168. Was it something I said?

Do you ever find yourself worrying that you said the wrong thing or caused a shift in a relationship? Asking yourself “was it something I said?” or “what did I do?”.

Many women slip into overthinking relationships because old patterns make them assume they are at fault. One small change in someone’s behaviour and you’re in self-blame before you can even pause to question it.

This article looks at why you react that way and what might really be happening beneath the surface. I’m talking about the link between old patterns, the inner critic and relationships, and the instinct to blame yourself.

You will see how much of this comes from conditioning rather than truth, and how freeing it can be to question those automatic thoughts.

If you want a calmer, kinder way to understand your relationships, take a moment to read this one. 

Transcript

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Hello, how are you? How's your week been? Has it been good? I hope so. Do you ever get bored of me saying that? Do you ever get bored of me starting the episode with, hello, how's your week been? Hope it's been good. I mean, I don't know what else I'm going to say though. I come here, I want to say hello, I want to greet you. I hope you've had a nice week. The alternative is I just dive straight into whatever I want to chat about. And that just feels a little bit rude, doesn't it? but I genuinely do hope you've had a good week. I do. But I haven't got anything of interest to tell you this week. I really haven't. There's nothing been going on here. Nothing at all. ah The cats haven't done anything to tell you about. The family hasn't done anything to tell you about. Nothing crazy has happened in my business world to tell you about. So it's all very boring really. It's all very boring. So I'm just going to get on with it. Now I was having a conversation with somebody the other day and they were talking about whether or not they'd upset somebody. And I said, what makes you feel like that? What makes you think you've upset them? What, or rather, what have you done? I think that's where we started. What have you done? Well, nothing. I haven't really done anything. This person says, I said, so what makes you think you've upset them? Well, they're in a bad mood. They're behaving funny. They haven't got any time to chat to me and they usually do. Um, to me in my head, it just sounds like this person was in a stinker of a mood and just didn't have any time for anybody really. And was just having an off a couple of days. You know, we all have days like that, don't we? Where we feel a bit crappy and we haven't got any time for anybody. We just, we just would rather bury our heads in the sand at home, bury ourselves under duvets and watch some crap TV. but we have to be in social situations. And then you don't give your all, right? You don't put yourself out there in your most friendly, nicest, well-behaved of manners. And to me, that's what this situation just said, but this person was really trying to find the thing that they had done that might have caused this behaviour in the other person. And at one point they were like, Is it something I've said? Have I said something? Now there are life moments like this all the time, aren't they? They make you question yourself. Too many of them, I think. You notice maybe that someone that you felt close to has stepped back a bit. They don't spend as much time with you anymore or a group chat has gone quiet, friends stop supporting you on social media, that sort of thing. Mates just start socializing with other people. That's a big one, isn't it? Suddenly they're spending time with other people and not you. Or maybe a colleague starts to confide in somebody else. Maybe they don't stop confiding in you. Maybe they just start confiding in somebody else too. Or they start talking about somebody else and they were like, well, I was having a chat with such and such a day and they said this. And you're like, hang on a minute. We always have those conversations. Or maybe a networking circle changes and you don't feel quite the part of it that you used to, or maybe a business buddy of yours stops checking in with you or stops, just stops messaging like they used to. I don't know, there's all kinds of ways that relationships change that make us question ourselves. Sometimes the dynamic just shifts in some way. And you can't really put your finger on it. You can't really explain it, but you just know it's not right. And without thinking about it rationally, your mind goes straight into the usual place of, what did I do? Was it something I said? Did I misread something? Have I taken something out of context? Was it my fault? That's what this boils down to. Was it my fault? This is the pull of overthinking relationships. And it happens really quickly. It happens so quickly that you don't see it happening at all. One little shift in somebody else's behavior and all of a sudden you are running through every interaction, every conversation. You're checking your messages to make sure that you haven't written something offensive. You're thinking about everything you've done. You're thinking about every comment you've made in the past few weeks. You're thinking about your social media posts and, God, what did I post that upset somebody? You always focus on yourself first because you must be the reason, right? You must be the reason that something is wrong with that other person. Now, if you are the kind of person that does this, it might be interesting for you to ask yourself instead, why do I think everything is my fault? I find myself there. I found myself right in the middle of this pattern too. I once realized that a group of friends that I had felt really close to were no longer as involved in my life. Nothing dramatic had happened. There was no falling out. We just became. distant from each other. You know, we just, we just changed. just evolved. Lives moved on and things happened and things just changed. But my mind did exactly what it had done before. It must've been me. I must've said the wrong thing. I must've missed something. It must be me. That's the reason why this person doesn't want to hang around with me anymore. But that's life, isn't it? Aren't we all busy women? If someone wants to invite me somewhere now, someone wants to send me a message now and say, Hey, Terry, do you want to come to this next week? I'd have to consider what I'd be moving or canceling in order to go to that thing. So to add a constant stream of social events and networking and maintaining and managing business relationships. When you throw those into the mix, it feels like a lot for me. So why can't it be that for the other person too. Maybe that's how it is for them as well. Either way, it is a familiar pattern, especially for women like us who have lived with confidence issues, people pleasing tendencies. If you question yourself, your confidence, your sense of self image is a little bit shaky, it's quite common for you to fall into patterns like this. You notice the change. and then you assume sole responsibility for it. Which is odd really, isn't it? When you think about it logically, it's really bizarre. Why do we do that? It must be me. It must be me. It can't possibly be anything else. It must be me and some minute behavior that I've partaken in over this last however long. It must be me. That's... bonkers, isn't it? That's not rational behavior. It's not rational thinking. But when we think about it a bit more, it does become more understandable. For instance, if you've spent most of your life managing other people's emotions, then you are essentially trained to react like this. So if you think back to times where you've stayed silent, maybe to avoid some tension in the house or when you've apologized, even though you haven't done anything wrong, simply because that felt safer or easier for you. That sort of behavior, when you do it over and over again, trains you to react in this way. And these patterns build up over years and years, and before you realize it, they shape how you interpret every comment, every behavior in a relationship. You scrutinize everything. You get used to scanning rooms for people. And for the energy in the room, you get used to softening your voice automatically, behaving a little more carefully, keeping the peace between you and somebody else or between other people. This early conditioning teaches you to keep everybody comfortable, often at the cost of your own comfort, through all situations in your life, right into adulthood, relationships in adulthood. and the way you manage your business or manage as a manager. Manage as a manager. You know what I mean. When a person grows distant then, or a group moves on without you, because that happens, you know, sometimes a whole groups do move on without you. Your mind will reach for old explanations. You go straight into that self analysis. Your inner critic will always speak first because it has been trained to keep you safe. And it does that through constant self monitoring. And then when something feels uncertain, it assumes that you are responsible because that is easier to manage than the unknown. If you think it's you, You can do something about it. If you don't know what it is, you can't do anything. You're stuck in this uncomfortable space and your brain doesn't like that. Your inner critic doesn't like that. So if it's you, you can fix it. And that's the easier, safer option. Many women though underestimate how strong that link is between the inner critic and your business relationships too. Your brain does not understand that this is a different type of relationship. Just follows the old patterns. Does that make sense? And it does it because the pattern is protective. If you believe you caused the shift, you can fix it, or at least try to fix it. If you believe you said the wrong thing, you can apologize. You can correct it. You can explain what you really meant to that sort of thing. If you think you behaved badly somehow, you can make amends. At least you'll know. Being responsible feels safer than not knowing what happened. For women with confidence challenges, this can become a constant cycle. You find yourself wondering why somebody has pulled back and your first thought is that you've done something wrong, but that's not your truth, is it? That's conditioning. This is an old survival strategy. When I noticed the difference with the group of friends that I was talking about earlier, I had much the same thoughts. And you know, the feelings that you get with it, the knot in your stomach, feel a bit upset, that sort of thing. Trying to figure out what you've done wrong. Like, I need to figure this out. I need to figure out what I've done wrong. I need to put this right. I need to make amends. I need to... And it turns into this feeling of panic. And that's horrible. That's a horrible feeling to deal with. If you don't know how you've upset somebody, if you don't know what you've done wrong, then that's horrible because you can't put it right. But now imagine putting yourself into that thought process and that emotional stress and that way of feeling when you don't even know that it's you. You can't keep doing that. Those reactions do not fit the woman that you want to be. They don't match the confident, self-assured woman that you want to be. And so it has to stop. So I ask myself different questions now. If I start to feel this happening, I ask myself different questions now. What story is my mind creating? Like what am I literally conjuring up in my mind right now? And does it make sense? Does it make sense or is this just a habit? Is this just a pattern I've got into? Like, is the story likely to be true, really? Or what else could be true? What else could be true here? And is my reaction coming from who I am now or who I used to be? I mean, we do have a tendency sometimes to slip back into our old ways. So is this me in my confident, self-assured way? Is this me as I am strong and confident and positive? Is that version of me? thinking about this or is old version of me thinking about this? You know, old version of me who wasn't sure of her place in friendship circles, wasn't sure of her place in the business world, didn't think she was ever any good at anything she did in enough of a capacity to run my own business, that sort of thing. Which voice, which inner critic is talking to me? Because if it's the one now, She doesn't behave like this. She doesn't create stories in her mind about what people are thinking and saying about her. And also what else could be true anyway? This question can really change a lot of the way you see this. It opens the door to a much wider interpretation of the whole situation. It gives you the space to step out of the story that your mind is trying to create and into one that might actually be true as well. So what is going on for them at the moment that means they don't have much time for me? Do they have got... Do they have got, do they have some stuff going on in their life that means that they're a bit short of patience at the moment? So they're a little bit snappy. You know, if they got something personal going on that you just don't know about, if they've got something medical going on that's worrying them, all these things can really change the way that somebody shows up in the world. And if that means you're catching the brunt of it, that might be it, mightn't it? It's that old adage of we hurt the people closest to us the most. So maybe somebody's a bit snappy with you because they're having a tough time, but you're close to them and they think they, well, they don't think, they just, they feel comfortable enough to let their emotions out. You know, it's a very real possibility. Have they made some changes in who they spend their time with or who they give their focus to for their own wellbeing or for their own benefit? You know, do they just have a little less time for you because they've had to make some changes to bring in some other people that can help them progress? That doesn't mean that they value you any less. It just means they've made some changes because they've got a different focus now. They're trying to move forward in a direction. They're trying to look after their business, their aspirations, their wellbeing. What is it? They might've made some changes for that reason. Has their business focus changed? So now actually they don't need the same groups as they used to. Maybe that's as simple as that. They just don't need these groups that you're a part of anymore. Doesn't mean they don't need you, just means they don't need the group that you're in. There's so many reasons why the way you interact with them might have changed. So why are you making it about yourself? It's a little self-centered, isn't it? It is, isn't it? It's a little bit selfish. Why should it be about you? I mean, I think that's a valid question as much as the rest of them. Why? Why should it be you? Somebody was talking the other day and they were talking about... I can't even remember where I was night, but they were talking about a situation they were in and, uh, somebody had said, somebody had said to them, why do you think you're so important that you've had that kind of impact on somebody else? And we can kind of, we can sort of apply it to this, can't we? It's a very similar thing. Why do you think you've got such? a massive impact on somebody that every little thing you does has this mammoth effect on your relationship with them. The reality is that your words and your actions are just normal. They're just normal. You're just behaving as you normally would. And because you say things a little off the cuff every now and again, that might be a little offensive every now and again, people know that of you. So they're not actually offended by you. Maybe that's the situation. You know, do you know what I mean though? Do you know where I'm going with that? Why is it that you think that what must be a tiny action, if you don't know what you've done, it must be something minute? Why do you think that minute thing is going to have to have had such an impact on somebody? Do you see what I mean? There's lots of different ways that you can look at this. There's lots of different ways that you can approach this. The chances are it is not you. If we look at this through our own life lenses, there's the possibility that you did change though, right? There is another way of looking at this again. Maybe you did change. Not necessarily for the bad, but maybe you did outgrow some people. I know for myself, this is true. For sure. For sure. There are people that not in my life now that I'm sad are not in my life because I loved them and I loved spending time with them. But if I'm really honest about it, they don't really have much of a place in my life anymore because they don't share the same values. beliefs, aspirations, they don't have the same focus, they don't have the same interests, they don't have the same experiences. So we contribute nothing to each other. So it's okay that we're not sharing that that we used to anymore. I've changed. My confidence has grown. My outlook is different. My future plans are not what they used to be. My boundaries are much clearer now. I don't tolerate. some behaviour that I used to tolerate from people. My business has changed. I'm doing something totally different now to what I was doing when I was friends with my old friends, you know, that sort of thing. My life has taken on a different direction that reflects who I'm becoming, not who I used to be. And when you change like that, relationships inevitably change too. It's not a bad thing. You didn't do something harmful. You didn't do something to apologize for. It's just... the dynamic that you once had with people no longer fits in the same way. And people do drift when energy shifts. You let people go, you invite others in. Without a doubt, people move and behave differently around you when you behave and act with more certainty, with more authority, with more confidence in what you're trying to achieve in life. You can't make changes like that and have everybody react in the same way to you and behave and interact with you in the same way. It's not a problem. It's just a part of growing, you know, you're just growing in your life. And you know that old saying, if you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got. Well, that kind of applies to this, doesn't it? This applies well to business and life progress. If you always have the same relationships with the same people, how can you ever develop personally or professionally? Once I saw that, the emotion behind these situations changed completely. The feeling of blame just eases. I stop asking what I've done wrong and start accepting that I might just simply be moving in a different direction to these people. And there's another saying, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. when you change the way you look at things, the things that you look at change. This is why being aware of your inner narrative matters. The moment you question everything, everything around you looks like it's pointing a finger at you. When you stop assuming that you caused those shifts, you can see different perspectives, different reasons why it might have happened. And when you start seeing other possibilities for those changes, your view on the other person and your relationship with the other person also changes. When you understand this, you stop carrying the responsibility for other people. You stop taking on board their behaviors, things that you cannot control. You do not have any real influence on their behavior, their attitudes, their actions. their considerations for other people, their voice, their beliefs, their life choices. You really don't have very much control over any of that stuff. So stop assuming the worst. You can only stand in your own choices. You stand there firmly. You stand there like you bloody well mean it. But that is what you've got control over. Overthinking relationships starts to lose its power then because you recognise it for what it is. You see that it's just a habit, it's an old pattern. It's not facts. The things you're thinking, they're not facts, are they? So what does this mean for women in business and leadership? Well, if you run a business or you lead a team, these patterns can show up even more strongly. Because of this, we can become hypercritical of others. If in some way, it might reflect on you. Every business owner wants their staff and customers to love them, don't they? If you are a small business owner and you increase your confidence, this can often mean being more visible, more vocal, raising your prices, being more direct, sharing your celebrations and sharing them proudly without apologizing for them. This can change the way that people respond to you if that's not what they're used to. And it can make old friendships and old peer groups feel different. Every manager wants their peers and their teams to admire and respect them, don't they? So for the women in management, stepping into authority changes the dynamics there too. Colleagues might interact with you slightly differently. Old friendships at work might fade as roles evolve. And as you take on more or different responsibility, jealousy in the workplace is a very real thing. We might be friends with people in the workplace, but if they start getting a leg up the ladder and if they start being perceived to be doing really well or progressing or getting promotions and things like that, that friendship is really tested. It's not often that somebody is genuinely a hundred percent celebrating somebody who they were on the same level with as work. It's very difficult for people to adjust to a dynamic shift like that. And again, it's not a reflection of you or your worth in your role. You're obviously doing very well if you're triggering this in people, but it is just simply the reality of growth, right? And in both cases, you're not doing anything wrong. You are becoming someone new, someone better, and not everyone can walk with you into that next stage. I like to believe that people come into your life for one of three things. I don't know if I've mentioned this before or not. It brings me a lot of peace actually to think of it this way. When I think of relationships that I've lost over the years or when things change. Some people are there for a reason, a season or a lifetime, right? That's how I think of it. So some people are there for a reason. They come into your life, they teach you something, they shift something in you. They mirror something back to you or they move you forward in a way that you might not have been able to do if you were without them. They are important, even if their place in your life is brief. So I have a very good example of somebody who came in for a reason. I had a friend, we had a business. I won't go into all the details of this because it's irrelevant, but it's also very personal. So we had a business. It was very short-lived. She, in a snap, decided that she didn't want to be a part of the partnership anymore. And she left just like that. I've not spoken to her since the day she sent that email. And I carried on the business and it was a great five years of my life. Now I believe that she came into my life to teach me about partnership in business, to teach me about... the blur between friendships and business relationships. I believe that her doing that taught me about running a business on my own and confidence in business and marketing and strategy and putting myself out there and how to run a business and what to do and what not to do and all these things that I would never have learned if I was doing it with her in tandem. I needed... to have that moment and go, right, I'm doing this on my own. And then out of that, I learned some really, really big lessons. Some people are there for a season. And by that, I mean, you walk the same path for a while. You share similar values or circumstances. You fit each other at that point in time. And when that season ends, even if it's confusing or painful or whatever, it just, doesn't mean that something went wrong. It just means that the chapter closed and you're ready for a new one. The person came in, you had a really good time, and then they're not in your life anymore. It means nothing of either of you. You just enjoyed that period of time with each other, and now you're ready for the next chapter. And then there are some people that are there for a lifetime. These are the ride or dies. They are... Well, that's what the kids say, isn't it? The ride or dies. My ride or die. I've never said that in my life. This is actually probably the first time I've ever said that in my life. So you are welcome. But these are the ones, these are the people who grow with you, adapt with you, stay connected with you, or maybe they don't stay connected. You have a period of separation and you are drawn back together. Even when life pulls you in different directions, you are always connected. They can hold your evolution without feeling threatened by it. They are with you. They are celebrating you. They are bigging you up. These are the lifetime people. I think I've got one, maybe two lifetime people. There are not many of them. They never will be many of them in your life. But they're variable the same. So a reason, a season or a lifetime. If a relationship is truly ending, what were they there for? Which one of those, well, which one of the two things were they there for? Cause if the relationship is ending, it's not that they're there for a lifetime, is it? It's they're there for a reason or a season. So if you think of things in a reason, season and lifetime way, can that help you give context to the relationships that you have and the relationships that have waned maybe? I really like those three things because it means that I can recognise losing closeness with somebody does not always mean I've made a mistake. Sometimes it just means that their part in your story has reached a natural end. So next time you find yourself thinking, was it something I said? Maybe it was never something you said. Think about that. Maybe it was never something you said. Maybe it was never something you did. Maybe it's simply the natural outcome of stepping into a new version of yourself. You are not the cause of every shift around you. You are not responsible for every silence. You are not at fault every time something changes. You are growing. You are becoming clearer. You're becoming more confident. You are standing more firmly in your life. And when that happens, you can stop overthinking relationships. and you can start trusting yourself instead. So I hope this has come at the right time for you. I hope that this is helpful. And if it's not, come back to it another time because, well, my words are always here, aren't they? They've been here for a few years and they haven't disappeared, so they're bound to be here for a few more. So uh yeah, if that resonates with you right now, then I hope it's been helpful. And if it doesn't, well, it's here if you need it again in future. On that note, I will love you and leave you. Please don't forget we're in November at the moment and the Bright Friday deals are still on. So you've got another couple of weeks. If you're listening to this in real time, you've got another couple of weeks. The Bright Friday bundles are on my website. So terrypugh.com forward slash bright hyphen Friday. And the link is in the show notes. Go and get yourself a bargain while it's November. and boost your confidence a little. And that's all from me until next time. Take care of yourself, look after yourself, be confident and I'll speak to you next week.