Why we over explain and people please.

Have you ever felt yourself apologizing for things that aren’t your fault, or find yourself over-explaining things? 

Over-explaining might be a type of response to past trauma, also known as the fawn response. You might be familiar with the fight, flight, freeze – the fourth is fawning. This is where we self abandon in order to meet the needs of others.

We disconnect from our own emotions, our own needs, and will do anything to avoid conflict, and often revert to people-pleasing.

Fawning is scanning the room in advance for safety. If we can meet the needs of the people in the room, and they’re okay, then we can be okay. Many of us learned as children that love was conditional, we had to work for it – perform for it. We knew what would gain us love, and we equally knew what behaviors would result in the loss of love. As a result, we became performers to prove that we were good little girls, and completely disconnected from our own emotional needs in order to survive and feel safe.

We also learned that love and approval could be taken away at any moment so we would over-explain, apologize, keep the peace at any cost because we were afraid of being abandoned.

Our inner child is afraid that they’re not good enough, not worthy enough, and if we aren’t enough then we won’t be loved, and love is the oxygen to the soul.

When we fear losing love we will do anything to avoid the loss of it, and this is often where we will self abandon and over-explain ourselves defending our worth, and our truth. We pretend that we’re low maintenance and have no needs in the attempt to convince someone to stay. That we will be good. This also where our boundaries become flexible, and red flags are no longer deal breakers.

The truth is, having needs doesn’t make you needy, it makes you human, and having boundaries doesn’t keep people out, it teaches people how to treat you by how you honor yourself. 

This is a great time to ask yourself what are your needs? What are your dreams, goals, desires?

What if you felt worthy of it all, what would ask for? If you felt enough, and there was no such thing as failure or rejection and you could have anything you wanted to order off the universal menu, what would you order?

Have you placed your order lately?

Healing the unworthiness wound takes patience, compassion, understanding, and forgiveness. It takes confidence, and it takes developing a deep relationship with self.

Start small. Start making a list of the things that you need. That are non negotiables for you. Take inventory of who makes you feel alive, expansive, light and the ones who try to shame, guilt, control, and who have no respect for your boundaries. 

People with high self-worth and high self-love don’t try to shame others. They don’t project their past trauma and pain onto others. They respect the other’s needs, opinions, and decisions because they respect themselves.

Remember, it is not only you and the other person in the conversation. It is you and the other person, AND their inner child AND yours. So ask yourself – who is actually speaking and what needs are they trying to meet and am I coming from a healed place or a wounded place?

You’re worthy of saying no, of declining that invitation or doing things differently without having to justify for their acceptance and approval.

Try it, and keep practicing, it gets easier.

Sending you so much love,

Amanda xo