Shadowing Practice: Seriously, I'm Begging You to Focus on Your Self Before It's Too Late - Learn English Speaking with Video
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If you've spent your whole life focused on everyone else, their feelings, their needs, their problems,
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while putting yourself last, I'm begging you to stop.
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Your narcissistic family trained you to neglect yourself, and if you don't start focusing on you,
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the consequences will only get worse.
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First, I'll show you what happens when you don't focus on yourself.
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so you can finally see the damage it's causing.
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Then I'll give you practical self-differentiation tips to help you start putting yourself first and break free from this pattern.
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Hi, I'm Jerry Wise, and for over 45 years, I've helped hundreds of thousands of people heal and get their families out of them by practicing self-differentiation,
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the process of becoming your true self
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and releasing the false self you were trained to be in your family of origin so you can finally experience clarity,
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peace, and lasting freedom.
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Number one, when you don't focus on yourself, you keep giving to everyone while neglecting your own needs.
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Your narcissistic family made you the emotional caretaker.
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They taught you that your job was to manage everyone's feelings and fix their problems, while your own needs were treated as selfish.
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You learned that your value came from what you gave, not who you were.
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What do I mean when I say narcissistic family?
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People have asked me this, and they say, are you saying everybody in the family is narcissistic?
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There are some families where everybody in the family is narcissistic.
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But generally, a narcissistic family is a family in which not everyone is narcissistic,
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but there is a narcissist who is a parent or a leader of the family or caretaker in the family,
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a parent, and that the whole family organizes itself around that illness.
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no different than the illness of alcoholism or drug addiction
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or bipolar or depression or because a family gets organizes itself around these types of problems
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and so that's what i mean by a narcissistic family a family who has a narcissist
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and again the family organizes itself around the narcissist here's what happens
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when you don't focus on yourself you keep giving until there's nothing left.
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You pour your energy into everyone around you, your partner, your kids, your job, your friends, but you never pour into yourself.
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This is what I call loaning self, overgiving at the expense of your real self.
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And the longer you keep pouring out without pouring in, the more disconnected from yourself you become.
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Number two, when you don't focus on yourself, you forget who you really are.
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In your narcissistic family, you weren't allowed to develop your own identity.
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When you expressed an opinion, it was dismissed.
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When you wanted something for yourself, you were told you were selfish.
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You were shaped into who they needed you to be.
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and over time you lost touch with your authentic self because there was never space for it to exist, to grow, to develop.
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Now look at your adult life.
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If someone asks you what you want or what makes you happy, you may go blank.
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I remember that.
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Well, what would you like to do, Jerry?
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I have no idea.
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What would you all like to do?
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Where would you like to go eat?
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I don't know.
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What would be your choice or favorite?
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Oh, I don't care.
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Anything's fine.
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You've spent so long focusing on everyone else that you don't even know who you are anymore.
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Your identity got buried under the years of other-focused living,
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focusing on others, other-focused, constantly monitoring others while neglecting yourself.
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And the longer you wait to focus on yourself, the harder it becomes to find your way back to who you really are.
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Number three, when you don't focus on yourself, you keep ending up in the same toxic relationships and same toxic patterns.
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Your narcissistic family was your first relationship model.
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They taught you what love looks like, even if that love was conditional, manipulative, and emotionally abusive.
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You learned to tolerate dysfunction because dysfunction was all you knew.
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Chaos felt familiar.
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Drama felt normal.
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This childhood programming affects your adult relationships.
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You keep choosing people who treat you the way your family did.
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Toxic feels like home, and healthy feels suspicious.
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Their kindness must be a trap.
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You're not bad at picking partners.
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Your system is calibrated to your childhood.
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Until you focus on yourself and get your family's programming out of you, you'll keep repeating the same patterns with different people.
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Number four, when you don't focus on yourself, you live the life your narcissistic family programmed, not your own.
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Your narcissistic family didn't just raise you, they programmed you.
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They instilled beliefs about who you are, what you deserve, and what your life should look like.
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Every decision you make runs through the filter of their expectations and their version of you.
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This is what I call the family super self.
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The self your family needed you to be, not the real self.
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And this family super self, all of the family partakes of this super self.
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And it's probably about five generations old as well.
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and we're plugged into that like an umbilical cord.
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Now look at your adult life.
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If you don't focus on yourself, you'll still spend your life living someone else's script, your career and your relationships.
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None of it will truly be yours.
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You'll wake up one day and realize that the life you built was never for you.
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How many people I have talked to as clients end up in careers, marriages, friendships, organizations, and they go,
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how did I even get here?
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I don't even want to be here.
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Whether it be the neurologist who studied all of his life to be a prominent neurologist and who goes,
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I'm not even sure this is really even what I want to do or wanted to do.
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This is what my family wanted me to do.
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And waking up from those times is very significant,
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no different than my own life and the different paths I have taken and coming to realize that's not really me.
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This isn't really me.
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That's not really me.
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Getting your narcissistic family out of you is the only way to finally live as who you really are.
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Number five, when you don't focus on yourself, you spend your life chasing approval that never satisfies.
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In your narcissistic family, love and approval were conditional.
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You had to earn it through performance and obedience.
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And even when you got it, it was fleeting.
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The goalposts always moved.
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You learned that approval was something you had to chase endlessly.
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Now in your adult life, you're still chasing.
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You seek validation from bosses, partners and friends or authority figures, anyone who might finally make you feel good enough, or maybe those rich friends of yours,
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maybe those who have nicer cars and clothes and houses than you, trying to get their approval.
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Watch what happens.
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No amount of external approval ever fills the void.
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You get the praise, and within hours, you need more.
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It becomes a drug.
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The validation you've been searching for has to come from within,
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and it never will until you stop looking outside and start looking in.
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Number six.
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When you don't focus on yourself, you keep tolerating treatment you would never except for someone you love.
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Your narcissistic family taught you that your boundaries didn't matter.
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They crossed them constantly, emotionally and mentally.
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When you tried to say no, you were punished and made to feel guilty.
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You were trained to accept mistreatment as normal,
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to minimize your pain and to prioritize their comfort over your own well-being.
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In adulthood, you tolerate things from others that you would never let someone do to a friend or a child you love.
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You accept disrespect and dismissal, and you make excuses for it.
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You feel hurt by it.
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When you don't focus on yourself, you keep allowing your boundaries to be violated over and over.
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You protect everyone except you.
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and you deserve the same fierce protection you so freely give to others.
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Number seven, when you don't focus on yourself, years pass and nothing changes.
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Your narcissistic family kept you stuck in survival mode.
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You were so focused on managing their dysfunction, their moods, their chaos, their emotional explosions,
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that you never had time to focus on your own growth.
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You learned to get through the day, not to build a life.
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Your energy went to surviving, not thriving.
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And now years are passing.
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You look back and realize you've been running in place.
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Same pattern, same struggles, same emptiness, different year.
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When you don't focus on yourself, time keeps moving, but we stay stuck.
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One day you'll look up and wonder where the years went and why nothing has changed.
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The time to focus on yourself isn't someday, it's right now.
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8. When you don't focus on yourself, you repeat the same dysfunction with your own children.
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Your narcissistic family passed their dysfunction down to you, not because they meant to, but because unhealed patterns just repeat themselves.
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And positive patterns repeat themselves.
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You absorb their emotional reactivity, their boundary violations, and their conditional love.
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Without conscious work, those patterns don't disappear.
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They become your patterns.
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They live in how you respond to stress and how you show love.
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This is what most people don't realize.
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When you don't focus on yourself, you risk passing the same dysfunction to your children.
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Not because you're a bad parent, but because what's unhealed in you gets transmitted unintentionally.
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Your children absorb your emotional Wi-Fi just like you absorbed your family.
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the best thing you can do for them is to heal yourself.
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Breaking the generational cycle starts with you focusing on you.
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And so many times people go, well, I don't want my children to end up like me
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or to suffer the struggles and problems and patterns that I had growing up.
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So now I'll over-focus on the kids.
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Don't over-focus on the kids.
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That was one of the patterns that was already a problem when you were growing up.
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What you want to do is focus on you, and the balance will be appropriate in terms of what you focus on the kids.
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Number nine, when you don't focus on yourself, your narcissistic family still controls you, even from a distance and even from long ago.
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Even if you moved away, 2,000 miles away, or you've gone no contact or low contact, or again, cut them completely out of your life,
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your narcissistic family can still live inside of you.
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Their voices still run through your head.
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Their rules still dictate your choices.
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Physical distance doesn't disconnect you emotionally.
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It may give you more space to realize things and to lower the temperature and the anxiety.
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That it may do, but that's not equal to the healing.
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It may be a healing component that we may need.
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For some people, they definitely need that component.
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Here's what happens when you don't focus on yourself.
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They still control how you think, how you feel, and who you become.
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You might have left the house, but you haven't left the system, the emotional field and the emotional system.
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You react to their rules even when they're not in the room.
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Getting them out of your life isn't enough.
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You have to get them out of you.
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And that only happens when you finally fully focus on yourself and work on self-differentiation.
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Let me give you a couple self-differentiation tips.
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Firstly, you can focus more on yourself by engaging thinking over feeling when interacting with others,
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particularly others who are problematic or family members.
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Focus on what's going on up here, not what's going on down here.
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There's a time to deal with feelings, but that needs to be done in a safe, neutral, supportive environment.
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Number two, you can focus more on yourself by taking up the important challenge of choosing to love yourself today.
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Choosing to love yourself.
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And that must start today.
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C. Number three, you can focus more on yourself by reducing and grieving the toxic relationships in your life.
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This makes room for more healthy relationships.
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We may have to do some weeding of the garden.
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I certainly had to years ago and then even years after that.
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There's stages of doing that weeding of the garden.
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If you're ready to finally break free and start living with clarity, peace and a grounded connection to your true self, then join my Road to Self program.
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Many who have joined say it was the missing piece in their healing journey, the step that finally helped them get the family out of them and stand strong as their true self.
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If you're not sure if the Road to Self program is for you, at least not right now, then at least start with my free 84-minute self-differentiation training.
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Over 30,000 people have joined the free training as their first step.
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Click the links in the description to get started.
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Don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell icon so you'll never miss a new video.
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I do want to thank you for watching and thank you for commenting.
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I read many of the comments that all of you put up.
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Have a great day and be wise.
Context & Background
In "Seriously, I'm Begging You to Focus on Your Self Before It's Too Late," Jerry Wise shares profound insights about the importance of self-awareness and self-care, especially when one has been conditioned to prioritize others' needs over their own. With over 45 years of experience, Jerry offers practical advice on self-differentiation, a term that refers to the process of understanding and embracing your true self, independent of external influences. His guidance is particularly valuable for anyone who grew up in a narcissistic household, helping listeners recognize the emotional patterns that prevent personal growth and fulfillment.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- “What do you want?” - A critical question to help you reconnect with your desires.
- “It’s okay to focus on yourself.” - A reminder that self-care is not selfish.
- “You don’t have to manage everyone’s feelings.” - An affirmation against overgiving.
- “Your needs matter too.” - A statement to prioritize your own emotional health.
- “Let’s talk about your happiness.” - Encouraging conversations about individual well-being.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
To fully benefit from Jerry's insights while improving your English pronunciation, consider using a shadowing app. Follow this step-by-step method to practice effectively:
- Listen to the Video: Start by watching the video attentively to grasp the speaker's tone and emotion.
- Break it Down: Divide the transcript into smaller sections, focusing on one phrase at a time, such as “It’s okay to focus on yourself.”
- Repeat and Imitate: Using a shadowing app, play the section and repeat it immediately after hearing it. Aim to mimic Jerry’s pronunciation, intonation, and pacing. This is known as shadow speech.
- Record Yourself: After several attempts, record your own version. This allows you to compare your pronunciation with the original, helping you improve your English pronunciation.
- Reflect and Revise: Listen to your recording and identify areas for improvement. Pay attention to rhythm and emphasis, as these can greatly impact clarity in spoken English.
By incorporating this shadowing technique with phrases rich in emotional depth, learners will not only enhance their English speaking skills but also gain confidence in their ability to express themselves authentically. Remember, the goal of shadow speak is not just to mimic but to internalize the language and use it in your daily life.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.