Mind

Better Relationships

This is for anyone who has conflicts with someone they care about who wants to figure out ways to get out of those conflicts fast and productively. 
It’s about our emotional baggage – specifically the unmet needs from our childhood, and how those block us from being able to see and receive the love from people in our life currently.  I will focus on how to get out of conflicts and pain and move into happiness and get more of what you want. How to better love others and better encourage love back. 

It’s a set of tools to stay out of blaming and resenting and let go of what you think they should do. So that you can empower yourself to get to more of what you DO want – which is shared affection and happiness. 


Hi friends! I’ve been away for a bit because I got hitched! It was awesome and wonderful. And now I’m back!

I will do the usual 3 parts: The What, The Why, The How – the tools. And to be clear – this is about all relationships that involve conflicts between the needs of others and your own. About relationships that involve needs of others and your own – and when those don’t match up. 

For more check out TeaspoonOfHappy.com
Smile peeps! xo

This one’s for Lara from Spain – thanks for writing me girl! :) 


Episode 53: Love Languages: Overcoming Emotional Baggage So You Can Better Receive and Give Love

For those who can’t stop trying to convince themselves they’re bad with self-destructive actions. This one is for Nikki. 

Why do we destroy relationships with those who love us? Why do break our own trust, betray our own dreams, and rob ourselves of happiness and safety as soon as we get close to it. It’s a mystifying loop of behavior that has powerful effects on everything about our life: a chain reaction that keeps us hiding or running from the ugly truth of what we’ve done. 

Just like an addict, you live with a subconscious awareness that you will inevitably destroy whatever good you might have – and that anxiety is overwhelming and scary. Like a lurking future of pain awaits you just around the corner. Happiness is immediately blocked by the overwhelming sense of dread that it will soon be lost. And so you self-medicate the fear and cling more tightly to what you want so badly. 

When you do inevitably self-sabotage and act out in ways that betray your values and the values of your partner, the experience is laden with fear and the resulting shame is soul-crushing. Like you just woke up inside a nightmare. You have an almost separate self who is doing these things despite you. 

I want you to know there’s a simple reason behind your cycle of behavior that you must CHOOSE to learn. It’s not who you are, it’s a tactic that you learned to cope with unrelated pain and anxiety. There are three parts: the what, the why, the how.

Help Me Be Me takes hundreds of hours to create. If you get anything out of this show or it brings value to your life, please consider a monthly donation – even something as small as a cup of coffee helps immensely. To donate visit HelpMeBeMe.com or Patreon.com/SarahMayB  Thanks!


Ep 74: Self-Sabotage: Why We Betray Ourselves and Destroy Our Relationships

Oh shit. This is bad. I’m not wrong, they’re wrong. Ouch this hurts. I wish this wasn’t this way. Why does everyone hate me? I hate everyone. I am dreading going to this place. I wish I never dated that person. They’re probably talking shit about me.  I should be doing better by my age. I haven’t done anything with my life. No one loves me. I look like shit.

These are the voices of worry, shame, fear, regret, pain of various forms – the loops that play out and push us to solve for x or act according to x.  This is when you can’t find your way out of a situation and instead your life just gets smogged over by the situation: when you know that something is wrong and because of it, you feel terrible inside. Life suddenly loses its highlights.  You ask for advice, you work on plans to overcome it, you wish on it, pray on it, lament it, replay it, try to aggressively work on alleviating it, or you hide from it and numb it. And it thickens. It’s the one thing that really catalyzes a whole lot of other beliefs – and you can’t seem to figure out a workaround.  When an emotion sticks inside us it CONTROLS US and often pushes us to act on its behalf – like a little demon with a joystick inside your brain. 

So if this sounds vaguely familiar, this is an episode for you. There are three parts – the what, the why, and the how  - the tools! Before I go on I wanted to let everyone know about my second podcast called “Love is Like a Plant” with Ellen Huerta of Mend. She’s building an app to get you through a breakup. Check us out – it’s all about relationships and dating. Anyhoo. The what!

If you like what you hear and you want to support this show visit me on Patreon or head to HelpMeBeMe.com and click donate! xox

Ep 77: Something's Wrong: When Worry, Hurt, Stress and Sadness Make You Stuck

It’s really hard to stop yourself from helping someone out, doing it for them, giving your time and energy, saying what you said you wouldn’t do again, or diving in head first to a partner – especially when chemicals take over. Because that’s who you are! A giving and loving person! It can feel almost like a commitment to being true to yourself, because when you have all the understanding of someone’s voids – you feel compassion. And even if you didn’t want to try to make them happy or fix something, you feel obligated – mostly by yourself you’re your own inner voice. It’s also because you like them so much and you want to make them happy. 

To fight against this habit will feel wrong, unnatural. And super uncomfortable – and it makes others so happy. It’s a confusing dilemma – to NOT follow your instincts will make you might feel like you’re not being yourself. You want to be loving and give your best for someone you love. It’s a catch-22. And so the flip side of this is you end up doing it all: you’re the saver who comes to the rescue and others will continue to disappoint you on a loop. Like you’re surrounded by children. You end up feeling resentful toward others for not giving you the love and care and THANKS you deserve, but you can’t stop yourself from being there for them and helping them live better lives. It feels good to be helpful.

This end result leaves you and whoever else you are stuck to in life, fighting or empty – battling for love and care and attention. And you’re not asking so much at all – just for a tiny bit of love and support at SOME time in life. Or just for them to not be so destructive. 

This one’s for Ty – great topic! Thank you!

If this helps you in any way, consider making a monthly donation at HelpMeBeMe.com thanks! 


Ep 78: Codependency: I Need to Find Someone Who Will Make Me Whole

This is all about how to get the most out of your capacity and your life experiences as well as how to navigate the painful stuff. I want to talk about the growing of self, as it relates to culture and society – and how it has changed. Plus ways that you can begin to maximize your growth as a human. So this is all about you – and the way you grow yourself in this lifetime. Like a self-reflective path-tuning educational episode. 

This one’s dedicated to Rich and Aldana. Hope you like!! xo


Help Me Be Me

A Life Worth Living

Ep 79: In Living Color: Self-Examination Exercises to Get More Out of Experiences

This is an episode that I’ve been wanting to write for a while – because it’s something that reminds me of a very confusing and difficult time for me.  When I couldn’t find my voice, or access it. It’s a thing that happens to a lot of people – you can feel the thing you have to say and it’s just stuck inside your body. You can almost hear yourself screaming it, desperately trying to get it out. But your physical body doesn’t move. It’s like witnessing a silent victim trapped behind double mirrors in prison – why can’t they see me? Why can’t they hear me?

Wherever this is coming from – for you, I think I can help give you a bit of a leg up. Because I know how this feels – it’s traumatizing. The worst. Because it’s like you are doing it to yourself, and you are somehow the cause of your own horror – because of the fact that you can’t even stand up for yourself. It sets up a really heavy, powerful loop that compounds a new truth: I am hopeless. I am a liar. I am invisible. I am a coward. No one can see me suffering. No on can help me, including me. 

Wow – that got kinda dark, huh? Well it’s kinda that feeling – a deep, dark where no light reaches. Let’s get to some proactive information shall we? There are 3 parts, the what why and how – the tools.

Ep 88: What to do when you can’t speak your truth

Let’s say you’re not confident, which leads your to focus on others and accommodate their needs solely. Or you have been tipped off balance because there’s someone in your life that you want so bad and you feel like you can’t keep them so you’re doing whatever you can think of to keep them – but that’s creating a cycle where they pull away more. This is for you. It’s a recommended “core workout” in that it’s for regaining your inner strength. It starts with strengthening that relationship with yourself and a bond with yourself. Another term for it would be self-love. 
Heads up - this is an episode I recorded without a script so if something doesn't make sense, leave me a comment and I'd be happy to answer. 
If you liked this, please leave me a review on iTunes! For more of my work check out HelpMeBeMe.com xo

Ep 92: Confidence in Love - A Core Workout

Contrary to popular belief, fights are not better talked out to the bitter end and happiness and intimacy are not the result of more loving couples. It really comes down to how you manage these perpetual fights.  I want to give you the main reasons people end separating or remain happy and together - based a couple different disciplines of research. Because a lot of what is the most damaging, isn’t obvious or calculated by a person. It’s totally accidental. 

When we have the same arguments and we start to get distant, it’s often because we don’t want to fight and we have a sense of dread around a repeated loop, so the distance is like a no-war zone between two foreign cultures. And the SHITTY news is when you get distant, your relationship is actually in the most trouble – because both parties are no longer demonstrating an investment in the bond. This is when you stop identifying as a couple and you start thinking in terms of me, the individual. And with that solo identity you start to focus on goals as an individual and not as a couple. Your focus redefines your past together as crappy – you see things from a personal interest standpoint. So if you guys are feeling distant and resentful, this is an episode for you! 

Caveat: I want to stress that this is NOT for people with abusive partners. Domestic violence is not something that I recommend using these tools for – if you’re in an abusive relationship, my heart goes out to you. If you like this episode, check the Gottman Institute for more! A lot of this is from his work.

For more of my writing and the blog version of this post, check out Yaywithme.com (the blogs will be posted a bit later than the podcasts). 

Book references:
Couples counselor questionnaire:
goo.gl/zWndxG
How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It
http://amzn.to/2oOqmqP
John Gottman’s most popular book:
http://amzn.to/2o3HxHU
The Gottman Institute – all their good, short articles. 
gottman.com
A book by the creator of Imago:
http://amzn.to/2onby1d
What to look for in a couples counselor:
http://www.marriagefriendlytherapists.com/whattolookfor.php

Ep 93: Relationship Fight Loops and Distance: Why We Lose Access to Intimacy

Forgiveness is a monumental practice because it really guides a lot of what you believe in your life -about the world, love, relationships and also yourself. I’ve said this before but truly the reason to forgive is for you: because it’s kind of like being stabbed and then keeping that knife in your body. Forgiveness is something only you can decide you are ready to do, but it’s also something only appropriate in certain situations. It comes from a pure and genuine goal created for the right reasons, with all the practical information at hand. For example, you might want to forgive your ex for breaking your heart, but you can’t force that until you are ready to accept and move on. Another example of a situation that might be best left for processing but not forgiveness – is chronic abuse. This is a situation when we are likely to blame ourselves – so it’s really vital to lean into anger and claim that blame.  When it comes to other deep wounds, when we prematurely choose to forgive it’s often because some part of us wants to skip over the pain of confrontation – looking at how bad we really hurt. When we want to forgive because the emotions associated with a certain event bring us BELOW the level of who we know we are, that is a mature and profound decision – one made from your highest self. This is something we all get to choose: basically, to align ourselves with who we know we are. 

What I want to do with this episode is really pose that invitation in a way that might get you closer to the reality of processing or forgiving – or knowing where you need to place a hurt from your past. 

References:

Triumph of Heart
http://amzn.to/2pt308G

The science of forgiveness
http://www.salon.com/2015/08/24/the_science_of_forgiveness_when_you_dont_forgive_you_release_all_the_chemicals_of_the_stress_response/

Haven’t read this myself but this is by the guy who heads up the Stanford Forgiveness Project which does a lot of good research. 
http://amzn.to/2qZy5Tt

Ep 95: Forgiveness: How to let go of hurt and anger, and why to do it at all

Help Me Be Me is an emotional toolkit for creating positive change in yourself. I like to think of it as self-help for people who hate self-help. I'm Sarah May, coach/mom/all-around happy person, and these are the tools that work for me in my life. For all of my offerings you can check out YayWithMe.com What I share is my personal opinion. It's not a diagnosis for treatment or a substitute for professional help. If you're suffering, please reach out to your local emergency services or call 9-1-1. Music theme created by www.BookerHillMusic.com