Today's blog is about forced transitions, that will inevitably happen when you start listening to your body, speak your mind, set healthy boundaries, and live a more authentic life that is true to your own values. Apart from the setbacks, the exhaustion, and the anxiety, one of the great benefits of going through burnout, is that it is an opportunity to redesign your life, to live it more fully and embrace yourself wholeheartedly. Transforming into a version of you that is much closer to who you really are or aspire to be. Transformations like that, will always affect your social environment. Dealing with that: how your social environment responds to the new you, is what this story is about.
In all honesty, I have always been that one person in the group who would speak up even others didn’t. But one of the bigger changes after my burnout, and moving into motherhood, was learning to set boundaries that actually protect me. I became less flexible in the places where I used to overgive because I wanted to be perfect, and more open about what I feel, what I need, and what I can’t carry. Those changes have kept me healthier and more grounded than I’ve ever been, but they’ve also brought more friction with people who expect flexibility and adaptation to their style of leadership. Motherhood on top of that added the last layer. As my good friend Dr. Renske van Geffen once said to me: "Being a mom makes you incapable of tolerating bullshit", and that really is the case.
Today’s blog is a rewritten version of a talk I gave to my yoga community in the past few weeks, as I was teaching my last classes there. About a month ago, the studio owners told me that they did not want to work with me any longer because they felt I was "too difficult". Where other people would flexibly say yes and adjust to their requests, I would set boundaries and ask them to take into consideration how their decisions affected my life, and ask for opportunities to share feedback (both ways) and discuss tensions.
After being fired from the studio, I worked through the process of rejection, and at the end of it, I felt like it would be a useful experience for myself, and for others, if I openly shared it. So here is that talk:
About How to Work Through Rejection
"Today I want to talk to you about something personal, and I’ll start by saying that there’s a part of me that’s scared of overloading anyone or putting too much emotion or pressure into the room, and I want to emphasize, that this is not the goal of this talk. I’m not sharing this to get support or compassion. The goal is to model openness and authenticity also when things don’t go my way, and thereby allowing other people to feel seen and normal if they go through similar things.
A few weeks ago, I was let go from the yoga studio. And not in a “can we give you feedback so you can improve” kind of way. There was no warning, no conversation, no attempt to talk things through. It was just the plug being pulled. I have worked here for 6 years, and have always tried to initiate a kind dialogue, but those requests were avoided until the conversation where I was let go.
And to me, both as a human and as someone with a background in organizational psychology, that’s simply not how you’re supposed to run a business or a team. Working together requires openness, feedback, and clear communication. However, I am aware that this open attitude I have, sometimes triggers fear and avoidance in others. And sometimes the consequences of being the one who speaks up, is that this makes other people so uncomfortable, that they’d rather cut ties than have the difficult conversations.
I share this with you, because even though my rational mind knows that this was a mismatch of views, of characters, which is nobody's fault, I still felt rejected. I had to work through the feeling of rejection, and I think that is a useful experience to share, because if you are re-learning to set clear boundaries and be more open, it is inevitable you will run into friction as well. And that does not mean you are doing anything wrong. It simply means you are changing.
The first thing that hit me was shame
“What was happening? How could this be happening to me? How could they think so low of me, that they thought the only way out was to fire me? Did I do something wrong? Had I been ‘too much’? Oh my God, what would people think??” Shame is such a social emotion, and when you don’t share it with anyone, it eats you alive. So I knew I needed to deal with shame at some point, but I parked it for later because it felt like too much.
Because in came grief
Grief for losing this yoga community, for losing the CrossFit community downstairs to the studio, where I was training three times a week with my friends, and the loss of the space where I do my coaching: all at the same time. This decision, which wasn’t mine, resulted in a huge loss that cut at multiple angles and required me to redesign my whole daily (work) life. There was sadness about not having had the opportunity to rectify a lot of assumptions that were made about me that were based on misunderstanding. But also dealing with being seen as ‘difficult’ because I speak my mind, and ‘unmotivated’ because I set clear boundaries. That feeling of being ‘judged’ a certain way and not being seen for the deeply caring, highly motivated person that I am, made me sad. So on the first day, I just sat with the grief and the sadness.
On the second day came anger
Because I wanted to defend myself and move out of the sadness. The first day there was still a part wondering, “Did I do something wrong? Should I have done something differently?” On the second day I went over all the WhatsApp conversations we had like an obsessive researcher, and I came to the conclusion that actually no, there wasn’t much I could have done better. So I felt anger, for having been made responsible for a mismatch between personalities, and having to shoulder the burden of the consequences alone.
I separated the anger that belonged to my past through working with Internal Family Systems Therapy. I became aware of the part of me that just lashes out when I feel deeply rejected for being who I am. The part that wants to over-explain, defend myself, and run away. And I realized that underneath, is a deep desire for acceptance. Which is something to really be felt and worked with, because if you want to be unapologetically yourself, people will always disagree with you, dislike you, and even reject you. And the only way to accept that, is to:
- fully accept yourself, and
- realize that other people's judgements have much more to do with their own struggles and insecurities, than with yours
Then came the Distraction
I would like to say that this is how it went from there on, I accepted myself, and that was that. But it required a few steps. First, putting everything I felt angry about and wanted to say on paper. Second, going out dancing to get out of my head and come back to my body. Third, getting pulled into a flirtation with a stranger. And fourth, realizing how strongly a part of me was being pulled towards this distraction, which showed me that I wasn't really there yet. Because even though I am committed to work with my feelings: when I feel really really uncomfortable and rejected, the pull of losing myself in the positive attention of someone else is strong. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with a bit of healthy distraction. We don’t need to marinate in our emotions all the time. But you can feel if it is healthy distraction because you have processed your stuff, or obsessive distraction because there is still something to be worked with (in my case: shame).
Then came the Clarity
I realized I had to get back to my anger. Because we do not need to get rid of anger, just heal our childhood wounds and be calm for the rest of our lives. I find that anger is a very useful emotion. Because anger is perceived injustice. Sometimes that perception has mostly to do with your own wounds, and sometimes anger flags a moral boundary. What remained was a very clear, grounded anger of, “Hey, certain moral boundaries were crossed, and it's okay to stand up for yourself.” After I allowed myself to feel that, I was free to share my story with others, and I knew what I still wanted to say to the people who fired me without getting defensive or judgmental.
I set up a talk with them where I listened to their views and shared my own, and although this was a very uncomfortable conversation on my part, and it did not go the way I wanted it to go or planned it to go (compassionate, understanding, non-defensive, open), I was very happy that I did it anyway. The most important lesson I learned again, was that we need to focus on what we can control, and the reactions of other people are simply not part of what we can control. As the Stoics would say: control the controllables. Or as it was later beautifully rephrased by Reinhold Niebuhr:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Reinhold Niebuhr
After that came connection
In the lead-up to the final conversation I had with them, I talked to several people who used to work here or still work here, and they helped me understand how they struggle(d) with exactly the same things. That gave me a true feeling of support and connection, and this helped me to work through the shame. Saying what happened out loud just loosens the grip shame has on you. And because I’ve worked through the grief, the sadness, the anger, noticed the distraction, and the shame, I’m able to share this now with an open and clear heart. I’m still touched, but I’m not overwhelmed. I feel free. What happened will not affect how I view new (work) relationships. No new protective patterns, fears, and trust issues will emerge because of this.
And hopefully that is the most important message of this talk. Rejection is an experience to be felt and worked through. It's such a complex mix of emotions that all deserve attention in order to be let go. And it’s only when we can feel all these things and be okay with them, to watch how we respond without judgment, that we can be truly honest and vulnerable about those emotions with other people, and we can be unapologetically ourselves.
Being unapologetically myself has cost me this job. And if my former employers were to read this blog, it might even affirm their judgment of me, and that is really okay. I am not attached to how they view me, and I am not attached to this job. I will miss all the people it connected me to, and I will work to find a way to teach other classes so we will meet again, but I seek refuge in the attitude of non-attachment:
In Yoga, Non-Attachment is so often misunderstood as:
“don’t feel things,” just relax and be calm.
But that’s not what the Bhagavad Gita teaches. One of my favourite lines is:
“Those who are motivated only by the desire for the fruits of action are miserable,for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do.
Seek refuge in the attitude of detachment,
and you will amass the wealth of spiritual awareness.”
Bhagavad Gita 2.47–48
For me, detachment is not about numbing out or pretending something doesn’t hurt. Detachment is about practicing satya, truthfulness: being honest with yourself, allowing yourself to feel the full reality of your experience, and then letting it move through you without gripping the outcome. Without demanding a certain response. Without controlling how others react. Without knowing what the future will hold. If we let go of that control, we are free. Letting go of that control is my teacher. It is something I need to learn over and over again, and it is the reason I wrote this blog.
I know the best thing I can do for myself is use difficult experiences like these as my practice to become more authentic and grounded while not expecting others to always respond in a positive way, and then teach it with humility. Offering others the opportunity to learn through my experience, without any hope or expectation of whether or not that ever happens ;-).
So… take a moment to feel whatever it is you feel right now. Whether this story resonated with your own experience, or also if it didn’t because you are new to this class or blog and part of you goes: what the hell? Whatever you feel is okay. Let it be noticed. Let it move through you. And if you notice any questions popping up in your head, I will be very happy to answer those."
If setting boundaries has been a struggle for you, feel free to reach out for coaching.
With love,
Inge