We also talk about the problem with traditional self-care and how you can honour your needs to strengthen your worth.

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Summer:
This episode of eat the rules is brought to you by you on fire you on fire is the online group coaching program that I run that gives you a step by step way of building up your self worth beyond your appearance. With personalized coaching from me incredible community support and lifetime access to the program so that you can get free from body shame and live life on your own terms. Get details on what’s included and sign up for the next cycle at summer innanen.com forward slash you on fire. I’d love to have you in that group. This is eat the rules, a podcast about body image self worth, anti dieting, and intersectional feminism. I am your host summer Innanen. a professionally trained coach specializing in body image self worth and confidence and the best selling author of body image remix. If you’re ready to break free of societal standards and stop living behind the number on your scale, then you have come to the right place. Welcome to the show.

This is episode 256. And I’m joined by Mara Glatzel, author of needy as well as a fellow coach. We’re talking about how to move from a place of self abandonment to one of self partnership, radical self care and self advocacy. She talks about how to get in touch with your needs, and why it’s necessary and valid to have needs. The problem with traditional self care and how you can honor your needs to strengthen your worth. You can find the show notes at summer innanen.com forward slash 256. I want to give a shout out to Athena lilies who left this review I hope I said that right. Thank you so much your podcast has introduced me to so many new concepts and ideas as well as new speakers and activists. Your conversations are enlightening and encouraging. I’m so grateful for the work you do it has helped to open up an entire new world of self acceptance for myself. Thank you. Thank you so much. Also the heading on that review was love you thank you summer which just gave me a really good feeling inside my body. So thank you, not in like a sexual nice feeling. And it would be okay if it was not to I guess, control what happens in our bodies. You can leave a review for the show by going to iTunes search for eat the rules then click ratings and reviews click to leave a review for this show. And you can always hit that subscribe button on whatever platform you’re using to listen to this. That definitely helps out as well. Don’t forget to grab the free 10 Day body confidence makeover at summer innanen.com forward slash freebies with 10 steps to take right now to feel better in your body. If you’re a professional who works with people who may also have body image struggles get the free body image coaching roadmap at summer innanen.com forward slash roadmap I’m so excited to have Maura back on the show. She was on the show back in 2017. But we’ve been following each other’s work since the beginning I would say she used to write about body image like many, many, many, many years ago, and has since like, you know evolved into this other space. But we still intersect so much in the work we do. And I just always love her writing and everything that she puts out into the world. I feel like it speaks to my soul. And reading MIDI was no different. It’s a beautiful book. I think it’s such a necessary book, if you struggle with you know prioritizing yourself if you feel like you hold, you know, resentment or you’re burned out or you feel like why? Why am I holding all of this? Why am I holding all the mental load or the emotional load or the physical load in this relationship or in my life, I think that this book is going to be so helpful for you. And for so many people it’s written so well in terms of the fact that you can jump around if you want, and there’s little exercises and journal prompts throughout it, the chapters are fairly short and digestible. So I really liked that too, because you can sort of get a concept and then put it into practice and then maybe move on to the next one when you’re ready, or revisit it over and over and Mars perspective on the stuff is just so I feel like it’s so refreshing and different. And also intersectional which I think is super important, which we’ll talk about in this interview as well but just loved it so much. So it’s out February 28 2023. Go grab it. It’s a wonderful book to add to your collection. And again, it’s called needy, which we’re gonna talk about a lot today. In this episode. Here’s the formal bio Mara glatzel MSW she her is an intuitive coach, writer and needy podcast host who helps humans stop abandoning themselves and start reclaiming their sovereignty through embracing their needs and honoring their natural energy rhythms. Her superpower is saying what you need to hear when you need to hear it and she is here to help you believe in yourself as much as she believes in you. You can find more of her at Mara glatzel.com Alright, let’s get started with the show.

Hi, Mara, welcome back to the show.

Mara:
Thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Summer:
I’m so excited to have you here too. And as I was saying how much I just loved your book. So I am really looking forward to asking you a little bit more about that. And yeah, I’m excited for it. It’s actually this episode’s gonna air the day it comes out. So yeah, just coincidentally. It’ll be like a big celebration. So people who are listening to go order it. But I’d love for you for like, because you you kind of started out the book just talking about your like, sort of a pivotal moment where things kind of built up for you. And you really realized that you you hadn’t been like honoring your needs, or even really, maybe even getting touch with them. So I’m curious to know, like, was it that moment? Or was there something else? Or was it a buildup that sort of led you to, to this work and to writing needy?

Mara:
Yeah, so it was a buildup of moments. And I think I can point to two specific situations. The second one is the one that was in the book, but the first one was a couple of years prior, where I was in grad school, and I was doing my clinical practicum. And working and my life was more full than it had been at probably any point before. And there was a lot of pressure to retain a lot of information and synthesize it and, you know, show it for my clients. And I was learning this new skill. And I don’t know if you know this about being in social work school, it’s like 20 years of therapy and two years that you’re in school, it’s just you’re doing all of your own work alongside all of those things. So I had a lot on my plate. And I wasn’t sleeping, I was so tired, but I couldn’t sleep, I was so hungry, but I didn’t have time to eat. I was wanting connection with my partner, but was way too busy for that. And I reached this pivotal point of realizing that I was so burnt out, and that my perfectionism was such that I was fluent in what I needed to be in every situation when everyone else wanted me to be in every situation. And I had absolutely no idea who I was or what I wanted, or what I needed independent of being an expert on the quote unquote, right thing to do. And every situation which I was, and the burnout, that I experienced that that moment was acute, and did require learning how to at least name my needs, but what happened and begin to honor them. But until I had children, which was the second such breaking point, I didn’t really have to bother anybody with my needs. And so what happened was, I was burned out. And I you know, it was hard to confront myself. Absolutely. And it was hard to learn how to name what I needed and start to incorporate those needs into my life. That was challenging work. But I was I had enough space and time, personal space and time to have those conversations with myself without needing anyone else or depending on anyone else. And when I became pregnant with my oldest child and through to you know, the beginning of the book starts with she’s a couple of weeks old, through to that time, the more that I needed to need other people, the more uncomfortable I became, the more it felt like I was this like hot pot boiling over of not being able to be perfect, not being able to meet my needs. In the perimeter of my life. When everyone was sleeping. There was no perimeter of my life, nobody slept, everything was mayhem. And at the epicenter of it, I had so many needs, and was really confronted by all of these beliefs that I carried about how dangerous it was to be needy in our relationship, specifically a romantic relationship. You know how dangerous it was for me to let my partner really see me as I was and to need them to help me with things on you know, such a pregnancy is a wild ride and postpartum is also a wild ride and you need people to do things for you sometimes that you never would have imagined having to ask somebody to do and it can be confronting especially when you carry these patterns of it’s not safe to need anything. It threatens my relationships, people will see me as needy. I started to realize how many of those stories As I was carrying and how much it was prohibiting me from being emotionally honest in my relationships about what I required in order to exist and thrive within them.

Summer:
Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. And so you mentioned something there just being about, like, how it was almost dangerous to be needy, like, what? What were you afraid of? What was sort of, like, what felt so dangerous about that? Just out of curiosity?

Mara:
You know, look, I grew up in the 90s, I watched all the romantic comedies was like, women who are good and valuable, are hot. Obviously, we all know that right? But are also uncomplicated. I carried this narrative around, being chill, being cool, being effortless, and coupled with lived history have always being too much, always having too many feelings, always being too sensitive. And, you know, my childhood is marked by like, Mark needs to talk about, it’s, again, Maurice having a feeling again, you know, so this idea formed in me, I don’t remember being told it specifically. But this idea formed in me, this is something that I better cover up or deal with on my own. Because when I introduce my neediness into a relationship, that person is absolutely going to leave me.

Summer:
Yeah, so it was really hinged on like, this abandonment, which you actually talk about the whole sort of, like kind of core of what you’re doing is trying to heal, like self abandonment. So I would love for you to even just tell everyone, like what does self abandonment sort of look like are mean to you? Because I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I kind of know Right? But I hadn’t really heard like that that expression before. So I would love for you to to tell everybody about it.

Mara:
Yeah, well, then I, you know, self abandonment is one of those things that I think sounds very traumatic, but that we do in many, many ways every single day. And I see not acknowledging or honoring or needs as a level of self abandonment. Is it the worst? No, but when we are not in relationship with ourselves, or when we bypass our relationship with ourselves belonging to ourselves in order to belong to other people, then that is an act of self abandonment. So if we look at, you know, me hiding my needs, so that I could make sure that my partner is not going to divorce me, first of all, this is based on all i, there’s nothing I can do, innately to keep anyone from leaving at any time. And furthermore, people leave for all sorts of reasons people say no to you for all sorts of reasons, many of which are their own, and have nothing to do with you or your worth, or the validity of your knees. So the story, you can kind of see these are like the half baked stories of a child, but the way we put them together, when we start to pull them apart as adults, like, well, the logic is faulty. But until we start to pull them apart, we carry them as these marching orders, and perpetuate that belief of Oh, belonging to other people really important. That’s what keeps me safe, I’m going to aim for that at all costs, I’m going to become whoever I believe I need to be in order to belong. And all the while ignoring the fact that that keeps me from belonging to myself. And I would say even after I became aware that I was belonging to others at the cost of belonging to myself, I continued to do that, because I didn’t like myself. And I didn’t want to belong to me, which is, I think, even more heartbreaking. This piece of, you know, I would pick myself last for dodgeball, if we were in gym class that like, Ah, god stuck with me. And I remember when I would have tried to have time with myself, if you engage in self care as I was bored, you know, I had never been taught to, like myself, I had never been taught to I had been taught to see myself as this project. And my life was on hold until I looked a certain way. And I achieved a certain level of success. And at that point, I would have earned my own respect. Instead of realizing that we deserve our own care, we deserve our own kindness. We deserve our own connection, and that doesn’t have to be earned. But it does have to be modeled. And this is one of the reasons that I wrote this book because I think that we you know, more and more people are talking about this absolutely. But from where I’m sitting, it can never be enough. We have to be talking about how we relate to ourselves in every facet of our lives, especially those of us who are coming through, you know, this just horrible system of the diet industry and how we learn to judge ourselves and disconnect from ourselves. Because so much of my understanding of my own worth was formed on how I was taught, what I was taught, my value was based on my size.

Summer:
Yeah, yeah. And you, you speak to that because you self identify as bad. And so how did that like anti fat bias or your internalized fat phobia? Like, how did that kind of like influence the way you sort of thought about your own needs? Yeah. So

Mara:
what I learned about my needs was that anything that originates in my body, anything natural, that originates in my body is bad, because it has created such a thing that looks the way that I do. And again, this is so young, you know, I have a six year old daughter, I was on diets when I was six years old. So this is so young. But this you can’t trust your hungers. And that exists in a physical plane, you know, with the food that you’re hungry for, or how often or how much you’re hungry for it. But that exists in every other plane, too, you are have been conditioned to mistrust yourself a to second guess yourself and to look outside of yourself for guidance to help you be better than you are. And so how can you form a relationship with yourself if you are all simultaneously consciously berating yourself for being who and how you are every single day, it just doesn’t work. And, you know, I remember waiting and waiting and working and hatching plans and thinking about about weight loss, but it was also about hyper organization, it was like the whole reinventing the whole package. And at that point, I would have earned my own trust, because I would have become, I would have figured it out. So now how to overcome this, you know, wanton thing inside of me. And certainly, we’re all impacted by systems of oppression and diet industry and the ways that we’re perceived based on how we look all the time. But I think that there is a specific place in my work for women who have been made to feel that their body can’t be trusted, and subsequently really struggle with figuring even knowing what is possible to need, even giving themselves any corner of the life that they want before they have earned it by becoming that thing that they’ve been taught to want.

Summer:
Yeah, wow. I know, that’s going to be so resonant. I mean, I like got goosebumps when you’re talking about that. So it’s so relatable to Yeah, the work that I do, and the people I work with, and, and so yeah, so I want to talk to you about needs, like when people think of needs, I think a lot of times we think about like physical needs, I mean, what are our needs? Like? What are some of the different sort of like, I don’t know, how do you categorize them? Like? Where do you even start with, like, defining what your needs are?

Mara:
Yeah, so I think this is the first this is the second reason I wrote this book is because by and large, I don’t think we know what is possible to need. And so somebody might say, Well, tell me what you need. And I have no idea what I’m allowed to ask for like a glass of water you to have some repair enclosure with me after we have a fight to turn the lights on to turn the lights off, and we’re having sex I mean, what is what am I allowed to ask for? Because I know for myself, I did not know I was allowed to ask for anything. So that was the first hurdle was your life may be more satisfying for you if you kind of made an impact on it by making decisions in any sort of way by asking for things but then what do you ask for and so I think about needs as something that you require in order to exist and thrive in your relationship either with yourself or relationship with another person. And I you know, we also have wants right and I like to think about a want is something that you desire to exist and thrive in those relationships and for people who have are scarce on time and personal resources, which is many of us these days, let’s it that often want to know like, Okay, so let’s, I have this much time and energy, like put them into a hierarchy. And I don’t want you to do that because both are really important. I mean, this book is called needy, it’s about needs, but wants are very important as well. And I like to think about the need as the What in the want is the how. So, you know, if we were to think about the physical needs of the body, I need food that nourishes my body at frequent intervals. That’s the what, and the how is what kind of food I might actually be hungry for what might be delicious. For me, I don’t just want breakfast. You know, this morning, I had scrambled eggs and this, like, amazing escape sauerkraut that I got from this farm that I’ve been obsessed with. And I wanted that specific thing. It’s not just about shoving something in my face, it’s about incorporating that pleasure element of this is what I want. And that want makes it that much more satisfying, because it’s that thing that tunes you into this exact moment tunes you into your current body to what you’re hungry for in the present tense, and enables you to create an experience that not just fills the need, you know, I hate that like Food is fuel doesn’t matter how it tastes like, from a pleasure perspective, what bullshit, right? And from being, you know, satiated by what you’re eating. So bullshit. So thinking about that’s the one that’s the how is really useful for me. And the need can be anything, we have our needs, shift and change over the course of our lives, depending on the circumstances, or the physical requirements of our body at that moment in time or that phase of life. And so I think less than, you know, there are like Maslow, all of these people have come up with these ideas of these are the needs that you have. And I don’t even want to limit it. Because I think that our needs, what is more important than memorizing a set of needs, is having a working relationship with ourselves where we’re asking what we need, and we’re being willing to be surprised by ourselves. That said, you know, over the course of the book, I talk about universal needs for safety, rest, sustenance, trust, integrity, sovereignty, belonging, love, and celebration. And I specifically identify those because I think we do need a roadmap. And we do need to have our sense of possibility expanded as it is related to a need. For many people, they might be familiar with the physical needs of their body, but spiritual or emotional needs, like celebration, or communion or reverence, feel, like nice to have, when really, you need those things just as much and sometimes more than other more tangible or easily achieved needs. So it’s a big conversation. And I think we have to be willing to get into the mess of it with ourselves.

Summer:
Yeah, one of the quotes that really stood out to me was so many of us have the feeling that we have to wring every drop of energy out of ourselves in service of being productive, good are effective, when that’s just not true. You deserve to have a surplus of energy and your you deserve to use that surplus for things that delight and support you give yourself more than the scraps. I was like, Oh my God, I feel like we just settle for the scrap. Like if we settle for anything, it’s like, we set the expectation of the scraps like we’re like, all worked towards giving myself a scraps, you know what I mean? Like this notion of like, surplus, like, I was like, what? It just felt like so yeah, like, just like, I was, like, I don’t even know, it just occurred to me like, and maybe that’s just because of the like, phase of life that I’m in, but that quote, just like smacked me in the head.

Mara:
Yeah, well, I also have young children, and I think, you know, and also have some chronic health things going on. And that idea of, oh my gosh, I have a moment and also energy, I have to use it for the maximum important thing, whatever that thing is in my life, and what sort of sacrilege it is to say, I have a lot of energy right now. And I’m feeling really good. And I’m going to do something just because, you know, giving to myself that that best highest energy instead of always worrying and, and from a real place, you know, I know as a person with inconsistent energy, it can feel as though I need to use every scrap of energy that I have to put towards my work because I don’t know when that quality energy is going to come back. But it creates this self perpetuating cycle where if I don’t give to myself, then my energy is even more unstable than it would be otherwise. And so, you know, I’m creating that all or nothing conditions that I’m afraid of when I’m over committing myself.

Summer:
Yeah. Wow. Wow. How is this different than sort of like traditional Self care approaches.

Mara:
So traditional self care approaches are by and large, prescriptive instead of responsive, which means they are created to resonate with a whole bunch of people, all the people instead of you in particular, and there can be some good ideas in there, you know, there, I’m not saying that everything that is being sold and taught with traditional self care is wrong. But the problem that I see that I encounter so much with my clients is that they have attempted repeatedly to kind of tick off these listicle items of, you know, take a bath phone or friend, write in your journal, or whatever it might be all of those are great things, and I’m not mocking them, please do those if those are things that you need, but they don’t satisfy the ache, they don’t satisfy the hunger because it might not be what you need at that time. And the first thing that is important to get on the table is that one act of self care is not going to satisfy a lifetime ache that is much too high of an expectation for one bath. And so we have got to understand that it’s going to take a lot of baths, if that’s your thing, it’s going to take a lot of journal writing, if journal writing is your thing, it’s going to take a lot of caring for yourself before you begin to complete the stress cycles that you’re carrying. dig yourself out from burnout, if you’re experiencing it is about doing less and more often, instead of saving up for the right and best perfect moment. Second piece is, instead of just doing a list of things, I find it’s much better and more effective to have your self care be responsive, meaning it happens through conversation with yourself. How do I feel? What do I need? What does my body need from me all of these questions, and I walk you through a pretty robust daily check in in the book that has different questions that you can ask. But these ways of checking in with yourself so that the care that you provide is the answer to those questions, it changes every day, maybe today I need to knock off it is incredibly beautiful outside, you know, knock off work early, I go for a long walk with my dog much longer than I would otherwise or listen to a podcast or no podcast today walk in silence, right, whatever that might be. But it comes from being in relationship with myself and being curious about what would bring more ease and more pleasure and more comfort into my body in this moment, instead of saying, all right, you know, on Fridays we XYZ thing or I read this article that said, light a candle and you’re gonna feel fine. Because I just have so many clients who are so burnt out on quote unquote, self care, who have not actually been caring for themselves in particular at all. They’ve just been doing these rote things, and hoping it’ll stick and when it doesn’t, they blame themselves and usually say fuck it to the whole self care experiment and just get back to work. We can have that unique care.

Summer:
Yeah, yeah, that’s what I love. And I’m what I love, I think about your approach is, is like you said, there’s so many different, like, you really lay it out, it’s like a, like, there’s prompts like it’s like a, let’s not just like a theory, it’s like, and here are the things to ask yourself and explore. But, and you also have it in different stages. So that and examples of like how that would work. If you’re in a particular like, if this is like really new to you, and you are like thinking like, oh my god, where do I even start, let’s like, get here’s where here’s how you might approach this. And then here, so if you’re kind of further along, and, and so forth. And so that’s I really appreciate how you did that. Because it’s it’s written for like, no matter kind of where you are on the spectrum of of this, you know, whether you’re at kind of like, oh my God, I don’t I don’t even like I’m allowed to have needs, like what do I know? Versus like, I know what my needs are, but I’m having a hard time like getting support around it. So I really appreciated that about the book, too.

Mara:
Thanks. Yeah, I like that myself, you know, and that grew out of this idea of healing being a linear journey with an endpoint that we’re hustling towards, right? This idea of, I’m gonna get to that destination will be healed and everything’s gonna be great. And instead of the spiral that it is, and in some places you might be further along, something might be easier for you and something might be more challenging for you. And so I tried to set out how you might approach it at different levels of familiarity and bravery with the concept and simultaneously trying to dispel any of that bullshit that we tell ourselves about being bad or meaning something bad that we’re back at the beginning point as it relates to this concept. You know, as I said, Before, when I was sharing my story, I was good at a lot of things, until I needed those things to ask for those things from other people that has always been really challenging for me is that this additional piece of risking myself and risking the vulnerability of asking for what I need in a relationship much harder than asking myself for it. And that’s not the same for everybody. But however it is for you. There’s a space for you here, because we’re all working to figure it out together, we’re all going to have highlights, and moments that we want to celebrate ourselves and moments that we can’t even believe that we’re back here again. And that is part of the journey, it doesn’t mean that you’re not doing it, right.

Summer:
Mm hmm. Yeah, I love how you speak to the process is really about being in relationship with yourself versus being healed. And I think that that, I mean, that’s kind of like the work that I do, too. It’s like, there’s not a destination, it’s like always, you know, showing up for yourself and continuing to build that relationship. One of the things that I know, you’ve mentioned, like your partner a few times in, and when you started the book with a story that you tell like you, like your partner says, like, I’m not a mind reader. And I feel like, that’s such a big thing for those of us that I mean, it doesn’t even matter if it’s like your, you know, like your your life partner, your romantic partner, like, it could just be a friend, you know, like, we just, it’s so hard for us, and then we but then at the same time, we sort of like expect or want the other person to be responsive to what our needs are, when we haven’t articulated what those needs are to them. And I feel like so many, so many of us are stuck in that place, like myself included a lot of

Mara:
Yeah, that was a hard pill for me to swallow, I had believed that if I was good, and that carries a multitude of connotations, if I was good, then other people would take the time to know what I needed and meet those needs, without me needing to ask for them. And again, this sort of romantic comedy version of a relationship where if a need was acknowledged by somebody else, then it was, you know, safe to acknowledge myself and that, you know, we express love for one another by just knowing what that person needs and doing it for them before they have to ask. And I was doing that for other people all the time. Because again, that was a facet of how I was socialized to be a woman and what it meant to be a good woman, what it meant to be a good therapist, what it meant to be a loyal and loving friend. And I have a boundary with myself now. Where I don’t allow myself to read anyone else’s mind. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a lot of intuitive knowing I have highly attuned skills of reading the room, and knowing what is unspoken. But that doesn’t mean I’m always right. And that doesn’t mean that it’s my business. And it doesn’t mean that it’s my job, certainly. And so I have a very strict boundary with myself now about not dealing in realms that are unspoken. Wow. Rife for misunderstanding, certainly, and also exhausting. It is exhausting to constantly be reading what is unsaid. And by forcing my conversations to that explicit level, it’s really interesting, because you can no longer assume you can say, you know, this is what I need. And you get to tell me, what, how you feel about it. And if I think you’re saying yes, but you want to say no, and everything in me wants to protect you from over committing yourself, it is not my job to do that for you. It is my job to do that for me. And so this experiment, it has been a few years that I have been in this experiment and it it is pervasive, the many ways that I have to remind myself every day like, hey, just because you have a felt sense that something is going on, doesn’t make it your job, doesn’t mean you have to fix it doesn’t mean you even have to acknowledge it, and you get to wait until somebody asks you for something. And it is that’s very pretty confronting, because I earned my worth by being really good at doing that for a very long time.

Summer:
Hmm, yeah. And I mean, that’s like, interwoven into the work you do with clients too, is your ability to be like so intuitive and kind of, you know, be responsive, and things like that. And so it’s like, it’s hard to like separate that and in your own life and be like okay, now, I cannot dabble with the things that are unsaid. I love that. However you said it

Mara:
The Yeah, when I was in school, I started to realize I was like, Oh, I’m good at this. And when I had a professional capacity, it was when I first started to realize, when people enter into a coaching relationship with me, part of what they’re hiring me to do is that when you’re just a random person on the street, there’s no you haven’t consented. To me working with you in that way, what is spoken for you is not my responsibility. And you know, by responsibility, I don’t mean that I’m responsible for what’s been spoken for my clients, but it is my job to name those things and bring them forward. And so by having that understanding of this is my professional capacity, this is my personal capacity, it really helped me understand. This is a skill that’s highly developed for me for very good reasons. And it was spilling out everywhere, and it needs some boundaries. And a lot of times when I work with people, especially when I work with them in person, like a host a retreat, the first thing that I say to the group is that I am here for you to have your needs and your wants met to the best of my abilities. I’m interested in that I love that I love to create these experiences where people ask for audacious things, and I strategize with them to get them met. I mean, there are tattoos at every retreat I run, it’s like we shouldn’t, it’s just, I’m baking cakes. There’s middle of the night pizza rounds, I mean, we’re doing all kinds of things, because part of it is that healing container of learning how to ask for what you want, and getting in on the excitement of it, but that I’m not a mind reader. And if they need something, they have to be willing to pony up and asked me for it, because I’m not going to even pull it out of them. And I think having that kind of understanding has really changed all of my relationships for the better. I don’t know if everyone else would say that people love this people loved about me that I was able to just know what they were needing. So I’m sure there are people that I’m not friends with anymore, who benefited from that. But it wasn’t good for me.

Summer:
Yeah, totally, totally. I think one of the things that people probably feel when they’re doing this work is I like, what my life will fall apart. If I start, you know, tending to my needs, like, what’s your response to that? Yes.

Mara:
And if that is the case, whatever it is, that’s falling away is already gone, you’re just unwilling to acknowledge that. And I say that with utmost compassion, but also the knowing especially when it comes to relationships, and it comes to patterns of over serving and over delivering, it may be okay now, but it is already inherently unstable, you know, those relationships where you have to tie yourself up in knots in order for the relationship to work, if somebody needs you to be a certain way in order to stick around, they are already gone. And it is heartbreaking to be in that kind of relationship and I have been in many, and if you are over serving or over delivering are caught in this pattern of hyper productivity, you are heading towards burnout, and your work is to unsustainable even if it is working right now. And so I prefer this the control freak in me. I prefer to do the work preemptively. Before everything falls apart. dealer’s choice, you you know, you get to choose whatever it is that you want to do. But for me, my life fell apart completely multiple times. I mean, it taught me lessons, but I could have learned some of those lessons, I could have learned some of those skills before I needed them. And that’s what my hope is for people who are reading this book is not that your life is gonna fall apart. But you really illuminate how when we are extracting from ourselves when we are over committing when we are not emotionally honest with ourselves or in our relationships. We are existing in an unsustainable system already. And we usually know it. That’s why we’re working so hard. And the answer even if it means you might be doing less, even if it means that some things might you know, the relationship contracts that you have with your loved ones might be a little rocky for a little bit. Ultimately, it is in the service to your highest good and the highest good of all of your relationships, for you to know what you need and how to ask for it. And it may be confronting to realize how many things you haven’t allowed yourself to need. It was for me, there may be a lot of grief that exists there for you. Absolutely, but it’s good for you to do this kind of work. And ultimately, it feels good to be connected with yourself, instead of outsourcing your sense of belonging, your sense of safety to doing everything you can so that somebody else doesn’t reject you, right? That’s, we’re always gonna be chasing that we’re always going to feel really alone in that. And I used to feel as though every achievement, it felt so hollow, you know, I would work so hard, I will be in the room where it was happening, surrounded by the people, and I would feel so alone. And I would know, rightfully, that those people did not know me. And I worked so hard to build those relationships. And it felt scary to risk all of that to be how I am and was. But what has happened in the wake of that, for me and with so many of my clients is that you don’t have to pour energy into holding it all together, or pretending that you’re somebody that you’re not, there’s so much more that’s available to you. And the big scary thing of somebody not liking you, or you know, I tell these stories in the book of friend breakups that I had that broke my heart, on the other side of those are relationships with people who really love me for me, and I don’t feel alone anymore. And that is worth it. In my opinion.

Summer:
Yeah. Wow. And I feel like that’s such a parallel to the work I do. Like it’s like, coexist. Your work is all Thank you. Well, listen, I’m gonna I’m gonna stop it here. Because that was like, that was really good. I mean, I got I could talk to you forever about this stuff. I feel like there was just so much. But I mean, there are so many things that you said today that just like blew my own mind. And I’m like, Oh, my gosh, so I’m still I’m in process myself from this conversation. But in the interim, where can people find more of you?

Mara:
Please come out, hang out with me. I like to hang out on Instagram, you can find me at Mark glatzel Please pick up this book. It will help you it will befriend you. It’s called needy how to advocate for your needs and claim your sovereignty and you can buy it wherever books are sold as of today. And yeah, me. And my podcast is called the needy as well. That’s a very fun way that I’m having kind of present day conversations as it relates to the material of the book. And you can find the podcast and everything else at Mark classical.com

Summer:
Amazing. Thank you so much for being here. As always, it’s just been like phenomenal. And I’m so excited for people to hear it.

Mara:
Thanks for having me.

Summer:
Rock on.

I always love catching up with Mara. And I just think she’s so wise and has such a beautiful way of talking about this subject matter. If you want to get some of the stuff that was mentioned in the show, go to summer innanen.com forward slash 256. Don’t forget to go and order needy. It’s out February 28 2023. That is today. If you are listening to this first and if you are listening to this the day that it drops, you are my biggest fan. Thank you. That’s it for today. Thank you so much for being here. I look forward to talking to you at your next time rock on I’m Summer Innanen And I want to thank you for listening today. You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook at summer Innanen. And if you haven’t yet, go to Apple podcasts search eat the rules and subscribe rate and review this show. I would be so grateful. Until next time, rock on.