If I'm So Strong, Why Do I Feel So Weak?

Helping Those Who Help Others Help Themselves

Eleanor Miller

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781683506430
• eBook ISBN: 9781683506447
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Mental Health & Wellbeing

This unique self-help guide speaks directly to those who excel at caring for others yet still need to learn how to take care of themselves.
From rescue workers who saves lives for a living to full-time caregivers who provide essential support, people who live lives of service to others often lose sight of their own needs. All too often, the thought of taking time for themselves leaves them feeling selfish. But it is possible to help yourself while still helping others. In fact, it's essential.
In If I'm So Strong, Why Do I Feel So Weak?, Reiki Master and Interfaith Minister Eleanor Miller offers guidance on important self-care skills like setting healthy boundaries and saying no without feeling guilty. Written with compassion and wisdom, this book will put readers on the path to finding their own voices and recognizing their own importance.

Chapter 1

What is Your Faction?

“Categorical labeling is a tool that humans use to resolve the impossible complexity of the environments we grapple to perceive.”

– Adam Alter from Psychology Today

Labels, labels, labels! I believe that everyone has at least two and sometimes many more. You were given labels and have carried them with you since early childhood!

You see, your labels are lovingly given to you when you are first born. Your parents, grandparents, siblings, family and friends all are so willing to partake in this ancient pastime. These labels may begin with being gender specific and then move onto personality characteristics. Anything you do that goes against these labels may be perceived as you acting in a negative way.

It appears that humanity has always liked to put people into categories. This is a tradition that was passed down for generations and is still going strong. The attraction about labeling is it is believed to be your truth. It is supposed to make life so much easier for you and those you first meet. It makes life easier for you, because you now know who people expect you to be. These labels also allow others to know exactly who you are, as well as let them know your strengths and weaknesses. How wonderful for society to pass down, from the first generation to our time now, this way of categorizing through labels. It has allowed us to conform and be who and what we are meant to be.

As per the bible, Cain and Abel were the first generation born into humanity. They were given labels of evil, self-centered, good, loving, slacker, hard worker, instigator and peacemaker. Even though we have never met them, we know who they are and what they were all about through their labeling. You see now how easy it is for all those you meet, to know who you are prior to getting to even meet you! Just by learning of your labels through family, friends, and coworkers.

We have been taught who we are through our gender labels. How wonderfully easy this makes it for both women and men. With our labels come attached duties or actions so that we always know the roles we need to play. The men are the hunters, warriors, the stronger sex. The women who are weaker physically and mentally, need to do only the soft and tender things. Men are the fixers and women are the boo-boo kissers and peacemakers. Add to that your personality labels and characterizations and there you stand, transparent and clear for all the world to see.

Society in its many ways still holds true to this pastime. When meeting someone new, we all have the belief that we know who the person is prior to our meeting just from the many labels we have heard that were given to them. For example, all someone needs to say about me is, meet Eleanor, Chick’s daughter. Voila! His friends may feel like they instantly know me from the labels they have heard I have been given.

I hope by now you realize that I am being a bit sarcastic in my approach to how society did and still does us all a favor with categories and labeling. All this categorizing reminds me of the movie Divergent. It is a movie that depicts a society, where once you become of age you are mandated to pick one group to live out the rest of your life with. There are five groups that society deems beneficial and acceptable for you to choose from. The one which you were born into and four others. You do not know much about the other groups, but a mind test is performed on you and tells you which group you would fit into the most, per your thoughts and beliefs. Once a specific group is picked, you are to take on all the labels, beliefs, and personalities of this group and hold them as your own for the rest of your life. If you should happen to choose to leave your group to go into another, no interaction at all is allowed with old family or friends. Society keeps them unconnected. You are to only be with your kind. There is only one way of thinking, allowing you to fit in always. Only group speak, never straying, never changing, always just being, for fear of becoming an outcast. This is supposed to make life’s choices so easy for you, as you have all the answers of how you are to act and think. Any thoughts or actions outside these parameters, or by not choosing a group, makes you an outcast of society! This included having an understanding and some beliefs of all the groups. You are only to act in one way and not be divergent, a free thinker, with individual thoughts.

Trusting no one, never feeling close and always afraid of being judged or deemed as unworthy. I, for one, do see so many similarities between the fictional world depicted in the movie and ours. Where individuality can be frowned upon and you can be made to feel like an outcast. Not fitting into any group at all. Do we need to really fit into any one group? Is individualism that bad?

You do have your own unique personality and you are always learning what works or does not work for you. Why then, do your labels never change? You seem to hold onto your labels so tightly and have such fear or guilt when you do not follow through with their dictated actions. You may also find that if a label is stressed by someone which goes against the ones given to you, an instant panic can happen. Action is usually quickly taken to change that negative label, to one that is believed to be more fitting, positive and acceptable. Convincing the person involved that even though we may have slipped, that is not who we really are. We want nothing but what society deems as positive. For example, especially for women, if you stress a point on a project while at work, you may be taken as being bossy or bitchy/overly assertive. You do not want to be perceived as being nasty or on the rag, so now you find yourself overcompensating, losing confidence or apologizing for something unnecessarily.

Whew, thank God for labels, for where would you be without them! How would we ever know who we are supposed to be? Caregiver, nurturer, someone who will drop everything for someone, a good student, a good person who helps everyone and speaks for the underdog. She is so quiet and easy to please, she causes no problems and so on and so on. These are the labels that are for the world to see, to show that you do indeed fit into a mold acceptable to all! How amazing you are! How proud you feel to grow up knowing all of this. You believe in these labels with all your being and the world sees you as this!

Just follow me for a few moments and imagine yourself in the following situations. Imagine that your journey of labels began at birth. You are an only girl born into a family with four older brothers. Now, I am almost positive that in this situation, if I ask them, they will say that you are and were so spoiled. It seems most brothers gripe about this consistently from day one until the day you die. But, because you are always hearing this, you have taken on the challenge of disproving this label, by proving yourself consistently in everything you do. You are always proving to yourself and others that you can and will do, without help, the task at hand.

And so, you see yourself growing up in this middle-class family, your father works two jobs to provide all the necessities in life, including a private school education. Your parents do things the best way they know how. Your dad’s way is to make you better at everything you do. He understands that you being a female, you need to do certain things in life. His way is to show you what is wrong, so you can fix the problem or situation.

Imagine bringing home your end of the year report card while finishing eighth-grade. You are so proud you brought home three A pluses, one A minus, and the rest regular As with a college reading level. You see yourself running home from school, showing first your mother. She gives you kudos telling you that you should go and show your dad. He of course, is at the bar. It is still early enough, as he is working his part-time job there. He does not drink while working. You run down the block and burst into that bar, so excited to show him what you have accomplished. Reaching for his glasses, he puts them on and studies the report card so carefully. After what seems like forever, you eagerly interrupt his inspection with, “Well, what do you think?” Awaiting a good pat on the back, he turns to you, without even a smile and says, “Why aren’t they all A pluses? I know you can do better than this.” And now you feel, in that moment, as if all the people in that bar are staring at you. They are giving you the look of, you are such a failure. You are so embarrassed. Talk about feeling instantly defeated and deflated. You believed this would have made him proud. Never thinking anyone could find fault in this. Now, you leave with the feeling of you are not good enough and what is worse is that now everyone knows it.

This causes you to doubt everything you do. It makes you question if you are capable of ever being great. It makes you a thinker of all the possibilities of what may or may not go wrong in any situation which life may offer. Always having to prove yourself and needing to be better than any expectations you could think of. Being number two, or God forbid, number three, is appalling and means you are a failure.

This feeling of having to be perfect started at such a young age. It was even reinforced in school. That private school was going to make you the best you could be! So much pressure to be perfect in everything you do that you passed out in your second-grade class. The sheer fright that came over you when you saw Sister Philemona swinging that yard stick over her head and hitting the student in front of you. He did not know the answer to the question he was asked. You’re next in line and doubting yourself, you are not one hundred percent sure. Bam! To the floor! That was so much easier than the berating and beating you would have taken. You do not dare tell your parents about the beatings in school, as you believe that you deserve to be punished for not knowing everything. Psychological warfare at its best and what a good little soldier you are! You can see now, why you would have anxiety when you are put on the spot! You are so afraid of being judged and embarrassed by failure. You are always supposed to be smart and know the answers to everything. To be the one who pleases and not disappoints anyone.

As a young child, you try constantly to please your father. Even though he was mostly unavailable to you. Often coming home drunk, stumbling down the block. Being so young and with your friends, you distracted them away from views of him or put on a smile and made a joke out of it as it tears you up inside. You feel the stares and swear you can hear the judgments, even if it was just in your thoughts. These looks are horrible, they make you believe that they feel sorry for you for having a father like that. If only you could make him happy; he would not drink. Then, he and your mom would get along so much better. They argue so much when he is drunk, which is almost always. You feel stuck in the middle and know in your young mind that there must be something you could do to fix this. There will be a fight in the house tonight. You try protecting your mom by talking to your dad and vice versa. Doesn’t always work.

All these labels and categories come with values for you that you need to follow. Always having to be what you are told to be. You find out that you are only human and will never be special or worthy enough. How disappointing to learn as a young child that you will never be humble enough or ever be good enough.

My question for you now, which group do you choose? Do you wish to be the Divergent one? Some people call them outcasts, and then others call them trailblazers. The choice is yours. You can be in a faction or be a trailblazer.

I had a client who I asked this question of. She just looked at me and broke down for a moment. Having grown exhausted of being trapped in a specific group and its predetermined mold was causing her to have a burning desire to break free of the expectations that everyone else has of her. She was always told she was the wild one and capable of getting whatever she wanted. She was tired of living the lie that she outgrew so long ago. She knew deep down that was not how she truly felt, but no one wanted to believe her. She just wanted people to care for her needs and know that she needed tenderness too.

After speaking to her it was easy to see, that she was looking for the tenderness and respect that she felt she never had. Feeling her family life and work were going down the drain. My client had become depressed, not wanting to do anything or be around anyone. Every...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction: Finding Your Authority
• Chapter 1: What is Your Faction?
• Chapter 2: I’m Sorry I’m Such a Biotch
• Chapter 3: How Are You So Good
• Chapter 4: Fear Not
• Chapter 5: Stop Apologizing
• Chapter 6: Happiness Comes from Within
• Chapter 7: Change Your Story, Change Your Life
• Chapter 8: Taking A Shortcut
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Thank You