment.

And burnout says that you've done too much, where misalignment says you've been living disconnected from yourself. So I want to talk a little bit about something that happened this week that I am still coming out on the other side.

I think everything's going fine. I got good headspace up here. My heart's feeling good. I'm feeling good on the inside. I wake up about 630 Monday morning, last Monday morning to a broken water heater. Now, many of you may know that three years ago, we had a flood in my basement and we just got the flood and all of that stuff dealt with this probably within the last six months. Probably three.

And I wake up to this and we're flooded again. it was both Sal and I, there was a trauma reaction that both of us had. I understood it. I could feel it. But you know, it was like, I went over here to call plumbers to find out what I needed to do. What's this going to cost me? And Sal went into starting to clean up the water because we had to get that done too. And it was like, we both just did what we knew that we could do to take control.

of a situation. By taking control of that situation was good. The thing was, is we didn't have hot water for a day because the plumber couldn't get here until the next day. And he said he would be here first thing in the morning, which whatever that meant, and they arrived at 11, which it was fine. But see, I'm the one with no hot water. I'm the one that has a show to do. And I'm and I finally went off the deep end. I mean, I was like,

was so out of control at that moment with this trauma coming up that it was like, all I want to do is wash my hair because I felt like I had no control. And sometimes when we are misaligned, we may not understand what's happening, but we are we're handling it to the best of our ability. Trauma was running the show. It took I'm just now getting back into my body. Sal and I bounced off the walls for the whole week.

We talked about it because he wasn't helping support me through the trauma. The plumbers were doing their best to help, but they were like, what's going on with her? Because they had never seen me like that. And I realized with all the work that I had been doing on myself, it didn't matter if there was trauma or not. The whole point was, is that I couldn't put on a mask and get through it. I was very reactatory.

and I was not a happy camper. I was coping. I had meetings to go to. I had a podcast to do for somebody. I was a guest and I put all of it aside to be very present in the moment. But I realized that when I went on to another show or event, I got into that room and I was like the deer in the headlights. I mean, it was like, can't cope. And I realized at that moment, now it's been a week.

doing a lot of different things, getting backgrounded, understanding that this trauma came from places that are beyond what I even knew was there within my body. So it was a full trauma release. But I wasn't, I didn't beat myself up for it. I was doing everything I possibly could. Sal was leaving town yesterday and we had to just keep going and deal with that of like, what do I need to do? What if this happens? You know, we're still getting parts in.

for the water heater, which is in, I just can't cope yet to talk to the plumber yet, and I will, but it's, you know, I need to be ready because I went tankless. Now I love tankless, but you know, it's like I look at it and go, have no idea. So that's pretty much it. But it wasn't, I didn't beat myself up for where I am because I'm okay with where I am. I understood what happened and I dealt with it. And that's what a lot of times

when you're at a breaking point, it's like nobody sees when you're at a breaking point. And because I have worked so hard to be who I am in the moment all the time, I let that out. Now, I didn't necessarily like it, but I decided that it was better so that way people understood I'm having an issue, I'm struggling.

I'm doing my best and I stayed away from the plumbers. I stayed upstairs the whole time. I was like, I couldn't go down there. Cause when I went down there, there's parts everywhere. There's all this. It's like, I can't talk to anybody. could, I had nothing to give. I was at my capacity and I didn't fully understand why I was at that capacity, but that's where I was.

And so I kept moving in that direction of it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. But the one thing that was cool is because I had to borrow money for this because I didn't have the money to do this emergency thing at this point. So I called my business partner, I asked him for the money.

He gave it to me, we went out, we had lunch, because I knew Sal had to get out of the house. I had to get out of the house on Monday. We just had to get away from everything for a little bit. And the fun part that this was so fun and so cool for me was we went to a diner. I got some, I got the food that I wanted that just made me feel really good on the inside. I mean, I was doing everything to soothe myself to the best of my ability. And then all of a sudden the Supremes come on and it's baby love.

and I'm in the restaurant and my hips are going and my shoulders are going and I am singing in the restaurant to Sal about how I need him. And it was so funny because I also felt at that moment something switched. Like I got out of the trauma for a brief moment of time. And later that day or the next day, I realized that music, when I was a child, is what saved my life.

because it was a sign that there's hope. There's gotta be something better than what my life was at that time. And at that moment, the Supremes coming on and singing, and I'm singing Baby Love, I felt like it's gonna be okay. It was my way of being okay again. And so when things come up like that, where you feel like you're out of control, what was it that made you happy back in the day? And for me, back in the day, it was music.

I mean, this restaurant played all the songs from like eight to 14, when the most trauma of my life happened during that period. And it was the music that kept me going.

I stayed in alignment to the best of my ability. I realized that I need to have more fun. I realized that fun was beaten out of me because my mother actually did beat me when I was playing a game was one time and I figured I'm not allowed to have fun. And so what did I do? I went into dance because I had to have an outlet. What were the outlets that you have? What did you do when you were overwhelmed as a child?

as a young adult, as an adult.

You have something that can bring you back if you stay conscious and not get wrapped up into the emotion of what you're feeling. It's not, I didn't deny the emotion. I was very present with it, but I knew it was not a place I wanted to stay. I knew I had to release it. And I understood that this trauma was so deep within my body that it was like I felt like I was releasing trauma for the planet at the same time because I was so thrown off a kilter. I couldn't do anything.

There was, I got nothing done and I thought, good Friday, I'm going to go on a job and it'll ground me. It didn't. I did a book signing on Sunday. I thought that would ground me. It didn't. And yesterday I was weepy. My eyes ran, my nose ran, you know, just post nasal drip kind of thing. And I'm thinking, I'm crying. I am really weeping. And I think it was partly because Sal was gone, partly because I was tired and partly because I realized that there's a big change coming for me.

And I realized that the reason I'm alone right now for a month is for me. And I accepted it. And I think when I finally accepted it and stopped resisting, because we resist a lot of times when things are happening. Like, you know, I didn't put my head in the sand on the hot water heater this time, like I did on the flood in the crawl space. I didn't put my head in the sand. I just dealt with it. I didn't drink a bottle of alcohol either. That was how I used to cope and just get my

nervous system smoothed out. I just was with it and I just did nice things. I was kind to myself because a lot of times we're not kind to ourselves especially for the high achieving woman who's in control of everything and something like that happens and you're out of control and you go crazy and it was okay to let somebody else do it. mean Sal knew that I wasn't going to clean up the water

but I also knew he wasn't gonna go find a plumber either. So I had to do the mechanical side of that while he was doing the other part, because both were needed, and at least we were both capable of doing that for each other to where we could get this done as soon as we possibly could. Then the next part was on Tuesday morning, we go down there and we're still flooding because we found out from the plumber.

that calcium builds up in a hot water tank and it holds water and when it's gone, there's more water that comes out. And it was like, I mean, it would just set us over even further. And it's not good when that happens, but it's what happened.

Because right now, what am I feeling that I've been trying not to feel? Well, sometimes we don't know what we're not feeling. I realized this was trauma because I could feel the nervous system because I've gotten very present about my body. This detox has done amazing things to understand what my body's going through. And every cell, I swear to God, was vibrating inside of me from this. And it was the strangest things coming up of like, whoa, how long have you been there?

because there were memories that I didn't even recognize or I had totally forgotten or thought were dealt with and interesting things were coming up because of it. So I had to, I let it come up and I let it go. I didn't hold onto it. I didn't analyze it because a lot of times when we're out of control, that's what we want to do. And I realized that this was a huge release. And then when I talked to the doctor this morning,

because it was my final call on the detox of what's going on. And we realized that this detox, this thing that happened on Monday did havoc on my body. Literally did havoc. Where everything is coming out all at once. I mean, the parasites are coming out all over my face, on my scalp. I mean, it didn't matter. Wherever it was, these bugs were coming out.

And it was good, but I'm also still holding on and resisting because we discovered that part of what's happening is my body is not wanting to release yet. And I give my body permission to release. I talk to it about releasing and saying, it's okay and you're safe. But see, the body has its own consciousness. And as long as the body has this consciousness, you've got to let it do what it needs to do. It's never in my time and I guarantee you it's never in spirit's time. So that's what I'm doing. So right now,

I'm in a very quiet place. I'm having fun, even though people think I'm not having fun, but I made this amazing dinner. I tried a new recipe last night. I had this and it was like, my God, I have to make this for Sal and not tell him what it is because it was so good. And I told this to a friend of mine and we just laughed, but that's the thing is that.

Even though I felt out of sorts yesterday and I'm all weepy and I'm crying and I look terrible and all of this and I'm on camera and I'm talking to people and I don't care. I'm real. But I still had fun. I did something nice for me. I made myself a nice meal because a lot of times we get hooked into look, I have to feed the family. Well, but when you're alone, what do you do? I know women's like, well, if I'm alone in the house, I'm just going to have popcorn. And you're like, what?

You don't even think you're worthy to eat something. I mean, you're not even the one who cooks in your house. It's your husband who cooks. So it's one of those things of just realizing, of trying to find the things that make me feel good. You know, creating my new website layout and I got all excited. That was fun because I feel like there's like I'm more in alignment with where, who I am and what it's going to say and what it's going to look like. It's fun. I mean, there are things that I'm doing.

that may not be fun for someone else because they think it's work, but for me it's not because I'm working on trying to bring my creativity back. I was at the book signing and my editor was there and she asked me, how would you describe your books? And I just was like, what? You're the one who came up with the categories and all of this. I'm kind of confused here. And I just said, metaphysical new age. But see how I talk about my books is not metaphysical new age, even though it is, it's not.

And it's just the way I talk about it. And I started to pay attention of that I'm shifting again, differently. I'm going higher up on the evolutionary rung of the spirituality because we spiral up. And yesterday I was like, couldn't see, like my glasses were wrong. And I realized that every time that I'm spiraling up, I can't see, I have issues, I get really tired.

And I accepted that. And so when I went to bed last night, I woke up really refreshed. Like I finished processing whatever I needed to process. And that's what I did. I mean, I didn't even know what I was going to talk about on the show. And I forced myself to do it yesterday. And I feel really good about what is going on because see, even though I'm still carrying trauma in my body, I may not know it. may not run my life. But what I'm my goal is

to release the trauma. And I know I have the capability of creating some sound, vibrational sound music to do this. I know that. I don't know what that is yet. I'm asking for the guidance because I don't want to carry it. I want the body to find a way that it's okay to release and not necessarily doing tapping and other somatic stuff. things I wanted to be gone once and for all. And if it works to be gone once and

For all for me, it can work for everyone else. And that's the goal of realizing that this trauma is still very debilitating and I didn't even know it was there. So a lot of times we don't know what's dragging us down until we stop or we have an event in our life that causes us to see things and to look at things. And that's the gift of life. As much as it may suck to be you at times, that's the gift.

because I know that I can get on the other side of it. I have the tools to get on the other side and by golly, I will get on the other side. And even though I may have been where I was yesterday, it's like life is still good because it was still good. It doesn't change. It's just your attitude about it. So I have a good attitude about it. And you know, the ebb and flow, I mean, it's just a cycle we go through. And I know I have to be really, really close to where I want to be.

or I wouldn't be having all this stuff going on.

So if this is where you are, the real question becomes, how do you get here without even noticing it? And sometimes we don't notice what's going on. Like I said, I didn't know I had this trauma until I had this water heater.

because...

We don't wake up one day and we abandon ourselves. It's what happens as as children and how we cope with it. We learned how to survive. And that's what it was. It was a survival mechanism that came up that I immediately went into, okay, I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to do this. That was my way of taking control. It was my way of not feeling like I didn't know how to handle my life.

because I decided early on that I was gonna be the strong one. I had two parents, my parents were worthless in my opinion, so I had to be the strong one. I had to take care of the family because they were not taking care of us at all. I learned that love was pain. I learned that love was about responsibility, trying to be perfect. Not that I ever got any...

recognition or accolades in my family. If anything, they shot me down all the time. But the one thing I did know, love was pain. So I didn't want to have love in my life because pain, it hurt. So I didn't want to have that. So I suppressed that again to stay in control. I put my arms up to keep people away from me. I let my anger and rage be my protector. So if I didn't want you around me, I would let you know that I didn't want you by anger and rage because most people can't even handle it.

And it's just an emotion. You just put an attitude on it. You put a judgment on it. I didn't have a judgment on it, but I knew it was a way to protect myself and it's what saved my life until I was ready to be where I am today. I didn't judge it and I understood what my anger was doing for me.

And then part of me lost my intuition and it wasn't so much that I lost it as I didn't want it because I didn't understand that most people didn't know what I was going through. Most people didn't understand it and I just wanted to get rid of it because nobody else could do what I did and it really freaked me out. So I was such a freak in my own mind that I didn't want that. So I kind of tried to sever it. Now who I am?

really hard to do because the minute spirits stepped back many years ago, I was so depressed because I was used to the constant sound and talking in my head and they left because they needed me to stand on my own two feet when they came back, I was happy again. So it made me look at where I really was. But see, I didn't have any understanding about me yet. I didn't understand the trauma. I didn't understand the abuse. I didn't have it because I buried it and it wasn't ready to come to the surface.

We were trying to get me back into my intuition first. And that's what we did.

And the life that you built didn't come from alignment. It came from adaptation. And I vouch for that. I totally vouch for that. Because I always question why is the outside of me and the inside of me so different from each other? Because I wasn't in alignment and I had no idea. And after 20 years of an adult going, I still don't know why I'm not in alignment. It's what it was.

So I didn't trust slowing down because everything that I built depended on me holding it together. So as I held everything together and I had to get my plate bigger, because it was a joke around me, well, if you got too much on your plate, get a bigger plate. Well, that's funny, but it's not funny because I could barely hold on to what I was doing and yet I did it because I was the strong one.

I didn't rest, I couldn't take naps, I didn't like relaxing because it made me crazy because that meant I had to sit with me and I wasn't really 100 % comfortable with me. Now I liked myself and I liked this, but see there was that gnawing thing that went on underneath that I didn't like and I didn't know what it was, I just thought there was some big old nasty monster down there and I didn't want it. I didn't want it to come up, I didn't want to face it because it scared the hell out of me.

Because what I noticed is that the silence brings up the emotions that I'm avoiding. And that's why I chose to sit in the trauma and listen to what it wanted to tell me. Because behind the trauma, there is the message. Behind anything we do, there's the message. But we have to sit in the silence to it forward. Excuse me.

And you're not stuck. You're not stuck because you're not broken. And you're stuck because the version of you that built this life is still trying to protect you.

So let's do a body awareness reset. So go ahead and close your eyes if you feel safe.

Take in a deep breath and exhale.

Again, take in a breath.

and exhale.

And notice where the tension is in your body. Is it in your chest, your stomach?

your shoulders. Just notice where you're holding your tension.

and ask, what am I holding right now that isn't mine to carry?

And if you feel ready, then just let it go.

So if the life that you built came from survival, what would it look like to rebuild from alignment?

You don't need to burn your life down to feel better. Excuse me. You just need to come back to yourself one small step at a time.

Stop overriding what you feel.

start listening to your inner voice.

Create safety in your body before making big changes.

and allow space instead of forcing solutions.

What I noticed when I was when I had the crawl space, I didn't know how to handle it. So I just let it go. And I just asked until I got a message of how to handle the flood in my crawl space. That was the first time that I felt like I was truly in control. I didn't want to fix it right away. I didn't have to fix it right away. I needed to fix it right away, but I didn't care. I needed to feel safe. I needed to feel.

protected, I needed to feel all these things, so I did. Because what I also realized at that point, alignment doesn't happen by doing more. It happens by finally being honest with myself. And what I needed to do, and even though I buried my head in the sand, I still dealt with the problem. I may have been grumpy about it, but I still dealt with the problem.

and it was a little bit is what I could handle at the time is what I did and that was good enough. It didn't matter if Sal liked me or not about it, I didn't care. I had to do what was right for me and that was what was right for me and that's how I handled it.

So let's do a return to self visualization in the last couple of minutes. So imagine a version of you that feels calm, safe and whole.

She's not performing. She's not proving. She just is.

and ask, what does she know that I've forgotten?

Pick one moment today where you paused instead of pushed. That's where your alignment begins.

The strongest woman isn't the one who holds it all together. She's the one who finally lets herself feel and chooses differently.

Download the free light activation guide at KathleenMFlanagan.com and start reconnecting with yourself in a way that feels safe, gentle, and real. And if you've been holding everything together, maybe it's time to let something hold you. I do have the community at school.com forward slash I am the light sanctuary forward slash about that works with women.

and a place that you can just feel safe. You can talk about what needs to be talked about without judgment, without repercussions, without anything. It's a very safe place to be and there's lots of tools to help you start moving back into that new version of you that you want to be, that you are desperately seeking to be. And there's, working on bringing in a lot more fun. So this becomes a fun community, even though it's a very heavy.

community of what we go through and what we feel. But this is where you got to start somewhere and this is the place to start. I appreciate your time today. appreciate you taking, listening to the show. And if you know of anyone who this might help, feel free to give them the link. And if you want to know when the next show is, feel free to like and subscribe and you will be notified of when the next show comes up. And until next week.

next Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. I wish you all a fabulous week.