Hello dear ones. I am taking you on a walk with me today as we draw a line in the sand and we declare that we are done over explaining ourselves, overexplaining the word salad, all the words, giving four hundred words to explain why we want what we want or why we’re doing what we’re doing. We’re done. It comes from many places, but being in relationships with narcissists and emotionally immature people, it also comes from us being children and having our feelings and needs questioned like, oh, do you really want that? Or why do you want that? Or, you know, it can come from a very innocent place. And yet as adults, we don’t need it in our relationships anymore, and we don’t need it in our confidence anymore. So join me today in declaring that we are done overexplaining. We are done over defending, and keep listening because I’ll teach you how to be done. How to stop. Let’s go Warriors. This is episode four hundred and twenty of the Love Your Life Show, and I am your dedicated life coach, relationship master, and biggest supporter, Susie Pettit.

Voiceover: Hi, this is the Love Your Life Show with Susie Pettit, certified life and wellness coach. Join Susie as she helps you with your wellness and mindset so you can live a life you love. Let’s go Warriors.

Hello Warriors. Thank you so much for listening in to this episode. And just a quick reminder as to why I call you warriors. It’s because you listen to episodes like this. It’s because you are conscious and mindful and intentional about the life that you’re living, or at least you want to be. That is warrior behaviour. Not everybody does that. You are extraordinary. You are not like ordinary people. You reflect, you think about what you’re modelling. You think about what you’re modelling is teaching the people around you. You think of your influence. You are here, and I’m so grateful you’re here. And I’m in this work with you. And today we’re going to work on not overexplaining ourselves anymore, not getting into the explaining. Now, we very much got into this habit as innocent children. Often we were told, you know, you don’t feel that way, or you shouldn’t be upset about that. And in our innocence, we’re like, wait, wait, wait. If they can just understand why I feel this way, then they’ll get it, you know? And so we’re sort of like, oh, but let me tell you, mom, or let me tell you, dad, or let me tell you, English teacher. And very often, you know, our parents were not schooled in validating and letting us have our feelings, even though maybe the way we were thinking about things was Insane, you know? And so we felt that we weren’t allowed to have our feelings and that we were misunderstood. And almost this idea that the more we talk, the more we’ll be believed, which doesn’t pan out that way. And so one reason we do this is because of children. We are reinforcing this. Another big reason is that many of us were in or are in narcissistic relationships or relationships with emotionally immature people. All right. So we sit there and think as adults, we’re like, well, how do we make how we feel make sense to us? How we perceive what they said makes sense to us. So if we just explain it to them, right. But that doesn’t work for narcissists, okay? It just doesn’t. The more we explain to the narcissist, the more words we give them for bait to use as a weapon against us later. It does not work. They are committed to their perception of reality, and narcissist or emotionally immature person, as I keep saying, is very insecure, and they are not. Emotional immaturity or narcissism means they’re very rigid in their thinking, and that thinking is very black or white. There’s one right way, one way. You know, my way or the highway type thing. And so they don’t have that flexibility of thought to be like, oh, wait, that’s a good point, Susie. Okay. Now, if any of this is you’re like, but I do that. Susie. That’s okay. You’re in the right place. You’re a warrior. You’re listening to this. I am an emotional intelligence coach. I help people with this. None of us was born with emotional intelligence. All right. So if you have that there, that’s okay. I get it. I’m emotionally immature at many points in my day also. Totally fine. Another thing that might be coming up for you as you listen is you’re like, but wait, this is my kid. They do that. They think their way is the right way. They think. And I just want to say, yes, kids are emotionally immature, appropriately. So often when we’re dealing with our forty-, fifty-, or sixty-year-old husband, we’re like, wait a minute, he’s acting like a twelve-year-old. But then when a twelve-year-old is acting like a twelve-year-old, we’re like, wait a minute. So I just want to give the kids a bit of a break here. And the tool we’re using, not overexplaining, helps with our kids, helps with our teens because we do not want to be overexplaining ourselves or overdefending ourselves with our teen either. So in emotion, in relationships with emotionally immature people or narcissists, overexplaining is not a helpful communication tool. It gets us into trouble, and it just prolongs drama. So let’s stop that in conversations with emotionally mature people, okay? It sort of ruins our credibility because they don’t need fourteen reasons. Fourteen and a half reasons as to why you want what you want, or why you feel how you feel. They’re like, yeah, I get it. People have different opinions. People perceive things differently. There are different ways to think about things. And the more you go on and on about like, no, but wait, but wait, but wait. It just, it’s almost confusing to the emotionally mature person. And again, what we’re trying to do, all of us here, listeners of the Love Your Life Show, is we’re trying to bring in more of these emotionally mature relationships and be in more emotionally mature relationships. And so we want to practice and act as if we’re emotionally mature people. And emotionally mature people do not overexplain and overdefend. So I think I’ve made the case as to why we want to stop this. Why, why we might be doing it. You know, comfort for it. And, um, I want to move on to how we stop. I guess one more example, because I know examples sometimes can bring it true with what I’m talking about, even when I say overexplaining. Uh, I noticed just yesterday my inclination to overexplain now that I’ve drawn the line in the sand, I was like, oh, but wait a minute. I still sort of feel that childlike, oh, I better explain what I’m doing. And I had made plans to see my son on Saturday, um, for brunch. He doesn’t live in my house anymore. So I made plans and, you know, my husband was welcome to come along. So I noticed myself when I was telling my husband that I was getting together with my son on Saturday for brunch; I noticed the tendency that I wanted to overexplain. I wanted to tell him fourteen reasons why I was choosing to do it on Saturday. I wanted it to be like, well, it’s because I’m leaving for San Diego the next weekend, and it’s because I hadn’t seen him for this time. And we want to talk about citizenship and blah blah blah. Like all these reasons, whereas my husband is like, give me four words to what you’re saying. He didn’t say this, but I know him. And it’s like, I’m meeting with Tyler on Saturday at eight thirty in Carmel. Do you want to come? That’s direct, confident, clear communication. That’s normal to an emotionally mature person. All right. And so this is what we’re trying to work on. So if we’re not in healthy relationships, then you contact me. I have a free consult that I give so I can help you because I’ve been in those unhealthy relationships with narcissists, okay. And emotionally immature people that are very, um, but for the relationships that we want to be in and we want to foster, we need to start practising this conversation behaviour and stop adding all the extra details that are not needed. All right. They don’t need you to explain to the narcissist. They want you to explain. As I said, the more words you say, the more bait you give them to come back and use as a weapon against you. Okay. So let’s talk about how to stop it. First of all, if you’re going into a conversation intentionally, like say you want to go talk to your teen and set a boundary that, you know, no cell phones at the dinner table or you’re, um, it’s, it’s someone that you love and you want to continue a conversation with, have an intent to the conversation and keep the end in mind. I love these two things. Like what is my intent with this conversation? I guess I should back up and say, these are conversations that feel a little like, ooh, they could be conflict. Okay. In general, we’re working on saying things more directly like to my husband, like I’m going to brunch with my or breakfast with my son at whatever, like just saying it more directly. Okay. But for this case, when we’re talking about not overexplaining, we usually overexplain when we’re feeling our nervous system has ignited and we’re feeling some degree of insecurity, right? And so sometimes we’re going into that insecurity thinking, like in a conversation with a teen trying to set a boundary or another adult asking for something that is whatever, or possibly, you know, we do still have narcissists in our life. Like I still have one in my life that I’m in contact with, with some very strong boundaries. And when I go into conversation with that person, I have an intent and I have the end in mind. And so let me just explain that. So what I mean is I have an intent, like, let’s say I’m going to talk to. Um, I have the intent, like talk to my son about having no cell phones on at the dinner table. Okay. So that’s my intent. It’s like, I want to set this boundary and it feels a little nerve wracking because I know he’s not going to be like, great idea, Mom, ” or, you know, no cell phones in your room at night. Okay. They’re not going to be like, awesome. Okay, so I’m feeling a little ick because my nervous system is whenever there’s ick, it’s Susie’s fault in the past and all of that. By the way, we’re working on emotional regulation in September in the love of Your Life school. So I’m super excited to help you reset your nervous system in ways that I have that really help me. But back to the conversation. So I go in with my intent that I want to basically, my intent in that conversation would be like, I just want to say aloud the new boundary, okay, I don’t need lots of words. I don’t need, I just need to say it. And then what’s the end in mind? I want to think of me leaving the table after the conversation, or leaving the environment where the conversation was, and feel one that I did what I intended to do, I. The words came out of my mouth sharing the boundary and I kept my cool. I didn’t lose my Bleep okay, so if he’s coming back at me and he’s going in for the like, Well, you’re ruining my life. And da da da da da da da. And I’m talking about kids that are living in your home. I had mentioned my son Tyler, that I’m getting together with for breakfast, who’s twenty-four. He’s not going to do this. So I’m talking more when my kids were ten years old, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, you know, that sort of thing. Okay, then I pull on the other tools that I’ll link to in the show notes, because that was a great one where you don’t want to go deep in these conversations, okay? You don’t want to defend, you don’t want to engage, you don’t want to explain, you don’t want to take things personally. D e e p, okay. Also broken record. Say the thing over and over. What’s the boundary? No cell phones at the dinner table or I want you to take over, um, loading the dishwasher or no dishes up in your room or whatever. The thing is, we say it broken record, repeat it. What is the how do we want to leave the conversation? I want to leave a conversation feeling like I’ve been an emotional adult, no matter who I’m talking to. Okay. Kids have a remarkable way of pulling you down to their level. Like, you know, the fourteen year old, and then you start acting like a fourteen year old. That is also the same thing for emotionally immature people in our life who are acting like emotional fourteen year olds, whereas they’re actually forty four, fifty four or sixty four. Okay. They can drag us down into that. And I want to stay up. It’s like Michelle Obama, when they go low, we stay high. So this is what we want to do. And one way of doing this is by going in with your intent and the end in mind. Okay. And then when you’re in it and say, you say like, say, I’m using this, this example where I’m like, okay, there’ll be no cell phones in your bedroom at night. You know, dear college age student while you’re living in my house. Okay. And I know I have, I know they’re coming back with arguments that they have to because they have a girlfriend, they live in college. You know all the arguments, I expect it. My expectations are there. I’m not taking it personally. They come back with whatever they say back. And my first word is a breath, a breath. And I want it to be a conversational breath. Have you heard of what this is? A conversational breath is two inhales in like this. So you breathe in, and then you have another one at the top and then exhale out. It’s conversational because no one really knows you’re doing it, except there’s a pause in conversation. Okay. And it does a whole lot of awesome neuroscience stuff that Jefferson Fisher talks about it on his podcast and in his book. I know it from my research on neuroscience. It’s your first word is a breath that resets our nervous system. Often when our kid comes back with something, our nervous system is off and running. And if we can take a breath and get back, we don’t have to think a freaking thing other than inhale. Inhale. Exhale. Our body does the rest. Okay, that’s going to slow things down. Okay, so that’s the first thing to stop overexplaining. The second thing to stop overexplaining is after they’ve come back with whatever it is, repeat your broken record phrase. Or remember your intent. So it goes like this. He’s like, oh, but I have a girlfriend and I need to talk to her. And we always talk at two a m. Take a breath. Inhale. Inhale. Exhale. Yeah. Valid, I get it. And when you’re living in your own house, you can totally do that in my house. No homes, no phones upstairs at night. You keep breathing. I kept it short. Okay. My first word is a breath. I remembered my intent. I don’t want to act like a child. I don’t want to defend. And in mine. Okay. And you keep the. It’s like. Think of your conversation like a spotlight. Keep the spotlight on your intent. When you’re talking to people who are more reactive or kids or narcissists or whatever, they’re going to try to widen that spotlight. Well, do you remember back in, you know, twenty twenty four when you it’s like, oh my God, back here, you want just a little piercing pen light on the thing. No phones upstairs, no phones at the dinner table. Okay, so first word is a breath. You pinpoint address what the topic is that they’re saying. And the less words, the better. Right. This is doable. I’ve been doing it. I promise you, this is doable. It’s not easy. Which is why I’m spending a whole month on it in the Love Your Life school, which is open now. I’m not even sure it’s open now, but I will open it for you now. Okay, so you can join in and you get expert advice because this is more than we can go on to on a podcast. There’s a whole bunch of, um, stuff. What makes me awesome as a coach and why I love coaching over therapy is therapy. They have to pick something and go with it. And you’re certified in that. There are so many rules and regulations. So you have a somatic therapist and they deal with the body and the nervous system, or you have a CBT therapist who deals with thinking and feeling and acting, or you can get a coach like me who’s certified in both of those, and DBT and ADHD and parenting and relationship, and I’m not limited by licenses, so I can throw it all at you in fifteen minutes, okay. And help you in the way that you really need. So we’re doing that in September in the Love Your Life school, sm dot com slash life school, or even better, it’s the love your life school dot com. And in the meantime, let’s can you join me? Can you? Somewhere, if you’re watching, if you’re listening to this on Spotify, please, you can make a comment there and say, I’m with you, Susie. Or if you get my newsletter, send me back a thing like, yeah, I’m in. I’m done with this. This is ridiculous. It’s childlike behavior. We get why we did it as a child, and we get why we did it when we felt emotionally childlike. But that’s not us anymore, warrior. We’re moving into more emotional maturity. I’m on this path and I hope you join along. I’m picturing this. I’m literally out walking on my bike path, which I’m sure you can tell. I’m going to try to have my wonderful assistant take out some of the background noise. Okay, but I’m literally out walking and I’m picturing us, you and me linking arms and it’s like, we’re done, girl. Let’s do it. All right on this journey with you. Big love to you. Thanks for being part of the Love Your Life Show family. You matter to me.