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Hello, welcome to the show. This is Emotional Badass, where moxie meets mindful. I'm your host, Nicky Eisenhower, life coach and psychotherapist. And on today's episode, I'm discussing what happens when loyalty becomes a burden after betrayal. One of the traits of high sensitivity, which shows up even more strongly in empaths, is loyalty. Loyalty is also one of the biggest stressors and confusions. Loyalty is fine until we meet betrayal. Loyalty is golden until we realize that the loyalty we have so often given goes unreciprocated. Now, loyalty is tricky to quantify and qualify and discuss. I hope today's episode opens up curiosity for this topic, for your own relationship with loyalty. So what is it about loyalty that can become so heavy and then so hurtful? Really, it's betrayal. Loyalty isn't just about staying forever into perpetuity. It's about. It's about why we stay. It's a reflection of our emotional depth, our empathy, our values. But like all of our emotions, it deserves some reflection. Is my loyalty rooted in love or fear? Connection or obligation? Growth or guilt? So let's look together at what gives loyalty its emotional weight. Firstly, loyalty is bound up in attachment. It stems from deep emotional bonds. Whether we're loyal to a person, a cause, a place, or a belief, we stay loyal because our hearts are involved. Can you connect with this? Do you see how true this is as big hearted, sensitive people? It's not just about obligation. And I've said on other episodes, obligation is never its own reason to do anything. But it's not just about this obligation. It's about connection. This is why betrayal hurts so much. When we have extended loyalty, betrayal doesn't just break a rule or step on a toe. It breaks something inside of us. It changes us. I want to make an important note here about codependency and people pleasing. And if you're new to those concepts, just, just bear with me. But almost everyone who would find themselves intrigued by the information that I offer on my content on this show, the healing stuff that I do basically would resonate with being a recovering codependent, a recovering people pleaser. They're pretty interchangeable. And what we say in recovery of these things is we tend to give away what we most need. Now if this is true, then giving away massive loyalty indicates that we want and need loyalty. Anyone who looks at my story would be well within reasonable rights to argue that I'm overly loyal because I was abandoned by my biological father while I was in elementary school and I was bonded to him and Then lost that bond. He disappeared from my life. My functional parents, both my mother's parents, died when I was 15 and 17. That was the year I became a runaway. And when my repressed childhood sexual abuse memories flooded back when I was 22, I made the first decision to go no contact with my remaining family after after learning that my mother had been warned that he was a child abuser and basically handed me and my sisters to him. My extended family, which is a huge big Catholic family, favored a strong loyalty towards my mother and not towards me. And in my opinion, my sister's is different, not towards my sisters either. Now I've had multiple mental health professionals tell me over the years that I've had more loss than they've ever known. I do believe that these early life wounds set me up to be overly loyal, to try to secure attachments to people, to not lose anyone else in my life, to have some stability within my relationships, my support systems, my family, whether it was blood family or a chosen family. My loyalty, even super duper strong loyalty, wouldn't have really been a problem if I had known how to moderate my loyalty without giving it. So automatically and fully, without seeing, without even knowing to look to see if someone deserved that loyalty from me or not. But the abuse and the neglect, the abandonment, a simple way to think about that is it broke my people picker and it guided me toward choosing people who could not and or would not reciprocate. My loyalty would not deal with me in honesty or maturity, which meant they could have never even minimally reciprocated my loyalty. Consider your own abandonment and loss wounds here and how each singular episode or event or experience impacts. And then consider the compounded nature of not just how many losses we've had, but how often or how frequent. Now we're all having stress in this life, right? There is not one person out there who gets some lily white stress free experience. But in terms of reasonable stress and reasonable resiliency, we think about the idea of waves in the ocean and every human has waves that come and knock them down at different times in their life. But generally we have some time, sort of find our footing, find our balance and stand up again before the next wave hits. It has different implications if we're hit wave after wave after wave after wave after wave after wave without ever having a moment to catch our breath, to stand up, to get our footing, to get solid and grounded again. So all of that being said, I have an absolutely unprovable sense, a hunch that I fully believe in that the person that I am, the baby I was born, was delivered into this life already a deep, deep person, full of emotional spaciousness, even deep in how I love and hold other people. Now I can look back at some very early memories from the ages of 4 to 6 and see my depth. Before abandonment, before childhood sexual abuse. My full souled way of loving and wanting to nurture and lift up was how I entered this plane, this earthly body, this existence, this human form. I was born highly sensitive and my trauma intensified, also intensified my loyalty. So here's a second reason that loyalty carries an emotional weight. It feels like protection. Being loyal can feel like being someone's shield. When we're loyal, we instinctively want to protect what we care about. We're ready to defend, nurture, stand by it even when it's hard. There's love in loyalty and often a willingness to sacrifice for people who are willing to easily reciprocate. It's often very hurtful, shockingly so, to have to learn that the loyalty given isn't automatically or intentionally reciprocated. Sometimes in any way, shape or form. We can feel utterly betrayed in this hard earned, painful wisdom. What we can do here is tap in our wise man or our wise woman to hold some space and provide some useful messaging for our inner child or our hurt parts. Here's some scripting for you to consider and play with. Dear sweet little me, I see it. You've poured yourself into this this person or this job or this entity or experience only for them to prove being unwilling to pour into you in a similar and reciprocal way when right in the moment when you need it and it hurts, it feels unfair and it's bewildering. I want you to know that your loyalty is lovely. It's beautiful. It is something that makes you very special. The next thing to learn is that everyone isn't right for your deep loyalty. And you can learn to bring more discernment and self protection to relationships. You wouldn't give all your water away on a hike. Even if someone else was super thirsty. You might give them some sips or the amount you could spare without dehydrating and endangering yourself. But it would be unwise to give them all of your water. Your loyalty is like water at all times. You must prioritize you getting enough for yourself before you give it all away. Even the flight attendants on the airplanes say this about the oxygen masks too. You get to be loyal to you first. You get to learn that you get to have limits and boundaries and you don't have to give your loyalty away so easily. With your big heart, it's okay to save some loyalty for you and some protection for your own heart. Here's a third reason that gives loyalty emotional weight. Loyalty tears us between duty and truth. Let me explain what I mean by that. Loyalty is emotionally charged because it's not always simple. Sometimes staying loyal means going against your own needs or truth. Longtime listeners, you know I am not going to advocate for us to go against our own needs and or own truth ever. But there's no perfection available here. There's no perfection available anywhere in anything. So in human relating there is a give and take. We're never getting 50, 50. In any relationship, it's been said we each have to give 100 and 100. But in relating and negotiating, there is no way to walk some kind of perfect high wire, some perfect perfect line. In human relating, there is this give and take that is in constant negotiation within ourselves and then in relation to other people. It is our own personal responsibility, whether we know it clearly or not, to treat ourselves with respect as we move through the various ways that we give and receive throughout a lifetime. There's no perfect way to meet our own or anyone else's needs or desires. Everything must live under an umbrella of good enough, of understanding and accepting that sometimes we have more or less to give. And this is true of others too, that internal conflict can be intense. Do I stay loyal to this person or loyal to myself in this moment? And that can be on a small scale or a large scale. That can be someone asking you for a large sum of money, thousands and thousands of dollars. That can be small, even mundane. Whether or not I go out to dinner tonight with a friend when I'm really tired and maybe I don't feel like I'm going to be the best company, but I also know they're having a really hard time. Wow. Can that internal conflict be intense? It can feel convoluted. It can feel confusing. Particularly if we come from backgrounds that had really wonky boundaries and people pleasing. Do I stay loyal to this person or loyal to myself? It's not that there's a formula to this, but it's in embracing this question and owning the reality that this is a question we're going to have to deal with and dance with all of the days of our lives. I love my factor meals, their convenience, their ease, their tastiness. And I think you're going to love them too. 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As long as we are alive, we will face negotiating the terms of this very question. And if we can't get straight in the negotiation within ourselves, it's going to be really wonky to then try to negotiate with somebody else. There are a lot of takers in the world out there, y' all, just objectively there are also a lot of givers too, but there are a lot of takers and if you, like me, are a giver. It's our job, in my opinion, to manage our own output. Who else is going to manage that for us, if not us. It's my job to manage my output and it's my job to accept from my growth, from my learning, from my age, from being on the planet longer and experiencing more, seeing more, testing out more. It's my job to get real with myself and accept the truth of what it means that there are takers on the planet. When I am a giver, takers don't show up and say, hey, you've given me enough, it's my turn to show up for you. A taker takes as much as they can take and they often don't have any qualms or any awareness about taking your very last drops, Whether it's drops of water, drops of patience, last drops of loyalty. Because their empathy starts and stops with, well, I'm thirsty and I know you to be generous in giving. Why wouldn't I take and drink your water? You must know this as essential self care. As a highly sensitive person, this emotional tug of war between givers and takers when there isn't more natural inclination towards balance there can be utterly exhausting. But it can also be enlightening. If and when we accept that this kind of negotiation is normal, it's necessary within our own self and in relating to any human out there. Do I stay loyal to this person or loyal to myself in this moment? How do I negotiate this? How do I find some kind of middle ground here? If I accept this instead of avoiding it, instead of crossing my fingers and hoping I'm not gonna have to pull up my big girl pants and say direct, hard things, just hope for reciprocation. Owning this brings its own enlightenment. Owning this takes out the fight of, gosh, do I need to negotiate this? What is going on now? And normalizes? Of course we need to negotiate this. The world in some ways, will ask us for everything it can take. Of course we get to learn how to say no. Maybe tomorrow. Sure, I can go for an hour, but not four hours. This is exactly why I teach boundaries and finding permission to recognize and act from healthy limits. This subconscious belief that so many highly sensitive people operate on without realizing it. I have to be everything to everybody because of this old abandonment wound or an old neglect wound. It's such a big player in what exhausts us and runs us ragged. And it's far too easy to point at the takers and go, look at them exhausting me. When are they gonna realize I've given enough? Do you see how we shirk our own responsibility with those thoughts? Do you see how I'm gonna use the C word? Not the one you think, the other one crazy. Do you see how truly crazy it is for me to project that out onto a taker and give the power of my life and what I'm giving to a taker and just hope and wait for them to think I've given enough? If I own that and pull that personal responsibility back to me instead of playing around being the victim, then I realize and I own and I affect my own life positively with forward motion. I'm the one that has to realize I decided I gave enough. I'm the one who gets to decide to give more. It's all on me. Whether or not one person shows up and asks me for something, or if 8 billion from the entire planet show up at my door asking me for whatever they want, there will never not be a time in this life where I need strong, no muscles. And that is on me. It's playing powerless to give that power away to somebody else that you already think is taking too much or is being entitled with your time, your bandwidth, your space without reciprocation. Wanting someone else to be respectful of us misses how important it is for our own self to respect our own self. The fourth reason I have for you about why loyalty gets heavy or wonky is that loyalty is tied to our highly sensitive identities. All right, so take in that idea. It's tied to identity. We are certainly living through an identity obsessed time, right? It is such a popular word right now. This is the type of identity we tend to not consciously choose. It just sort of develops like I am an artist, I am a dog, mom. You know, it just sort of develops with life. But this is where we can reflect. Loyalty often becomes part of how we define ourselves. Have you ever heard anybody say this? Have you said this? I'm the kind of person who doesn't walk away. Well, I'm just the kind of person that can be counted on to let go of loyalty, even in degrees. I'm not talking black or white, all or nothing, though sometimes we have to do that too. But letting go of loyalty, even when we know that loyalty is not serving us, can feel like rejecting a part of ourselves, like losing a part of ourselves. This is why so many people sometimes stay too long in clearly toxic relationships or jobs or belief systems like cults. Loyalty runs deep and we believe that it is good to be loyal. And this is part of what makes me a good person to be so loyal. This is also how we avoid the entire grief process, by Continuing loyalty even when it seems crazy to our own self to continue doing so. If you're interested in participating in the boundaries course this October, know that I teach a concept in there called dysfunctional hope. And every time I teach it, I get nervous laughter because it's just so true of people who are wired in this highly sensitive way. Here's what I teach in there. A quick brief synopsis. We've all been taught the healthy idea to always give people second chances, right? That sounds good to all of us. Second chances, right? We all want second chances because we know the wisdom of none of us are perfect, therefore we shall give second chances, right? But this is what I see highly sensitive people do. They distort this teaching and they convince themselves that being a kind person means giving unlimited chances. This is what creates what I call dysfunctional hope. This essentially keeps people dealing with and dancing with the devils they know getting less than what they give. And we tend to choose this devil we know over the devil of the unknowns. A hard truth to face is that we don't really know. And ooh, it makes us anxious to face those devils of the unknown. And that's what happens the moment we stop pouring loyalty into someone that is like a sieve. A deeper truth can be that we're fully insecure about who we are. And as long as we are loyal givers, we have a grip on a personal identity. This may be why it can be so existentially terrifying to change our people pleasing and codependent ways. Because if I just say to you, hey, let go of some of the people pleasing and you take better care of yourself, right? Win, win, you'll feel self respect, you'll feel more balanced, you'll be less exhausted. It's like, gee, why wouldn't I do this? This is why our deeper subconscious psychology has so many of these over functioning behaviors. Giving, giving, giving, giving behaviors connected to our identity as a good person. If we stop being overly loyal, we may be facing changing our identity. And that means allowing people and society to judge us no matter how we slice it. And deep down we all know that. I can even hear my sister using some of this in my mind, attempting to shame me. Before I went no contact the first time, before I had ever examined my own loyalty, why I felt like I was dying while I was trying to go no contact, she would say to me, I'm the type of person who will never leave mom. And the implication is I'm the terrible person who will, right? So we need a lot of skills about how to observe and not absorb. We need to understand that people that are used to us just showing up, showing up, showing up, showing up, no matter how awful it feels, no matter how imbalanced and skewed, no matter how exhausted we are, no matter how sad, no matter how much we might beg. I certainly begged back then. I'm not proud of that. I understand it and I give myself self compassion and I no longer do that. I begged her to understand that I was still a good person. Even though I had to leave our mother. I desperately wanted her support. Her loyalty was for our mother, not for me. There was no avoiding all of that pain. All of the ways my critical voice knew how to do anything but help me through that. It was very, very painful. I had to learn over years and years that because I walked away from my own big loyalty that I feel to try to save myself, I had to let go of all my own self judgment that I was some kind of low character bad person. Like I so willy nilly just decided to abandon my mother. Like she looked at me funny and I just threw her away. It was hard to learn how to love myself. And that loving of myself really and truly became a recalibration of my loyalty. And it didn't happen overnight, but it has happened. Being able to give the loyalty to me, to trust that I am a good person. And if I have to back away from anyone or dial down my loyalty or lessen what I give, none of that is bad. And none of that is some sort of bad, shameful proof of how I suck as a human. I'm a good person, always have been. Trying to stabilize myself, coming from a lot of historical upheaval and chaos. So this work towards self respect and self care, it makes us change at the level of identity. I want you to know that this is part of what grew my steel like backbone. And I recognize now, in ways I didn't quite understand back then, that one of my fears was if I started saying no or really doing what I needed to do for me. But I wouldn't be liked, I would be thrown away and I would be shamed. That is what happened in a lot of ways. And in facing that, my backbone grew. Strength grew, me supporting me got stronger. Me being able to weather judgments, shame from external to internal where it could fall off of me more like Teflon began to form. So my steel like backbone as it developed did not diminish my empathy or my care at all. Like I was scared of. In fact my boundaries gave me the space to grow even more. And I've learned to be more discerning and intentional with my loyalty, my love, my kindness and my giving. And I love being generous. I also learned to add myself to the top of my own people pleasing list. Here's the fifth reason that makes loyalty heavy. Loyalty can lead to resentment. So when loyalty isn't mutual or reciprocal, or when it's taken for granted, it really can easily morph into resentment. And it's easy to point that resentment outward as if that other person is doing it to me. And it's true that it would be easier if I wasn't having to deal with them asking for something or pressuring for something. When I show up in my loyalty, we might find ourselves asking why am I the only one still holding on? Why am I over functioning? Why am I working so hard at this? Why is there more output for me than input? Painful resentment is part of the emotional cost of loyalty to non reciprocating people. And it's often the motivator to change one's own relationship to loyalty and people pleasing. It's important that I don't finish this episode without saying this to you. When someone betrays, it doesn't mean that you made wrong decisions earlier. Doesn't necessarily mean that you missed red flags, though you could have. You don't have to process it like what did I do wrong before to get to this place of betrayal? Did I fail them? Did I do something wrong? Sometimes the simple truth is someone else is taking me for granted and I couldn't have foreseen that. Sometimes what happens, especially in a long term relationship, is the other person changes or we grow apart. And the loyalty we may feel as a permanence, as a forever sort of intention may not be what the other person feels. And that doesn't mean that they feel an FU for us. It just may be an a simple absence of loyalty. Or they might be getting lost in other things in their lives. They might not want to give us any bandwidth anymore. The question why am I the only one still holding on? Can then transform into how do I loosen my grip? And we can negotiate within ourselves at a minimum, the worthiness of loosening that grip on loyalty or letting go altogether. It is our personal responsibility to never let resentment fester. That resentment is an invitation for you to change something. And not in a month, and not in six months and not in years. It will eat you from the inside out. It will fester. Resentment is an invitation for you to change something now. So those are five Reasons, explanations I gave as to why our loyalty can become heavy or burdensome or hurtful or even resentful. I want to leave you with a sixth reason, but not of heaviness. One of lightness, of buoyancy. Loyalty can be beautiful, y'. All. It can be beautiful and it can be rather weightless. When loyalty is met with respect, honesty, love, mutual consideration, it can create unshakable bonds. It's a kind of emotional safety in knowing that someone is with you even when the world isn't. And that is powerful. If your loyalty and generosity are high and big, self respect is knowing that you are a rare gem. Everybody doesn't contain that kind of loyalty or the stuff that bakes a loyalty cake. Consider that you may be a very rare gem. Not weird because you're different or sensitive. There's nothing wrong with you because you're sensitive. What if you framed yourself like I've learned to frame me? I am a rare gem, y', all, and so are you, or you wouldn't be here listening. I know it like I know my first name. Come show up in the patreon and tell me I'm wrong. You are a rare gem. Which means you have always likely been looking for rare gems out in the world too. But you may have been settling for fake gold and glass. I recognize that I spent many, many, many years giving myself to people who were actually cut glass. And my delusion was hoping that by me pouring into them, they would one day become gem like. Then we could go skip into the sunset getting real and honest with myself about my part in the pain of betrayal, my part and not recognizing how far I let it go that that loyalty and respect went unreciprocated for me in many relationships. Owning this has helped me no longer fall for faux gems, y'. All. Now I know how to spot the real thing. And that is a safety and security that runs deep in me. Because my inner child looks up at grown up me and she can exhale. She knows that I'm paying attention to what's important to me. And because I have a big heart and I'm generous, I understand and accept that people who want to take advantage, they can smell me out. I can't change that. They can smell me out, but I can repel their efforts. I want to invite you to come check out the different ways available to work with me. I have options where you may work with me directly or dive into some self study or you may even want to participate in the new call in show. Now I teach boundaries and peace passionately. Because I know the liberation and the exuberance of waking up one day to realize I'm never going to feel like an angry, resentful, worthless doormat ever again. And while I can't bottle that feeling the way I would like to and just give it to you with a pretty bow, I am confident from the tips of my toes to the tips of my crazy hair that I can show you. I can teach you how to strategize and show up with healthiness for your inner and outer worlds until you know with fervor how to never, ever, ever participate in doormatting yourself ever again, how to minimize the potential for getting betrayed, and how to epically take care of yourself if and when you do. We all face risking with humans again and again. We are social creatures, even the most introverted. That's me calling myself out. And to be able to learn how to do that with more security. I don't even know how to put it into words. If you grew up like I did in an insecure childhood, to me there is nothing better. So come check out if you're curious and come find what's right for you. Come to emotionalbadass.com I am an emotional badass, you are an emotional badass. And together we are where moxie meets mindful. Light and love. Take care of your generosity and your loyalty and I'll see you next time right here or on the Patreon for a brand new episode. Light and love. I'll see you next time. Till then, take care. Bye bye.