Episode 017: When The Oxygen Mask Comes Down

You’ve heard the airline rule that when the oxygen mask comes down you need to prioritize yourself before others—I think the same is true in friendships and relationships. When you prioritize yourself, you’re doing so not only selfishly, but you’re doing it for the impact on the other person as well. In today’s episode, I’m diving into why prioritizing yourself is important, how to keep an eye out for red flags of when you’re not a priority, and I’m sharing a challenge you can do this week to start prioritizing yourself.

Review the Show Notes:

Prioritizing Yourself in Friendships (2:33)

Is this still hurting you? (5:30)

Seeing Signs in Your Friendships (9:27)

How Prioritizing Yourself in Your Friendships will Make Your Friendships a Priority (12:56)

Prioritizing Yourself in Family Relationships & Setting Boundaries (14:08)

You Don’t Have to Give Give Give (25:25)

Challenge for You (28:20)

Review the Transcript

Welcome to some place for everybody where we talk about belonging and being a human in our bodies and living in and learning to love our bodies. I’m your host, Carly someplace. This podcast is brought to you by someplace images, boudoir for everybody, you can see the full show notes at some place for everybody.com. Now, let’s change some self perspectives.

Hi, y’all, I’m so excited to bring you another episode.Oh my goodness, so much amazing feedback from the past few episodes. And I just want to heartfelt say, Thank you for listening. And thank you all of the ratings and reviews, if you’ve had anything resonate with you, please, please feel free to rate and review or leave me comments, even emails and the messages that I’ve got, honestly just makes me so incredibly happy to have you reach out and tell me that this is resonating with you. So I want to say a big thank you at the start for that in general, it really, it’s really cool. It feels really, really cool. So I want to chat today on a very important subject, something incredibly near and dear to my heart and something that I’m still working on every day as well. And this is prioritizing yourself. So we all you know, get the you can’t pour from an empty cup. And when you’re doing too much, you know, you’re not being able to best serve others, or serve yourself. And of course, the metaphor and everything that people use when they’re talking about prioritizing yourself is that when you’re on an airplane, and the flight attendants tell you that if the oxygen mask comes down, you have to help yourself before you can help others. And as much as that’s like repeated over and over and over in our society. I so incredibly think that it’s true. And I am working so hard on myself with doing this as well. So I’m kind of a people pleaser.

I’m sure that other people would say it’s not kind of and it’s definitely, but it’s because I’ve been working really hard on not just doing everything that I do to be a people pleaser. So it’s been incredibly hard for me to take a step back and prioritize doing things for myself and things that benefit myself, instead of just saying yes to everything. And this income in so many different forms. I think one of the biggest forms that we really really don’t think about, and this is a really hard one, y’all really hard one is prioritizing ourselves. Even in friendships, we all kind of have that friend that is very take take take take take. And when you just give, give, give, give, give and don’t ever get anything in return. How is that friendship actually serving feel? Like? Is there any actual benefit of being friends with this person, and I honestly want you to take a look at your friendships, and your relationships and contemplate this because it’s a really hard realization to come to sometimes when people in your life are just taking from you and not giving anything back. And at that point, like you really do need to prioritize yourself and turn around and be able to say no to them. I think I’ve touched on it just a little bit before or at least in other podcasts interviews I’ve ever had. So if you’ve come here from any of the podcast interviews you’ve listened to with me, this is definitely touching on that subject. So when I first started my business someplace images, I had moved to Australia to open my business with a business partner.

And while I’m not specifically going to name her or shame her because I understand what held her back, she bailed on me a few weeks before we were set to officially launch our business and to move forward with making some place images, this destination based and you know, world traveled photography do to be able to shoot destination weddings and destination sessions and do all this other stuff. So I personally had moved to Australia to open this business with her. And one of my close close guy friends was so worried for me, he was so worried that what’s gonna happen if this doesn’t go correctly? What’s going to happen if Carly has to move home? What what are we going to do? How are we going to deal with this? How are we going to deal with all of her feelings around it and I so appreciate that. He did that and said those things, you know, in in more in the aftermath, but I think that it’s just a very interesting thing in the way that I handled it. So first, I will say I was very upset. But understanding I guess for a little bit I was like okay, I guess and in taking a step back and letting her run the show. I was really doing myself such a disservice. And honestly not prioritizing myself in what I needed from our relationships, our business relationship, our friendship, our anything. And I continued even after that even after she essentially said I’m stepping away. I’m not doing this with you, but we’re still fine as friends, right? My brain was like, yes. But the answer was no.

And that I was angry, and I was upset and my feelings were hurt. And so in the process of like, really recognizing those feelings in myself, one of my other very good friends sat down and said, if you’re upset, you need to make it known. You need to place your priorities and place yourself in this space where you’re not letting this friendship hurt you. And is it still hurting you? And I like had never had anybody directly asked me that question. Is this still hurting you? If it is, the most important thing is a direct means of communication. So I waffled I won’t lie. I waffled a lot. I went back and forth, I continued to spend time with her, I continue to try and make our friendship work, even though our business relationship was over. And that’s what we’ve had really, the majority of our friendship was our business relationship. And she had changed a lot since we first met. And I, I’m going to say that I probably had as well. But in doing this in staying and trying to figure out our friendship over and over over the next six months of that, I was not prioritizing myself in any way. And it gave me a lot of resentment. And it gave me a lot of like icky feelings about my business, which, when you’re a new business owner, you don’t want icky feelings about your business. That’s terrible. It’s an absolutely terrible thing. So I went to go meet her for lunch one day, and she was with a client. And our entire session ran over of what she was working on. And I sat for over two hours at a train station waiting for her to text me, or for her to call me for her to make any contact because I was waiting physically for her, in order for us to have lunch together. And at some point, I just hit my breaking point, it was around the two hour mark, like I can be a very patient person when I want to be it’s not very often but when I want to be, or when I feel like there’s some benefit in it, I can be incredibly patient. So I waited two hours, no text, no call, no anything. So I turned around, and I got back on the next train back into the city city center, and went back to where I was living. And as I was about halfway back, I got a text from her. Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I couldn’t step away. I couldn’t do any of these things. Can you come back. And this is where if I like put my foot down and said no.

After having waited for two hours, two hours, she finally texted me 15 minutes later, but I had already hit my breaking point. And I think that that breaking point of like I’m done with this now was a really, really healthy step. I can say that moving forward, our friendship absolutely was not the same. But I also came to realize that she absolutely did not prioritize me in any way. And I was following her lead and not prioritizing myself either. And it took so much it has taken so much work for me to look back at that scenario and understand what was happening there. That because she was placing me at a lower priority, I was placing myself at a lower priority, because I thought that our friendship was more important than myself. I thought that our friendship was something that needed to last. I honestly I hate being the person that people don’t like I hate being the sort that people pleaser comes in. I hate being the person that people are going to in any way I don’t want to say look down on but like not be friends with for some reason. I am a people pleaser. I want people to like me. And I have no problem admitting that now. But in that moment, I was like, Oh, well, if I just wait a little longer if I just wait a little longer, you know, something must have happened, things get held up. I kept making excuses for her. I could have done so much with that time with those two hours. Who knows? Who knows what I could have accomplished. And it is absolutely incredibly crazy to me that I let myself sit in a train station for two full hours and have somebody else take. I don’t want to say advantage but advantage of my time.

And I was so incredibly upset at myself for letting that happen, especially as I look back at it now. Now in my life, I absolutely would not let that happen. It’s one thing if somebody will message you and say I’m so sorry, I’m running 15 minutes late. That’s a different thing. If that’s if you have a friend that is I’m so sorry, I’m running 15 minutes late every single time. They’re clearly also not prioritizing you, you have to look for these signs. And in that prioritization, have you built that into your schedule, knowing that that’s what they’re going to be like? Have you built that into your life knowing that that’s what they’re going to be like? And is that friendship still benefiting and serving you? Whatever really deeply talk about this prioritization of self, it’s so incredibly hard, it is not an easy task in any way, shape, or form, to prioritize yourself. And trust me, I know this. And again, it was that breaking point that I was like, This is not what I need to be happening in order for me to be living my best life or be doing things that are the best for me. So I took a step back, I’m sure that as I’m telling this story, you have somebody who comes to mind that does this to you, that does not prioritize you, even though you are prioritizing them. And I really delicately but also in a very upfront way want to tell you that is not worth your time, you, personally are worth more than that. You are worth people who respect you respect your time, respect your boundaries, and have a general respect for what’s going on. I’m not going to say that our one chronically late friend, because we all have one. And sometimes we are that friend is doing it intentionally. But setting boundaries on Hey, this is really important. And I would like to spend time with you please make sure you’re on time is a nudge in the direction of like, Please prioritize me as well as prioritizing our friendship. If people can’t listen to those boundaries, and those asks, then maybe they aren’t the people that need to be in your life.

And it’s really hard to break up with friendships. It’s really, really hard to break up with friendships. But it’s incredibly important to ourselves. And it doesn’t have to just be friendships, this can be any type of relationship. I’m thankful that I have an amazing family and my parents are wonderful. And I have wonderful siblings that I get along with. And all this. And I have at this point, I don’t want to say a curated list of friends, but like, I have the people who are my go twos, who lift me up, when I’m feeling down on myself, I have all of these people who helped me realize what I’m worth, and who helped me prioritize myself by prioritizing me as well. And I obviously do the same for them. I try so hard. This is a big one, this is a huge thing. When I’m with my friends, and take into consideration, I travel a lot. Like a lot. I don’t necessarily get to see my best friends very often, I don’t live in the same place as most of my friends. And especially my close friends, my closest friends pretty much don’t live anywhere near me. And that’s incredibly hard. Sometimes, however, what that brings to the table is that that means when I’m with them, we are prioritizing our time for one another, I not on my phone, I’m not taking other calls, I’m very rarely sending other text messages, etc. I want to spend the time with that person and pay attention to them, and be able to hear what they’re saying and give feedback and and relish in the all of the amazing things of friendship. And I can do that by prioritizing myself first. And I know that sounds sounds so counterintuitive. I do that by prioritizing myself in the way of I’m going to be with this friend, is this friend going to fill my cup? Yes, absolutely. Then this is a prioritization. For myself, in my heart in my soul, this makes me feel better. This makes me be better this person pushes me and encourages me, but isn’t ever looking down on me. Those are friendships that prioritize yourself. If you have a friend, that you meet with a friend, a relationship, a parent, a sibling, and all you do is feel drained,

it’s really time to take a step back and consider why. Why that interaction is draining to you what that interaction is taking away from you. And if you need to put boundaries in place for yourself. I didn’t say this was easy in any way. I have quite a few friends who’ve done a very incredibly hard thing of cutting out a family member.

Because that person was incredibly draining to them, and incredibly hard on them and isn’t making their lives better. There’s also putting in boundaries. I’ve talked specifically about my grandmother and I have much more than I could say about the woman. And here’s the thing, at the end of the day, I really love my grandmother, I really do. I understand that she was completely made of a different generation, that she has it ingrained in her brain that you have to be thin to be be in the spotlight and be taking up space in the world. And I challenge that notion for her every single day as I do the things that I do. And I think slowly, slowly. I’m changing her perspective on that. And it’s an incredibly we’re talking like years of this. And I can say that those changes have come from me, prioritizing myself and those changes have come from me, prioritizing boundaries with her. I will actually see my grandparents this weekend, I’m very incredibly excited, I get to go have dinner with them. They’re at their second home in Palm Springs. And I’m just incredibly excited to go and be able to sit outside and enjoy their company, my grandparents are in their 80s. They’re getting older, they’re still wonderful humans, the person that my grandmother is, and the things that my grandmother have said to me are because they’re a product of her generation, at the core of who she is, she cares incredibly deeply for me. And she cares about my success.

She cares about my happiness. She cares about all of those things. So while you’ve heard me say negative things about my grandmother and this mentality that she’s stuck in, I can separate who those two people are, there’s the person that she is, and the things that come out of her mouth, that might just be rude. And just so not not, for lack of a better word, the things that she said to me. But here’s how our relationship has shifted. In my adult years. I’ve set boundaries, and I’ve prioritized myself, those boundaries are incredibly hard. Those boundaries are I am not spending Thanksgiving with you. I will not spend a holiday that is technically based around eating with my grandmother, because I do not want her commentary on what I’m putting on my plate. What I’m not putting on my plate, y’all. I don’t like green beans, I’m not gonna have green bean casserole. And when my grandmother makes green bean casserole and then is like, why don’t you like like green beans, you should be eating more vegetables, I don’t want that. I don’t need that. I just don’t like green beans. I am 33 years old. I am okay with not liking green beans. And that is such a personal choice that I’ve made to spend Thanksgiving elsewhere. It’s so incredibly important for me to spend Thanksgiving elsewhere. I spend Thanksgiving with my best friend’s family. And it is a completely different affair than it is with my family. With my family.

It’s I don’t want to say more formal or whatever. But there are rules, we’re expected to act a certain way. When I spend Thanksgiving with my other family, my heart family, I get to we lounge in our pajamas all day, we play board games, we create a general time that we would like to eat dinner, we have snacks for the entire day. Everybody just kind of lounges we all the night before decide who is cooking, what and how things are going to go. And all of those things might seem so incredibly small. But they’re huge for my mental health. And I’ve done that by prioritizing my time with my heart family, then with my biological family. Again, mom thinks my parents are so incredibly open to this. My parents want us to be happy. They want us to be nourished. They want us to have these experiences. And I’m so incredibly lucky that my parents listen to what I’m saying. And even as a kid, it was so hard for me to go and to do these things and to be present. I remember being at my grandparents Country Club for Easter and being told, you need to eat less sugar, you’re going to get diabetes, you’re going to do these things and just a ragging on me and on my body and what was going into my mouth. And as an adult. I have prioritized my own well being my own mental health and my own boundaries when it comes to my grandparents. For an example of some of these boundaries, my grandmother loves clothes. I also love clothes, I love going shopping, so does my grandmother. This is not something that we do anymore.

My grandmother for the majority of my life would buy our school clothes. And I believe that I mentioned this in the episode where I specifically talked about her. But to have the person who’s buying your school clothes, nag on your body, over and over and over again, is incredibly disheartening as I’ve grown up and as I’ve developed my own style, which is super eclectic, listen like one day I’m going to be in a memo the other days I’m going to be in skinny jeans, and fabulous top like hand me any bodysuit on the face of the planet. And I will pair it with a short skirt and all of these other things. I love boots. I love heels. I love everything. I love clothes, I love fashion. I love dressing myself and I love dressing myself for my body and what makes me feel comfortable in my body. And that’s not the same thing every day. I can be boho one day and I can be super glam the next and then the third day after that I can look like, you know, belong in a punk rock concert. It’s such an incredibly different thing for me. I do not go shopping with my grandmother, though. I think that it’s an experience we would both in theory enjoy. And it’s something that both of us enjoy doing. I no longer do it. I don’t do it because of the pressure that she puts on me when she picks things up and doesn’t understand that my size fluctuates and my size changes and that I’m in theory probably bigger than she thinks I am. So I just don’t do it anymore. When I have meals with my grandparents, I definitely prepare myself, I sit down. And as I will, we will be going out to dinner this week. And I’m incredibly excited. I told my grandparents, it was their choice for wherever we wanted to go.

My grandpa likes to spoil me a little bit. I’m the only girl it’s fine. But so wherever we’re going to go, I’m sure it’s going to be great. And here’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to order exactly what I want. And when my grandmother orders something that is smaller, or she asks if she can have a half size or if she asked, or she tells me over and over again, well, I get this because it doesn’t have too much sugar in it, or I get this, I look at my grandmother and say I’m going to get this because I love the way that it tastes. I love the nourishment that I get from this, I love these things about this meal. And that is why I’m getting them with every negative thing she throws at me about food, I throw back something positive. It’s taken a long time for me to learn how to do that. A long time, it’s taken a lot of perseverance for me to learn how to do that. The other boundary that I have with my grandmother is not letting her speak negatively on other people’s bodies. And this is really hard. If you listen to the episode with me and Kayla. And we talked about body shaming, and we talked about we don’t body shame here. It’s something that I inherently find my grandmother doing. And it’s why I am so adamant that I don’t do it. I don’t want to be that person. And I try it is still a hard thing. Even for me to look at somebody and say they can wear whatever they want. They can do different things like this. My grandmother is the first person to point out when something is unflattering, quote unquote, in her own eyes on somebody else. Here’s the thing, I could think it looks freakin amazing. I could think it looks unreal, like, there are so many things that she wants to point out and say that she is better at doing them than another person. I will say my grandmother has fantastic taste. But at the same time, she’s very conscious of her body at all points in time. And therefore she is conscious of other people’s bodies. And when they break out of doing something outside of what she would do, she criticizes it.

And I do not let her do that. Around me. Over time. Oh, man, this has caused so many fights within my family. This has caused fights at my cousin’s graduation party, where she was shaming my cousin’s now ex girlfriend for her hair, and I done a photo shoot with them. It got published in Pop Sugar, I was so incredibly excited about it. And I was showing the photos to one of her friends as she requested. And she looked at me and she said, her hair just looks so much better what like it did then I don’t know what she’s doing now. But it just doesn’t look good on her. And I stopped and I said, That’s rude. And she said, Don’t be rude to me. And I said, You’re being rude. You’re being rude. By choosing to insult her hair because you don’t like it. If she feels comfortable and she feels confident, then what does it matter to you? She proceeded to tell me that I was being rude that I was being rude in front of her friend for calling her out on it. She looked at my mother, like my mother was going to be able to rein me in. That never happens. Let’s not kid ourselves. And when she asked for an apology, I told her no, I’m not apologizing for standing up for somebody that you’re speaking down on them and the way that they look or the choices that they’ve made about the way that they look, when they’re not here to defend themselves. It has absolutely no effect on you whatsoever to shame this person. All it does is reiterate the fact that you are not comfortable with something. When I first dyed my hair pink, my grandma had a heyday over it. When I went from pink to purple. It was a

what I went from purple to teal. It was a whole other thing. Never once has she talked about it. When I shaved my head. There was no comment. And the reason that there were no comment on these things, even though I am sure beyond the shores of shore, that she had an opinion. It’s because for so long, I have put my foot down about her giving me that opinion about her body shaming others or others choices around anything to do with their body, their hairstyle, their clothes, how they’re wearing something specifically doing those things. I do not let her have those thoughts and conversations with me. She will start them and I will shut it right down. If she tells me she doesn’t think that somebody looks becoming and something I will say that’s their own personal choice. This is a hard boundary you guys, this has caused. Like I said so many fights so many different things that I’m disrespectful and I’m a terrible child and she’ll call my parents and tell them that I am rude and disrespectful and I don’t listen to my elders and I don’t do anything If these things because I’m standing my ground, because I am prioritizing myself, and my mental well being, when I go into these situations with her, it’s hard. What I’m talking about prioritizing yourself in so many different ways, is not easy, especially because we live in this society where we are told to give, give, give, give, give all the time, if you’re a business owner, like I am, we are told to give, give, give, give, give, and serve, serve, serve, serve, serve.

And, you know, it comes at the expense of our time, and our time with our friends and time with our family and time doing anything. I had a bottle of wine with a very dear friend the other night, and we sat down both of us own businesses, both of us own small businesses that are growing, and are succeeding, and we’re so incredibly proud of ourselves. And the thing is, we’re both tired, we’re both incredibly tired. And it comes back to prioritizing self, we were both so excited to have a night to sit down with each other in our sweatpants, and drink a glass of wine, and just enjoy each other’s company. Because we needed that we needed that conversation that wasn’t just about business, we needed that conversation that wasn’t just about numbers and success and marketing and where we’re going from here and goal setting. There are so many good times to have those conversations. However, sometimes you just need a glass of wine and some girl talk. And that’s okay. Not everything has to be about moving forward or getting bigger or going from there. When you’re a business. It can be about looking inward and giving yourself time off giving yourself a break giving yourself anything. One of the best things that I did, and I did this for myself today, I did not set an alarm clock. I’m in between destinations. For Destination sessions, I’m legitimately recording this podcast episode in my car. And I when I woke up this morning, so I set an alarm clock for the latest that I could sleep in. That was the only alarm that I set. And that was that I would have time to get up, make some coffee, still have a chill morning and get my stuff loaded into my car before I had to check out of my Airbnb. So I had that alarm clock set.

And I figured, okay, if I sleep all the way until 10am, fantastic. If I don’t, that’s okay, too. All I did was go to bed last night, and just sleep in. And when I got up this morning, I made coffee. I wasn’t in a rush, I did some computer work. I was in no rush to get to my next destination. There was no timeframe, there was no anything. Because I was prioritizing myself, instead of trying to make it somewhere else for somebody else. It’s the small everyday acts that we do for ourselves that truly overtime build up our boundaries, that give us a better sense of self and purpose that refill us. You cannot pour from an empty cup, my friends. And I know this because I’ve tried so many times. When you’re living in a state of abundance, and being able to have your boundaries, there’s more than enough of you and more than enough of your energy to go around because you have access because you have prioritized yourself.

So I have a challenge for you. Just one little challenge. I want you when you listen to this, to choose one act of self, act of selfishness, if you will, one thing where you’re prioritizing yourself to do this whole week, seven days from when you listen to this, I want you every single day to prioritize yourself for that one thing, it could be taking a longer shower, because you just enjoy it. And not just for the utility of it. It could be prioritizing sleep. It could be prioritizing, getting your fun work done, instead of your boring work. It could be doing those things that really light you up and prioritizing them. It could be prioritizing, taking a walk with your spouse every evening. It could be prioritizing anything you want. But I challenge you to prioritize yourself in that way for seven full days and see how you feel. Come back. Tell me how you feel because I’m so curious of those small micro changes that you can make in your life to make you feel more about yourself. Because at the end of the day, our selves are so incredibly important. So incredibly important. There is some place for everybody and in that we need to make space for ourselves. That’s where it all starts. Self love starts with those self steps have an amazing challenge this week. I know you’re gonna do a fantastic job. Thanks so much for listening to someplace for everybody. If you love this episode, would you mind leaving me a review in your favorite podcast app and subscribe to the show? If you’re looking for a community to love on you and support you and your self love Journey, come join our all gender Facebook group someplace for everybody which can be found in the show notes at someplace for everybody.com Until we meet again, be kind to yourself.