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Emotional Badass
Why Stubborn People Are Actually Genius
00:27:55
Most empaths and highly sensitive people get labeled as stubborn, but this trait might actually be a superpower.
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Hello, welcome to the show. This is Emotional Badass, where moxie meets mindful. I'm your host, Nikki Eisenhower, life coach and psychotherapist. And on today's episode we're discussing getting positively stubborn. Nearly every empath and highly sensitive person I've ever worked with or known I could describe as stubborn. Yes, stubborn. I am incredibly stubborn. If you've been listening for a while and that surprises you to hear, I hope you listen all the way to the end. In today's episode, I'm breaking down how you can have a positive relationship with stubbornness and use it to your highly sensitive advantage. But first, let's talk about how most of the world relates to stereotypical stubbornness. There are the direct insults to stubbornness and I grew up hearing every single one. Were you called any of these names growing up? I was called hard headed, pig headed, bull headed, thick skulled, mule headed, blockhead. What's interesting to me is that most of this name calling around stubbornness references the head as if all stubbornness is created in or comes from the head. That's very interesting to me as someone who helps highly sensitive people get out of this headiness and get into what we call heart and body knowledge. So it's very interesting to consider for us as highly sensitive people because we're the feelers. Does our stubbornness actually come from our head or more from our feeling parts? What we feel in within ourselves and within any given situation? When I look back, much of my stubbornness was about how I felt as an instinct, as an intuition in my gut, my heart and my body. We don't have terms like hard hearted, but we do have hard headed. Isn't that interesting? I've said on the show countless times that we're living through a very heady time in the human condition because we're such a therapized population now and on TV and in social media, we're very heady and I, I don't think to our advantage. I think to our detriment. These terms that are exclusively describing stubbornness as some kind of headiness really supports this idea. So think about that as you consider your own stubbornness as we go through this episode. Maybe, like me, your stubbornness was seen as difficult. I was called difficult when I was showing stubbornness. When I was showing stubbornness, told I was being impossible, even ridiculous. The solid memory that comes to mind is me at about five to seven years old now. I was the eldest and had two younger sisters and I was stubborn about wanting an older brother. I would not let this go. I had an older male cousin I adored. If you tune into everything that I release, then you've likely heard me talk about, this is my male cousin who died this year from alcoholism. But I would not let up with my mother about wanting an older brother. Any chance that I got, I hammered her about wanting a brother. Any baby I saw became a question, can I have an older brother yet? To which my mother, exasperated, would exclaim, I can't even give you that if I wanted to. Nicky, you were the eldest. You can't get an older brother and I'm not having any more kids. No brother for you. You're not getting a brother. But I just would not concede her point. And here's a little side therapeutic note to consider when it comes to stubbornness. The tragedy in painting a highly sensitive child as stubborn is that the learning opportunities are lost. There are lost moments of potential, deeper connection and true intimacy that just get blown away by the winds of surface level parenting for a deep child. If my mother was cut from a different cloth, she might have sat me down and asked me some deeper questions. From the vantage point of surface level processing, it was easy to dismiss my brotherly stubbornness as cute kid stuff and, oh, Nikki's too young to get it about birth order and just kind of blow me off. When I look back at this moment in my life from a deeper place. If I would have had a more deeply processing mother who understood me more, who understood the constitution of who I was as a person, I might have been asked, why is this so important to you? Why do you want an older brother so badly? To which I might have said, even at those very young ages, to play with me, to protect me, to teach me about being strong. I like to wrestle and have my physical strength challenged by my cousin. The stronger I was, the safer I felt. Is the truth at this time in my life, at the time, that I wanted this in a stubborn fashion, this brother, my stubborn wanting ramped up. It didn't ramp down. At this time, what was going on in my life was I was being told that my biological father wanted to kidnap me and my sisters, and he wanted to take us away from everyone and everything we ever knew. I would never see my mother or my grandparents again. He would take us to Italy. He was fluent and leave us for dead. That's what I was being told about my very father. So in wanting an older brother, I. I was accused of being stubborn, pigheaded, ridiculous and difficult. The deeper truth beneath me wanting an older brother Was that I didn't have a safe father. He wasn't safe for me anymore. And my smart little mind was trying to correct for that in the best way little me could figure out. I don't remember this in this way, but I imagine a light bulb going off over my little kid head at a point, trying to make sense of all that was happening around me. And the best I could figure out was that an older brother was what I needed, somebody to help me carry this burden that was put on my shoulders. It was put on me that it was my job to keep my sister safe when we were outside or walking to and from school. That was put on me at very young and tender ages to see me as stubborn, as stubbornly wanting a brother, missed who I was and what I was going through and what I was really asking for. I was asking for protection, I was asking for safety, I was asking for security, and I was asking for help. So when I ask you if you've been raised to believe you're stubborn, to look back and not just look back on the surface, but to look back deeper and ask yourself why? What was going around you to make you so? Was this a pure negative stubbornness? Or were there reasons for your stubbornness? Reasons you were digging in? When we are stubborn, society can easily label us as difficult, impossible, thick as an insult, uncooperative, dumb even, defiant, obstinate, headstrong in ways that are difficult for other people. Let's be real. When we're stubborn, we're basically told we're a pain in the ass. I was none of these things. And I was none of these things when I was specifically being stubborn about wanting an older brother. But I didn't have adults around me that were able or willing to figure out my depth. So I had trouble figuring out my depth. If you've been told you were stubborn your whole life, you might have heard phrases like, you never listen to anybody else. You always have to have it your way. You're so set in your ways, you can't take direction or work on a team. You're too intense, you don't know when to quit. You might have even been described as rigid, inflexible, resistant, oppositional, willful, contrary. You might have been dismissed with phrasing like, there you go again. If I would make a really good point in the way my mom would call stubborn a good point, that she couldn't deflate like a balloon, that really meant she had to do something for me or change something about her behavior, she'd often Say to me to shut me down. And boy, did it work. You just always think you're right, don't you, Nikki? Which confused the hell out of me. Was I right? Was I wrong? When she was saying that? I couldn't tell. I knew that I didn't try to always be right, but I also wanted to speak up and be heard. I also thought it was smart and right to make a good point. I wouldn't speak up to try to make a poor point. And I couldn't understand, is this good about me or bad about me? I don't know. This way of shutting me down gave me shame about having a strong, critically thinking and intelligent mind that could be stubborn about what I deemed worthy of being stubborn about. Maybe you heard you're being unreasonable. When I was told this, it was toward me compromising, which was confusing to me. And I didn't like it because I didn't see reciprocal compromise often as the eldest, I was told that I needed to compromise, which really meant give in to what your sisters want because they're whining and you're the eldest, so make them be quiet by you giving them what they want. There was no compromising in my direction. What I saw and understood as a child that helped me become a people pleaser was that I was taught to be reasonable when I was stubborn. And I took that to mean that I should give up what I want to make other people happy. That me being liked by other people meant me being easier on other people and making it easier, which meant not being stubborn, not having an opinion and not getting my way and not negotiating my way, just fully giving up and letting other people have their way. It was a one way kind of compromising on my end. That's not the spirit of compromise. That's not a true honest definition. But compromise started to mean to me that I should give in and give up and not rock the boat. And we wonder why so many highly sensitive people who maybe were strong in their opinions about what they like and what they don't like, what they want and what they don't want, what is okay and what is not okay. Maybe they had a deep, solid sense of this. Maybe the adults didn't know how to hear this or how to honor it. I learned it should be easy for other people and that should be the priority over whatever stubborn desire I was wanting or experiencing. I. I also heard you're making it harder than it needs to be. Why won't you just go along with what I want? I was around a lot of people that really thought it was right to dominate me. And I had an innate sense of not being dominated. So understand this if you're resonating with stubbornness as a topic today. Many highly sensitive people happen to be raised by people with narcissistic traits, no matter where they are on the continuum from low grade to massive. Now, I'm a believer that people with narcissistic traits self absorption that makes it very difficult to see a child for their own life, the their own being that that child is. I said for many years that I don't believe narcissists have children. They have extensions of themselves because they are godlike. Narcissism is the godlike disorder. They believe they are infallible. If a God births something that is an extension of them, it's part of why nothing's ever good enough. You're an extension of me who is godlike. You should be godlike. How dare you make a mistake. How dare you think of things your way and not do them the way I think is right as the big primal God. That's how it feels to grow up under someone with these traits. And if the narc doesn't have children and what I mean by that, they certainly produce children. But healthier, more mature, less self absorbed parents tend to have a better understanding that their children are here to grow into being their own people. They are not just minions for whatever the parents want. They are their own being with their own temperament, with their own dreams, their own ideas for their own lives. They will grow up and they will differentiate from the family to be able to have their own family. Narcissists don't see this reality. They don't act within this reality. They don't see you as a separate and full being because of their own dysfunction, not because of you. We are very grateful to have Air Doctor sponsor this episode, y'. All. I love my Air Doctor Air purifiers. We have one in the bedroom that we run every single night. I cannot express to you how much you can actually walk into the room and feel that the air is clean. 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This is part of why a narcissistic parent expects you to be entirely okay, even happy with letting them run an agenda, letting them decide your life for you and control your life, because your life doesn't really belong to you in their mind. It's an extension of them and you should obey. So for a narcissist, a highly sensitive child is a difficult child for them to have. That child doesn't go along so easily because a smart, emotionally deep, questioning or stubborn child is the kind of free thinking, free feeling, insight having individual that is so different than the person with narcissistic traits. Basically, I showed to my mother the traits of me growing up and in the future, differentiating away from her and away from the family system. This is how we break the cycles in our families, y'. All. A hard truth is that narcissistic parents are not vested in us breaking the cycles that they themselves have not broken. In fact, they're quite offended. Those of you who are parenting children know this. Narcissistic parents are wildly offended when you don't Raise your own children exactly how they raised you. When you say, no, we're doing things a little differently. Even when you explain your reasons, they tend to be very offended because it means that their way wasn't perfect. And that really is the expectation that they have is that they are seen as perfect. So a narcissistic parent feels very, very challenged by a highly sensitive child's stubbornness. So squashing this independent thinking and independent being, squishing it so that you're more submissive, very much works for this parent, this temperament and this style of person. It's why so many of us who are raised by narcissists are people pleasers. We are actually groomed by our parents to please them, to serve them. They want their children operating under a belief system that says, whatever you want, parents, I'll go along with whatever you deem is happening around me. I am not my own being. I'll be the kind of extension of you that you want me to be. I won't rock your boat by being my own person. Stubbornness and insight may be the kryptonite that shows up in the child of a narcissist. That may be what it takes to ultimately break those cycles of dysfunction. So let's take back the power and the beauty of our stubbornness. Let's look at its strengths. So if you are stubborn, could it be true that you are just resolute, that you are tenacious about your vision for your one precious life on the big scale and on the daily small scale minutia? Are you persistent? Are you resilient, unwavering in who you are, steadfast, strong? It takes a strength to come up with a belief, to hold onto it, to stand in it, to live from it. Maybe when society looks at you or your family looks at you and says, ugh, so stubborn. Maybe you're just very clear about who you are and what you want. Maybe you're very clear about what you don't want and who you don't want to be and what you will and will not allow. Now, I've often described highly sensitive people as the reluctant leaders in the world. Those of you who are out there that have worked any program with me, that have worked individually with me, you've likely had this conversation with me that I have likely told you you have the qualities of a reluctant leader. We are not the people that elbow into the room in a loud, overtaking, bombastic way and go, I'm going to lead this ship. We sit back, we observe, we take it all in we see who's leading, we see how it can be done better, and we know how it can be done better. And some of us then raise our hand or walk up to the podium to take a leadership role. Do you see how any leader would have to have some positive stubbornness to be able to lead themselves into that position, much less lead anybody else? So maybe if you've thought of stubbornness as some kind of negative in your life, maybe this is the reframe you've always been looking for or didn't know you needed. I might see you as dedicated, relentless in the most wonderful ways, goal oriented, single minded and decisive, ambitious, persevering, willing to speak up, willing to rock these human boats. The beautiful side of stubbornness is the expression of these character traits. Highly sensitive people that are stubborn are also loyal and stubborn about their loyalty, sometimes to their detriment, sometimes towards lifelong relationships. We tend to have a stubbornness with being consistent and conscientious. Highly sensitive people. We're certainly not perfect, but we value reliability. We want people who are reliable in our lives, and we tend to show up and require ourselves to be reliable. We a certain sprinkling of stubbornness. We tend to be stubborn in our authenticity. Y'. All, I almost cannot say a lie. I mean, I'm sure if my life depended on it, I could muster it, but even that would be hard for me. I don't like lying. It makes me feel sick, it makes me feel gross, it makes me feel icky. I'm stubborn. I look back on my life and think, my goodness, I would have made that moment in my life so much easier if I just would not have stubbornly spoken up. But I respect my own moral compass and the person that I am every time I do. We can be stubbornly true to ourselves. If we're not being stubbornly true to ourselves, what the hell are we doing? Without the negativity associated with stubbornness, you might be described as never giving up, staying the course, paving your path, fighting for what you believe in. You might be described as someone who doesn't compromise their values. I love this one because compromise in everyday society is sort of like hope. I teach dysfunctional hope in the boundaries course. Maybe I need to add dysfunctional compromise when compromise is skewed and we're not balancing compromise, where I'm compromising a little and you're compromising a little and we're coming together in the middle. I'm going to call that dysfunctional compromise. One way compromise is not compromise. We don't Always need to compromise. Just like we don't always need to always have hope if hope is being used like it's being thrown down a black hole. So maybe beautiful, stubborn one out there, you don't compromise your values. And I love that about you. I love it about me. You might also be described as somebody with a backbone. Is there anybody out there in 2025 that really wants to be described as backbone? Less. And if you struggle to fortify your backbone, has it ever been positive for you to not have one or to have a soft backbone? No. We want to have a hard, stoic, strong, not bendy backbone and recovering people pleasers. Can you hear it in how I'm describing it? My goodness. Do we really need to connect with this idea and give permission to feel the strength of an unwavering backbone, to not back down? Stubborn people know how to stand their ground. How many times in this life has this life shown up to challenge you to stand your ground? When we're stubborn, what if that's the muscle building of being able to stand our ground all of our lives for what counts, what really matters? This kind of positive stubbornness describes visionaries, pioneers, trailblazers. I have described listeners of this show as seekers. May we all be positively stubborn about how we seek and seek with more positivity than ever before. Trailblazers are the people in society who truly innovate. They're bold, they're courageous, and sometimes courageous to hold on to their ideas. When I look back at the show, we went through the COVID years. It was terrifying for me, but I was convicted to publicly share with y' all that I would not be goaded into brand new medicine to put a vaccine into my body just because people were frightened. The stubborn have conviction. They have unshakable faith. They tend to have a strong moral compass. Certainly true of me. And I haven't always known that this was a good thing. I have grown into becoming my own authority figure. I practice what I preach, y'. All. I have refused to settle for less. Thank you, stubbornness. And I have chosen again and again and again to protect what matters. So ask yourself this. If anyone has ever accused you of being negatively stubborn, maybe even your own self, did this person or part want to control you, want you to stay small, not change, not grow? Did this person or part see your stubbornness as a threat to how much they want to control your mind, your decision making? Do they want you to be your best self, your expansive self, or a small, contained self that's easier for them to manage and is that fair and right for you? I am inspired by and respect when I see someone healthily stubborn. I love seeing the look on someone's face when they disparage their own stubbornness and I go, wait a minute, I actually love your stubbornness. And their head jerks back like, what? What planet am I on? What did you just say? I trust stubborn people to be who they are. Principled, strong, reliable, grounded. I'm not talking about an immature adolescent. That's just being stubborn just to be stubborn. Because that's the most powerful they've ever felt. That's a stubbornness that will not serve you or anybody. How do you feel about your own stubbornness today and historically? How has your stubbornness developed? Do you use your stubbornness in the light or in the dark? What I mean by that is, do you use it to make your life better? Letting your wisdom guide your stubbornness? Does your stubbornness have a maturity problem? Hunkering down to protect the ego? Being stubborn just to be stubborn instead of stubborn towards your highest good? If you are not comfortable or proud of your relationship with being stubborn, how could you become proud? What would you need to do differently? What would need to change internally and externally for you to be peaceful and yes, proud of that stubbornness, that backbone? Does your stubbornness live within healthy boundaries or is it out of control? September's Livestream Q and A is on emotional boundaries. If you're on the fence about joining the boundaries intensive this year that I teach live for six weeks, this is a great low, almost no cost experience to jump into that Patreon. You can jump right out again if that's not your thing, but you can jump in there to interact with me live. That'll give you a good taste or sampling about interacting with me in the boundaries intensive. What happens if you make peace and make positive your relationship with stubbornness? Come let me know in the Patreon discussion for this episode, y'. All, and also please share the show. If you think there is someone in your world who would benefit from listening to this episode or any, please take that extra step. Y' all really are our most effective marketing team that we have ever had from the beginning. If there's someone who would benefit from this or any episode, please take a moment, send them a text, send them an email, share this episode or share the show. Thank you so very much. Light and Love. I am an emotional badass. You were an emotional badass and together we are where moxie meets mindful. Till next time, take care of yourselves out there and maybe, just maybe have a different relationship with your own stubbornness. And I'll see you right here next time for a brand new episode. Bye bye.
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