Are You Sacrificing Too Much?
Jul 16, 2020
As an Empath/HSP, one of your tendencies is to help others. Unfortunately, sometimes the cost of helping others comes at a high price for you.
Maybe you sacrifice your love, time, money, or energy for someone who doesn't appreciate it or squanders it away.
Instead of everyone feeling better, it may seem like the one who gets hurt the most is you.
There are 3 major patterns at play when it comes to sacrificing to help others.
1) Helping others comes naturally.
It's part of who you are, and you may feel a strong urge or desire to do it. This is normal for an Empath/HSP because you have a natural healing ability. However, there's a problem if you prefer only to give rather than receive. When you only give, it won't take very long before you feel tapped out, and resentful that others don't seem to be doing their share. Also, when you block yourself from receiving, it has larger consequences energetically. The message you're sending out to others is that you don't want or need anything. How awful is that? Of course you need stuff! This includes time, love, attention, and even impacts your finances.
Empaths have another reason for preferring to give rather than receive. When you're the giver, this puts you in the "power position" because you have control over how much you give and who receives it. Receiving is perceived as less powerful because you're dependent on the giver for whatever they choose to give you. So, in order to feel stable, safe, and secure, an Empath/HSP will prefer to give rather than receive. In this way, giving may be used as a self-defense mechanism.
2) In order to feel loved and accepted, you need to please others.
You may be familiar with the body's Fight/Flight/Freeze response, but there's a fourth response to trauma called Fawn. This response involves catering to others and people pleasing as a means of survival. Also, depending on your childhood, you may have had to earn affection from your parents through accomplishments, or compete with your siblings for your parents' attention. This pattern lasts beyond childhood and often magnifies to make you feel that if you don't make others happy, or do what they want, then they'll abandon you. In order to avoid rejection and abandonment, you end up sacrificing your own wants and needs. After a while, you feel lost and unhappy.
3) You value others more than yourself.
Ouch! This is a harsh truth bomb. It's unlikely that you'd ever say the words "I don't value myself as much as others" out loud to another person, but your actions may speak otherwise. When you put others' needs consistently above your own, and deny yourself basic things you freely give to others, then you're caught in a major trap! You may not logically think or feel like you don't value yourself. However, your subconscious drives you toward people pleasing to avoid rejections as we've previously discussed. Working on your self-esteem and valuing yourself as worthy beyond the things you do for others is extremely important.
If you would like to release feelings of guilt, abandonment, and rejection while increasing your self-esteem and confidence, then please book a FREE consultation to find out how Emotional Strength Coaching and Emotional Release can help you feel better and allow you to better help others.
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