You could have it all…

The ending of a relationship brings with it a period of confusion. I was feeling a lot of overwhelming and conflicting emotions that I was utterly ill equipped to deal with. For so long I had progressively over time added layer upon layer of armour to myself and my personality in a vain attempt at keeping calm and carrying on… and in full disclosure it had worked for the last 33 years. My ability to completely detach from my emotional self and operate purely on the logical self had gotten me this far in life and up to this point I had no reason to question my own rationale. It just worked for me.

Problem was (and what I couldn’t see at the time) was that every time I armoured up and shut down my emotional self I became that little bit more detached from everyone around me. The cost of keeping calm and carrying on was my emotional self and its ability to connect to others. Sure I didn’t panic in a crisis and I was able to operate effectively regardless of the chaos I found myself in to the point where I proudly self-identified my role within the family as specialising in ‘Crisis management and disaster response’. I wore it like a badge of pride. I valued myself and my own self-worth on that criteria and in how useful I was to others.

But I wasn’t truly connected to others. I said the right things, nodded in the right places and went through the motions but I didn’t feel it inside. I didn’t feel anything other than anger, bitterness and resentment. See when you armour yourself up its not in preparation to be joyous or happy or engage in fun. It is to fight and for as long as I could remember I was at war with the world and more importantly with myself. I felt it was my job to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, to fix every problem, to always have the answer. I didn’t truly realise that there was a problem or that life could be any other way.

The first inclination I had that I may not be playing to the same rules as everyone else came in the form of Brené Brown. I had seen Brené’s books pop up on my Amazon ‘recommended for you’ list for years and every time I did I chose to ignore them thinking that they were for ‘everyone else’ you know the ‘emotional’ types? They held no value for me I was fine and dandy going about my business fighting the world, I had no need for emotions (The irony that I had fallen foul of the old adage ‘Never judge a book by its cover’ is not lost on me).

I came across her special on Netflix ‘The Call to Courage’ which out of curiosity one night I watched…and it was like someone switched a lightbulb on for me. Brené was not only funny, wise and authentic but she articulated in a way that I finally understood something I never knew I needed to understand. The language of shame and vulnerability was something that has been driving my behaviour for so long without me even being aware of them. I was hooked. I ordered her book ‘Daring Greatly’ and quickly devoured that (and have since consumed most of her other works including podcasts) and I was ready to take on the world. I was ready to be part of the human race again to face my shame and embrace vulnerability as a way of life.

However it wasn’t to be that easy. Brené had given me the what and the why but what I lacked was the how. How do I change? How do I embrace vulnerability? How do I connect with and engage on an emotional level with those around me. I had the intention and the drive but not the tools and techniques. I needed further guidance.

I first reflected on myself, warts and all in a way that I hadn’t done for a long time. I was good at picking out faults with others and that skill was easily applied to myself. I came up with the list below which I split into two parts — Fears and Faults:

Fears

Failure– I fear failure. I fear not having succeeded. My desire to succeed means that I will stop at nothing to win whatever the cost and no matter who gets in my way. Money seems to be a biggie with my fear of failure which is likely why it forms the basis of much of my anxiety.

Not being a good man — I don’t know what being a good man is truly. I didn’t have good male role models growing up and I don’t share the same interests and values as other men. I try hard to do the opposite of what I saw as being bad but that doesn’t always equate to good.

Not being a good parent — I don’t feel I had the best parents and I strive to be better but I lack the emotional presence to do so. I am good at dealing with the practical things but not so good at dealing with the mental and emotional parts.

Not knowing — I fear not knowing, not having an answer. I have a hero complex I like to be the fixer and when I don’t have an answer this makes me feel ashamed.

Being weak — Linked with being a man I don’t like to feel weak and sometimes harden up to avoid showing any sort of weakness. This desire to be seen as strong means that I get stubborn about things and don’t back down for fear of being seen as weak.

Conflict — I hate conflict. I would much rather ignore or avoid it altogether but in doing so I make myself and the issue worse. I make a rod for my own back and then it inevitably comes out all in one go at a later date.

Not fulfilling potential — I don’t feel like I am fulfilling my potential. I don’t know what my potential is or even what I want to do. I just have an overriding feeling of not achieving it.

Rejection — I feel physically afraid of rejection to the point where I go to great lengths to avoid it by either compromising myself and my wants values to please others or in never risking opening up in the first place.

Faults

Being too proud — This has happened too many times to mention specifics. I am too proud to ask for help when I am struggling to the point where I have done it so little that I really don’t know how to do it properly. On the few occasions I have done so the discomfort and vulnerability I feel makes me super defensive to the point where I become an arsehole.

Being tolerant but not patient — I realise with hindsight that I am very tolerant. I can take a lot of crap. Patience I’m not so good at. I can’t wait for anything and I expect results asap.

Not being straight with people — Linked with being tolerant. I tolerate bad behaviour and situations and expect things to change without actually telling the people involved how and why what they are doing affects me and how I need them to change.

Expectations — I do have an internal list of expectations of people, situations and life that I don’t openly share. I am literally asking people to play a game and not telling them how they win the game. Similarly I apply expectations to myself and ruthlessly judge myself by those standards regardless of whether or not people around me want or need those things from me.

Not recognising when I need help — I miss the signs of when I am struggling or getting overwhelmed until it reaches a point where it is too far gone at which point this leaks out to those around me and causes friction.

Not being able to accept help — I often think I don’t/ can’t be helped as I am the only person who can fix/ do something. I get irritated if someone trying to help fails to live up to my expectations that I have in my head.

Control — I have a need to control the world around me including the people in it. Control makes things predictable which makes it manageable but you literally cannot control people and ultimately anything beyond your own thoughts behaviours and actions.

Lack of trust in others — I find it very difficult to trust other people and take a cynical view of the world. I often dismiss other people’s ideas as I believe I know best.

I don’t deserve to be loved — I am unable to accept the love that is shown to me and feel quite uncomfortable with it.

Worth is tied into usefulness — I tie my own sense of worth into what I can do i.e. being useful to people. If I am not useful then I am not worthy. I can’t just accept my worth as a person based on who I am

Stubbornness — I joke that I am too stubborn to die which isn’t too far from the truth. Whilst I see the benefits of being stubborn when applied to personal relationships this is often a negative. I place restrictions on myself which only hurt those close to me.

As you can see the list was pretty extensive and damning but even after conducting this exercise I had no idea what to do with this information. So I swallowed my pride (good start as that was on the list) and I sought professional help in the form of counselling.

I didn’t have high hopes for counselling. I had some back in my twenties and though it helped somewhat at the time it wasn’t the miracle cure I was after (you can see from that statement why it failed). I also believed that the counsellor wouldn’t be able to tell me anything new.

We had some very interesting conversations and the counsellor introduced me to Kahler’s drivers which are the unconscious internal pressures that make us behave in a certain way that tend to satisfy our inner needs rather than be outwardly useful in life (generally speaking there are some benefits to each of these drivers but largely they aren’t beneficial to the individual) the five drivers are:

Be Perfect — “I have to get things exactly right” (As if accuracy were important)

Hurry Up — “I have to get things done as quickly as possible” (As if speed of completion was important)

Please People — “I have to make sure everyone is happy with how I do things” (As if other people’s approval is important)

Be Strong — “I can’t show how much I am struggling to get things done” (As if the struggle and discomfort is important)

Try Hard — “I must put maximum effort into getting things done” (As if the effort applied to the task is important)

Now most people don’t demonstrate one of these drivers alone its usually two or more in combination and they all have strengths and weaknesses but for me my top two were be strong and be perfect. Let’s take a deeper look at these.

Be Strong

Be strong people are strong in a crisis and believe that the worth in doing something comes from the amount of effort and stress it takes to accomplish. They put a lot of pressure on themselves and tend appear to have ‘broad shoulders’ often shouldering more than their fair share without complaining or asking for help. Be strong people need to learn to relax and admit to their mistakes and struggles.

Be Perfect

Be perfect people believe that every task, person, product or even statement can and should be rated as more or less good or bad. They worry about getting something wrong and insist in getting things exactly right and absolutely hate other people’s criticism. Be perfect people need to learn to accept that things can be good enough and that things don’t always have to be perfect.

And just like that I had the answers to what drives me and my behaviours. I painfully could see both the positives and negatives of being and acting in the way I had been and I also had some explanation to how I felt the way I felt and behaved the way I behaved. Those two paragraphs above described what was driving my faults list almost perfectly.

I don’t know whether it was my receptiveness to it or the fact that I was a little older and a little wiser now but this time round something about it all just made sense. I reviewed my fears list through the lens of knowing my drivers and figured out pretty quickly that a lot of what was driving the ‘Fears’ list was the very last thing on the list — my fear of rejection.

My fear of rejection stems from a multitude of sources from my relationship with my parents, significant life events and past relationship history but regardless of the source there it was in the cold light of day for all to see. Now it was out in the open I couldn’t avoid it I had to confront it.

There is a saying (and I can’t for the life of me remember where I heard this) that we are all the architects of our own demise. We subconsciously create scenarios and situations that make our biggest fears a reality and I was no different. My fear of rejection had gotten the better of me and in order to avoid it I had done two very distinct things. The first was in not allowing myself to be accepted. I did not accept the love and affection of others or myself because if I never had it I could never lose it (which made perfect sense on some level). The other way was I actively pushed people away because if I pushed them away first then they couldn’t push me away (again makes a twisted sort of sense).

Unearthing these beliefs, drivers, fears and failures was incredibly painful and ultimately too late to have any bearing on the breakdown of my marriage. But in terms of having a roadmap of what I needed to do to be better in the future it was priceless. I am a firm believer in not regretting life experiences and circumstances because every decision and experience leads you to who you are today. Changing any one element, no matter how insignificant, completely changes the story and who we are as people.

I continue to work on these negative and undesirable aspects of who I am. It took 33 years to get here so it’s not going to be resolved in a week or a month or even a year. It is the journey that matters most. Having the opportunity to practise new behaviours, to make better choices and to be mindful of myself is a gift and one that I am grateful for. If you take one thing from all this it is simply that we all have our own individual quirks, issues, trauma, strengths, weaknesses etc. and it is up to us to recognise these things within ourselves and take actions to address them because we are ultimately only responsible for and in control of ourselves and our own choices in life. Better to have one hand on the steering wheel than to be at the mercy of our own subconscious.