"I'm not even annoyed at my job anymore; I'm just over it. I spent $700 on this sweater. You like it?"
"With my dad, it's like everything I do is wrong. It makes me so angry – I'm going to stop talking to him for a while."
"I was really into that relationship and now, I don't know, I guess I'm not anymore."
Feeling out of control is not, in general, the feeling we feel when we feel out of control. Instead, out-of-control gets translated into a host of other feelings, such as boredom or dislike or anger. Because we identify ourselves as being [bored/angry/whatev], we make behavior decisions based on those feelings. And the function of these feelings is to justify an action we're about to take in order to (secretly) regain control (not, of course, that we're aware that we're involved in any kind of power issue at all).
Unfortunately, being reactive is patently not the same thing as being in control. A key marker that you feel out of control is when you find yourself really invested in trying to take control, and not necessarily of the situation you're in. So it goes like this:
SUBCONSIOUS: "Taking control in this type of situation had horrible consequences in the past; I'm afraid to enact power."
CONSEQUENCE: You don't get what you want; more importantly, you don't even try, meaning you don't get to [assert yourself/protect yourself/etc.].
TRANSLATION TO CONSCIOUS: "I feel [enraged/disinterested/depressed/etc.]."
CONSEQUENCE: You take control of a situation where you can do so without triggering your subconscious fear. So, instead of quitting your job (because self-assertion had negative consequences for you in the past), you plan an expensive spa retreat weekend.
And to use the above examples:
"I feel out of control at work" translates to "annoyed" and manifests as "I'm going to control my closet."
"I feel out of control with my father" translates to "angry" and manifests as "I'm going to control the communication."
"I feel out of control in my relationship" translates to "detached" and manifests as "I'm going to control my feelings."
When you find yourself taking control of a situation, it's because you are totally out of control. And "out of control" is not the space you want to be in when making big behavior decisions.
So, if we don't feel out of control, how do we know when we're out of control? And what does "control" even mean anyway – control over what? And how do we get control back? And do we even want it?
ORIGINS OF CONTROL
Our sense of authority comes from how authority was enacted by us and on us in our families. What did you do when mom yelled? When your sibling was treated better than you? Were you a follower at home? Pushy? What succeeded in getting you what you wanted - did sulking work? Being a suck-up at school? Lying? What didn't work?
With power and control we generally translate our childhood sense of power and control – unexamined - into our current jobs, relationships, etc. Here are the four basic ways we enact power – and we often use them in combination:
ENLISTING OTHERS
Were you the sibling who always tattled to mom? If this technique worked, then you never really learned to trust in your inner sense of power, and your experience of control is that you enlist others to enforce your authority for you. You probably still do this. At work, you go to your boss with complaints about other people. In your personal life, when you get into a fight, you get backup – spouse, partner, friend, sibling, etc. – to marshal your arguments, as if the more people who agree with you, the more right you are. You get other people to back you up because you believe, at a certain level, that it's somehow not meaningful if you're the only one who thinks something is true. Here are some of your core supporting arguments:
"EVERYONE does it this way."
"Wanting that is totally NORMAL."
"Well, that's the way WE do it."
CRUSHING OTHERS
Was one of your parents a GREAT SANTINI-type who ruled the house? Were your feelings and desires subsumed by some outside parental force? Did the family get dragged along on one parent's desire, e.g. did you have to do things like visit historic battlefields then get in trouble if you complained, i.e. expressed yourself? If so, then you learned that asserting your authority had terrible negative consequences. Having been thwarted for so long, you are probably now doing to others exactly what was done to you – crush them first, shout louder than them, ensure that you are always totally in control, consequences be damned. Do you dismiss every issue that isn't your issue, like if it's not important to you, it's not important at all – and not just unimportant but almost contemptuous? Are you coercive? Do you have lots of unspoken rules about what you will and won't discuss?
Your core arguments rely on force of personality and not giving much back to people emotionally into order to keep them on their toes. When someone disagrees with you, you squash them; if squashing doesn't work, you cut them out. You might be very passive-aggressive about this. Is your past littered with broken relationships? Ex-friends? People you no longer speak to? Do you use logic to cut people down? When you're in an argument, do you focus on the precise words the other person uses in order to catch them in a logic trap and use one small mistake to dismiss them and everything they're saying? Crushers often try to sound reasonable, as if they're acting out of logic and not emotion. For crushers, the more upset the other person becomes, the calmer they get; getting through emotionally makes them feel in control.
DOING NOTHING
Do things happen to you at work and you complain a lot and do nothing? If so, you may believe you have no authority. Your experience growing up was that you weren't allowed to enact your power. If your family was very hierarchical, then perhaps you learned that power can't be enacted upward, only downward (and even that was only allowed if you didn't get caught). You cede your power to some kind of generalized rule-following – like at work – and get very upset when people break the rules because it's not fair that they do it but somehow you don't. So you complain about it at home and probably take it out in your personal life or by spending a lot of time being unhappy and beating yourself up. You do a lot for others and keep doing it no matter how little you get back or how unsatisfying it all is.
Your core arguments probably come off like a lot of whining. You may notice that your friends, who used to give you advice about your problems, now just kind of nod and agree because you've never taken their advice. For example, you complain about your job; when a friend suggests you look for a new one, you say something ala, "Yeah, I should do that" then go back to complaining. You are probably wracked with a lot of guilt over, well, everything. You're two-faced in all likelihood, presenting a sweet, fake face to the world and a real, mean one to people close to you. Passive-aggressive defines you, like making cutting remarks in a sweet tone then acting all upset when someone "took it wrong."
DOING SOMETHING
Are you someone who always has to respond? Are you constantly righting wrongs, real or perceived? If so, you probably spent much of your childhood feeling your authority was thwarted. Maybe your parents never listened to you; maybe they always seemed to side with another sibling; maybe when you reacted to unfairness, you got yelled at. If so, you are probably spending a lot of your time trying to even out relationships and make everything "fair." You may write letters to congresspeople or speak up at staff meeting about inequities or have very tit-for-tat interpersonal relationships. You cannot just sit with the unfairness; it MUST be righted.
You are a constant complaint engine. You send your steak back. You contact family members to tell them exactly how you feel about what you believe they've done to you. For you, there's no such thing as a mistake – it's a personal slight; there's no such thing as an oversight because every single human action, to your mind, is totally deliberate. If someone forgets your birthday, it's not mere forgetfulness; rather, it's personal, it's a pattern, it's unacceptable, and you're going to tell them about it.
CONTROL OF WHAT?
A central problem with any of these four responses is you've confused taking action with taking control. Action looks like control because you're taking power over… something. Whether you're sitting there sulking about it or screaming in someone's face about it, you're still doing something. But there's a disconnect here because taking action is a behavior you perform in place of actually taking control because truly standing in your power… scares the crap out of you. Example:
CURRENT SITUATION: You really hate one of the people who works under you in your division at work. You can't put your finger on why, but you can't stand him and want him out – he rubs you the wrong way for some reason. Unfortunately, he's pretty good at his job, has done nothing to set you off, and your mutual boss really likes him.
TAKING ACTION: You decide you're going to comb through every inch of his expense accounts looking for a discrepancy so you can maybe justify firing him.
PAST SITUATION: Growing up, you felt like no one really listened to you, and, when they did, that you were somehow wrong in some way. Maybe you jumbled your words or said silly things because you had so little confidence that your legitimate thoughts would be meaningful and valued. Gathering evidence to fire someone mimics that past behavior – instead of examining what's happening inside you and why you're upset about this person, you're turning to external cues to tell you how to behave. And maybe the fact that your mutual boss likes this guy raises some issues and insecurities for you – like competition for parental love, or maybe, like in childhood, you feel the two of you are being compared and that you're coming up short.
TAKING CONTROL: You decide to do nothing about this person because, if you have to go searching for a case against him, then you don't really have one. If it's doable, you let one of your co-workers manage this person instead of you; if that can't happen, you look for another way to manage your wound, like by trying to confine the relationship to email so you're not as easily set off by him for example. You decide that the part of you that dislikes him is responding to a past wound; you choose, instead, to listen to your adult voice that says he's doing a good job.
Given the current situation, why would you ever comb through this employee's expenses looking for a reason to fire him? Rather, the action you're taking is in response to your feeling out control in the past. Taking control is acknowledging your past but behaving based on the present.
TAKING BACK CONTROL
Taking control means taking SELF-control, not control over some external situation or person. And this is the essence of power and control. It never has anything to do with anyone else. For the most part, we don't get freaky about things we KNOW we can't control – like the weather; you might be bummed if your party gets rained out and you have to move it indoors, but not enraged. Also, we don't get wildly upset about things we KNOW we can control even if they don't turn out the way we'd like; while we may kick ourselves a bit for blowing off the gym, we don't become violently frustrated. (BTW, if you are getting extremely upset over things entirely out of your control or totally in your control, you should go talk to someone because it may speak to a larger issue, like depression for example.)
Control is really about one thing: a reality check. Internally, it's about getting a sense of yourself and your own power issues. But self-awareness isn't the whole answer. Externally, it's about knowing when to stop. Stopping often looks like starting, since stopping one course of action – getting high every night and watching TV instead of dating, nagging your partner the second he or she comes in the door – means starting another – e.g. dating, smiling and shutting up, etc.
Stopping is not "giving up" or "giving in" or "losing"; stopping is an acknowledgment of your own power; it's a statement to yourself that you have done right by you, that you have reached for what you wanted in the best way you currently know how, AND THAT YOU DON'T JUDGE YOURSELF TO BE A FAILURE FOR NOT GETTING THE OUTCOME YOU WANTED. When you keep pounding away at something – or keep avoiding pounding away if you're the do-nothing type – you're telling yourself that the problem with the situation is you. This is why the reality check is so crucial; if you've really done everything you can to get what you want, give yourself a break, stop, and come up with plan B.
We get upset about things we THINK we can control; we get upset when we have SOME control over an outcome but don't have a great sense of how much. This is where we overassert our control – by doing something, by doing nothing – and where we feel we need to exert power – by enlisting others or crushing others. Thinking we can do something to control an outcome – like making someone love you more or getting someone to apologize for something they did and really mean it and make it all right or any of a host of other outcomes we want and believe we can get if we just manipulate the situation correctly – is what drives those strong emotions and misplaced behaviors. They define being "out of control." Taking control, paradoxically, is about relinquishing control. By letting go of behaviors predicated on your past, you are living in your present, which is the essence of standing in your power and control.
]]>Drama. Sometimes, there's nothing better than a big juicy drama, either as a lead player or a bit one. Drama can feel like living. There's so much emotionality, so much STUFF happening that you must be alive, you must be feeling, this all must be real, right? Drama can make you feel like you're IN – part of – something. Well, the something you're in is your own muck and you're face down, squirming in it and calling that motion "living." Drama, in other words, is a means of not living because drama is about being in a play and performing for an audience. Life is offstage. It's time to close the show. Here's how.
Lead: You.
One way to know you're the lead in the drama is if you think someone else is the lead in the drama. "I'm so over that fight I had with mom; she just won't let it go." Drama stems from a factual completion – like a breakup – without an emotional completion. Drama is about pretending. Pretending you're over it; pretending you don't care anymore; pretending you're unaffected; pretending you're not angry. Drama is a fake connecting thread to a person when the actual thread has been cut. Instead of connecting to each other via real communication, you connect via acting. If there are secrets, secondhand information, lots of unsaid stuff between you and someone else, and big emotions about the person – secret glee that they didn't get that job! rage that they did! - then you are the lead in a drama.
Bit Player: You.
If you "got sucked into" (read: "chose to participate in") someone else's drama, you are a bit player in a drama. Bit players generally get into the show by making unwitting statements – "Congrats on your new job!" only to have the person's spouse go, "What? You're quitting?" If you invest your energy in these people's crizzap, you're a bit player. In other words, you've made their drama into your drama. All of a sudden you find yourself trying to right something when you didn't even know you'd done anything wrong; you talk to other friends about it; you send apologetic or frustrated emails to the main players. If you both accidentally incite something AND subsequently get involved in its aftermath, you're a bit player.
The Ex, Mom, Co-Worker, Friend
Actually, no one else matters; this drama stars YOU.
You dated The Ex for a few years before the two of you broke up a year or so ago; you're still up in The Ex's junk (like maybe you're in business together); you're OVER it you tell yourself; The Ex can go off and do whatever – you don't care. Then, via secondhand information (from someone who's about to become a Bit Player), you find out that The Ex is dating someone else.
Curtain rises.
You stew for a few days. It's agonizing for you. What did Bit Player say exactly? What does Bit Player know? I mean, it's not like you care about The Ex anymore; you're just curious. You spend a lot of time telling yourself you don't care. You go on fishing expeditions and pretend that's not what you're doing. You ask your source, "Hey, how's Bit Player doing? What's Bit Player up to? You know, I haven't talked to Bit Player in ages; what's Bit Player's email?" Maybe you contact Bit Player to get more info. At any rate, at some point, you are unable to let this go. For someone who's over it, you suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure are putting in a lot of work and emotions in finding out what's going on. So you decide to contact The Ex. You know you have to say something innocuous and casual – this, after all, is the character you're projecting to your audience (which is primarily comprised of you but also contains your friends, your family, The Ex, your co-workers – anyone with whom you're being fake about your feelings).
So you contact The Ex in some manner. At a core level, you know this is going to get some kind of reaction out of The Ex – that's the whole point. But, because you're acting so totally cool and uncaring about the whole thing and because your comment is so meaningless in and of itself – well, any reaction is surely not about YOUR drama. If The Ex goes all crazy, then that's about The Ex and not about you – or so you tell yourself. Of course, if you're not looking for a reaction… why do you even bother saying anything? You shove that thought aside. "Hey, heard you and your new relationship ran into Bit Player." While you're at it, you decide to send Bit Player an email, just to dig as much as you can about a person you claim you don't care about anymore.
Curtain.
You know – K-N-O-W – that this is going to set off a shitstorm in The Ex. In fact, that's the whole point – to evoke a burst of emotions in The Ex. Because if The Ex gets all upset, then you can relax; The Ex's upset means that The Ex still secretly cares. Phew. Of course, you tell yourself that you never anticipated there would be any reaction to your casual text message. Telling yourself that The Ex overreacted feels good! You now go about your business like nothing happened.
Bit Player receives Lead's email. Lead's email is filled with vagueness, and you can't exactly tell what's going on. What did The Ex say to Lead? It looks like The Ex put some really nasty statements in your mouth. It's all "Whisper Down the Valley" in which one person told another person who told another person. You don't know what was said to whom, but you feel anxious – like you somehow did something wrong. You feel terribly misunderstood and decide to correct things; you feel something got out of control and it's somehow your responsibility to control it, as if it should have been in your control to begin with. You respond to Lead, trying to explain yourself.
Lead gets Bit Player's email. You don't know what to make of it. It wasn't very informative. Now you really need to know what went down between Bit Player and The Ex. Your emotions are in a total flurry, though maybe, beneath it all, is a kind of depression. There's energy, anxiety – you don't even know why or what you want. You do a lot of work to convince yourself that you're just experiencing natural curiosity about a friend because, at some level, you know your emotions are way outsized for the situation. At a very core level you CAN'T be upset about The Ex because, if you look there, well, that's a total emotional black hole. You act even harder, all the while digging around for some piece of information that will make all these feelings go away.
Meanwhile, Bit Player gets a furious email from The Ex. "What the fuck did you say to Lead? Lead says you revealed everything about our conversation. Jesus, what is wrong with you? I thought I could trust you. You're an ass."
You fly into a tailspin. Huh? What? You discuss this with friends. "I haven't seen either of them in years. Last I heard, they were long broken up. In fact, The Ex said they were really good friends now and were both off seeing other people. What the fuck is going on? Now The Ex hates me – and I didn't even do anything. And why the fuck did Lead say anything?" You can't really be mad at the secondhand source for saying something to Lead. After all, if you genuinely thought you were saying something non-gossipy and meaningless, then the secondhand source didn't break any trust. And anyway, when did The Ex's personal life become your secret? You write a baffled, hurt, and maybe kind of angry email to The Ex.
Curtain.
Bit Player receives an email from The Ex. In fact, a flurry of emails go back and forth between you and The Ex whereby you wind up kind of apologizing for something you don't even think you did wrong. It's not like The Ex told you the new relationship was a secret. The Ex is accusing you of breaking trust – and you're letting The Ex do exactly that. You have bought into The Ex's belief that you did something wrong. But you can't quite figure out how to correct it because, no matter how much you explain yourself to The Ex, The Ex is still mad. You're looking for The Ex to excuse you from the drama, to say, "Sorry, you're right; I was drunk when I wrote that email; ignore it; you did nothing wrong." You keep trying to get that response from The Ex but it just doesn't happen. You're at a loss. You're in the drama-nado now, swirling around, out of control, trying to get everything back to where it was and utterly failing.
The Lead just can't let this go. You hate feeling this way, but you have to find out what was happening. You don't even know if you care. Things were in some kind of stasis before, and now they're not. The email with Bit Player wasn't satisfying; your secondhand source doesn't know anything more; while you know you got a rise of The Ex (thank God), it's not really that satisfying. What you want is to rip open The Ex's skull and find out exactly what emotions lie in there, to somehow know for all time specifically what The Ex feels about you and then somehow get ongoing updates wired directly from The Ex's subconscious to yours. It's all so stressful and depressing. There's not really much more you can think of to do – of course, you've been in this emotional space before. "Kind of depressed all the time" is your steady state, and you slide right back into it.
And so it ends, kind of boring and unresolved. Lead, Bit Player, and The Ex are all slightly riled up then it all dribbles away to a space where no one knows anything more than they knew before but everyone's a little bit angrier and disconnected.
Curtain. Omnes exeunt.
If you think you're Lead, well guess what? The Ex thinks the same thing. The Ex is going through a marginally different version of the exact same drama that Lead is. In The Ex's drama, The Ex is Lead and you are The Ex.
So the first thing to recognize is that, whether you're a Lead or a Bit Player, the show is not about anyone other than you. In the example above, you're probably not into The Ex anymore. However, the breakup with The Ex set off a terrible cascade of self-esteem issues with you, self-esteem issues you brought to the relationship (and which, in all likelihood, contributed to its end). In other words, in a certain sense, you're right – you are over The Ex. What you're not over is hating yourself or feeling that you'll never be good enough or any of a host of other issues. You invested The Ex with meaning, like "The Ex is in love with me; therefore I'm loveable." When The Ex left, so did your loveableness. So the drama is not about getting an emotional rise out The Ex; it's about getting an emotional rise out of YOURSELF via The Ex.
The Bit Player is no different. "The Ex hates me!" "The Lead thinks I said horrible things!" You have invested these people's responses with meaning: if The Ex hates you, then you're horrible; if the Lead perceives you badly then you're a bad person. You are turning to these external people to correct feelings within yourself – if you're liked and understood then you can feel okay about what you did. In the above example, you believe you somehow did something wrong by saying whatever it is you said. But you only believe it because THEY believe it, i.e. in fact you don't actually think you did anything wrong. You simply feel in trouble for something; you've probably felt "wrong" in a lot of other situations. This is a pattern for you. You invest in the drama in order to feel "right" about yourself.
Step 1: So the first step to getting offstage and into your life, is by getting real. Getting real in this case means acknowledging your feelings as valid even as you're judging them. Do both at once.
"I know it's stupid but I feel [depressed, stabbed in the gut, enraged, etc.] that The Ex is seeing someone else."
Putting down your feelings means putting down yourself. Own them. If you can own them without the judgment, even better. Don't worry about what you "should" feel; focus on what you DO feel.
Step 2: Ask yourself when you've felt this way before. In a past relationship? With dad? With more or less everyone you get close to? Patterns can be very tough to crack. However, knowing you're in a pattern can also be weirdly calming. A pattern tells you it's totally about you, a fact which can often take the sting out of whatever the other person was up to.
Step 3: Figure out what you really feel about the other person. Are you still in love with The Ex? Do you, the Bit Player, really feel you've wronged Lead and/or The Ex? Give yourself permission to tell yourself the truth. Play the following game – "If I were someone who… what would I feel?"
"If I were someone who was genuinely no longer in love with The Ex, what would I feel when I found out The Ex was dating someone else?"
"If I were someone who believed I did nothing wrong, what would I do when I received The Ex's email?"
What you would feel can serve as a reality check to help you figure out what to do next.
Step 4: Examine what you DO feel but behave based on what you WOULD feel. Would, not should. If you would feel about The Ex's new relationship something ala "that's cool" then ask yourself how someone who felt "that's cool" would behave. Would that person yell? Write detached notes? Start dating someone they didn't care about just to get revenge?
If you're the Bit Player, would you write a note back to The Ex? If you would, what would you say in it – would you still defend yourself? Would you call instead of email? Would you ignore the whole thing entirely? What you would feel is actually what you do feel; you just haven't stepped into being that person yet.
By the way, this is all self-help, but the truth is it's a lot easier to get through something like this with some counseling assistance. If you're in a drama, it's because you have a lot of emotion tied to something, and it's often simpler to untangle it all with a disinterested, outside party. However, whether you do it alone or with someone else, the steps are exactly the same.
The hardest thing about choosing life over drama is that, because drama is pre-scripted, you know where it's going to end. For all its emotionality, drama is safe, and it's that sense of safety that makes you show up and do the show day after day after day. Performing your life is so much easier than living it. Being real is scary when you don't know who the real you truly is. But the only way you're going to find out is by getting off that stage, by leaving your audience behind, and stepping outside into the world.
]]>“I know, I know – I should save – but what do you think of my $250 highlights?”
“We told our friends not to buy us any presents for our engagement party; we’re better off than they are and they couldn’t afford what we wanted anyway.”
“I know it’s outside my budget, but I NEED that new car.”
“I can’t live any cheaper; I mean if I cut everything out, then why even bother?”
We often pretend that money is some external object, unrelated to internal self-definition, but how you spend your money tells you everything about how you view yourself. Do you give yourself expensive treats that you can’t afford? If you have a lot of money, do you spend it on things you don’t really care about, disposable items, like shoes you wear once for example? Do you fail to return things you dislike figuring it’s not worth the effort? The way you spend money translates to the way you live your life.
STEALING FROM PETER TO PAY FOR JEAN-PAUL
“I make six-figures a year. I bought a $700 sweater – so what? I go out to dinner all the time; I treat myself to a several hundred dollar spa treatment; my hair costs $400. I have the money so big deal!”
While this cash hemorrhage may look like you’re just enjoying the benefits of a high-paying job, you may, in fact, be mortgaging your future. The way to know is to look at the areas of your life that have nothing to do with money and see if your spending reflects a pattern that goes across all areas of your life.
Food: Do you tell yourself you want to lose weight but you’re just going to eat this cupcake then go back on your diet?
Love: Do you have “empty calorie” relationships that you kind of know are going nowhere, letting time keep drifting by without finding anything real? Or do you kind of dodge dating/relationships altogether, telling yourself you want to be in a relationship but you’re just too tired (or something) to date now and you’d rather spend time with your friends?
Work: Are you miserable at your job and keep talking about getting a new one but somehow stay at the same place anyway? Do you get irritated with your friends when they say things like, “Well maybe you should get a new job” like they just don’t get how complicated it all is? Do you procrastinate at work, doing a lot of things last-minute rather than organizing your schedule better? Do you dicker around on the internet all day at work or maybe spend an inordinate amount of time picking through Zagats to plan your overpriced evening meal?
Conflict: Do you tell everyone about your conflicts except the person you’re actually having the conflict with? Do you get upset with other people and complain rather than doing something about it? Or get all passive-aggressive on them? Or simply pretend you’re fine?
The commonality here is that you’re giving yourself a “gift” in the present in the hopes that the underlying issue will all just kind of magically work itself out in the future. You are, in effect, putting a band-aid on a gaping chest wound. Your belief is that, somehow, in the future, you’ll be this different person, this new person capable of dealing with the problem you’re failing to deal with now. You won’t. The way you change the way your future self will deal with problems is by changing the way your present-day self deals with problem. Your spending pattern, then, tells you everything you need to know.
LIVING SMALL
“Look, I have rent, car, insurance, my daughter’s school, clothes, etc. I’ve pared myself down to the bone. There’s no fat left to give up!”
Giving “everything” up is often a justification to spend big in some area unrelated to money – like you’ve made this big financial sacrifice so that should somehow “pay” for your choice to pursue an acting career. You’ve given up seemingly everything but you still can’t afford your life. There’s nothing else you can do! But, of course, there is. Living small is based on the belief that if you pull nourishment from other parts of your life, you’ll be able to heavily nourish the one part of your life that truly matters to you and that that is somehow all worth it.
When you really get down to it, when you examine your “small” life, you will see that there are many places where you’re not living so small – you’ve invented this world in which there are certain things you “can’t” give up and have organized your entire life around maintaining those. To pick the “I wanna be an actor” example:
Living Small:
· You live in a craphole studio with a roommate to cut back on your expenses.
· You shop only at thrift stores.
· You buy second-hand furniture.
· You never go out or only to places that are free.
· You have no health insurance.
Living Big:
· Your cell-phone bill is in the hundreds because you “need” a cell phone so your agent can call plus you got rid of your landline so that’s economizing right?
· You need new head shots.
· You need a great haircut – you’re an actor and you’re being judged on your looks plus you have to go to this art opening later and you know you’re going to be seen.
· You turn down “extras” work because you need to be perceived a certain way by the industry.
· You can’t take a day job because how would you audition?
· When you do do outside work, it needs to be arty because you’re an artist – like it’s okay to do costumes for a puppet show but it’s not okay to temp at an investment bank.
· You keep people in your life that you hate – your agent, other industry types – because you need to maintain connections for future work.
· You have to live in Manhattan; you cannot move to Brooklyn or Queens (well, maybe Brooklyn, but NOT Queens).
This list could go on. For someone who lives small and has given “everything” up, you sure seem to have a lot of requirements. The issue is not about wanting to pursue a career in a risky, generally low-paying field; the issue is about wanting to do it YOUR WAY. What you’re unwilling to give up is a very costly self-definition. “Starving artist” has a sort of nobility to you that “auditioning legal secretary” doesn’t. Or, even worse, “I’m 35 and it didn’t work out for me and I need to do something else with my life.” And you are paying a dear price to maintain your self-delusion. Your whole life if defined by what you’ve given up for whatever it is you claim you really want – and the more you’ve given up to get that thing (that relationship, that gig, etc.), the more it has to payoff the next time when it fails to pay off this time. Living small life=living big lie.
BUDGETING YOUR LIFE
In order to properly budget your life, you first need to detach money from meaning. Money doesn’t mean anything; material objects don’t mean anything. The problem, in fact, is your effort to derive meaning from objects. If you want a $700 sweater, by all means go get one – just realize that neither the money you spent nor the sweater itself actually means anything. If you believe they do – like if you find yourself talking to people about your $700 sweater – then you need to start examining what it is you’re using “$700 sweater” to convey. What does the object mean to you and what kind of response are you looking for from other people?
Budgeting your life doesn’t mean spending more or spending less. It means spending your resources on what it is you really want instead of purchasing alternative objects or emotions. Overspenders sabotage their futures by the way they spend in the present, i.e. they purchase things they don’t need instead of investing themselves in getting the things they do. Underspenders unequally distribute their resources; by being self-sacrificing in the present, they can justify maintaining something in their life that clearly isn’t working (job, relationship, etc.) because they’ve “paid” for it by what they’ve given up. Things can be different if you want them to be. Here’s how you do it.
If you’re an overspender:
Look at your credit card bill at the end of each month. For each $10/$100 (depending on your finances) you judge yourself to have bought unnecessary items, spend that many minutes per day thinking about what it is you really want and how you plan to get it. In other words, if you spent $1500 last month and decide that $1000 of it was for unnecessary stuff, make an agreement with yourself to spend 10 minutes per day thinking about where you are your life, what’s missing, what the money might be substituting for. If you already know these things (or once you figure them out), spend 10 minutes a day figuring out what you’d need to do to get what you want. Once you’ve done that, spend 10 minutes a day implementing your plan. This isn’t about saving money; it’s about saving you.
If you’re an underspender:
Do the reverse of the overspender, i.e. figure out how much you’ve deprived yourself of and agree to spend a minute for every $1/$10/$100 you would have spent in various aspects of your life if you had the money (or, if you’re well-off but miserly, if you’d chosen to spend the money). Would you be living in your current cheapass apartment? Would you own a house? Would you be out there dating more because you wouldn’t be so hung up on the cost of going to a bar or restaurant? Now spend your underspent time really thinking about whether everything you don’t have in your life is worth it. Did you always want kids but you’ve lived so small that you could never afford them without giving up your dream? Is it YOUR dream or the dream of some past version of you? Are you holding on because you want it or because you’ve given up so much for it that it HAS to pay off or your sacrifice won’t be worth it? Then, if you decide you want things to be different, start thinking about what would need to change in order for you to get other things in your life. Then start implementing those things.
Both the overspending and underspending examples amount to the same thing: understanding yourself via the way you spend (or don’t spend) your money. If you look, you will find parallels. If you’re financially generous with everyone but yourself, then you can be sure that there are many other areas of your life where you’re putting yourself last. If you buy off your guilt – like by paying rent for someone you dumped or by buying chocolates for someone you’ve wronged – then you are, in all likelihood, making emotional purchases in multiple different life areas.
Money is a metaphor for your life. Worth, value, earn, deserve, spend – these are all words that apply to cash transactions as well as interpersonal ones. Your money is a mirror of you. If you’re willing to look at it and see what it’s telling you, then you will find your time investment paying dividends in the only coinage that truly matters – that of being true to yourself.
]]>WHAT'S REAL?
When we’re young, we don’t know what “reality” is. Children can believe anything – that elephants deliver the mail, that a cement floor is a really a pool of taffy, etc. While we have certain built-in physical self-protective mechanisms, e.g. flinching, we, as children, have to learn what is harmful. We also learn what makes us “happy,” and “happiness,” in painful environments, generally means “not in pain,” “currently not under attack,” “safe.”
Physical pain needs no reinforcement – touch a hot stove once and you’re done. Psychological pain does need reinforcement; because there’s no physical harm to the body, it requires ongoing fortification. This, incidentally, is what makes abuse abuse – it’s not the one-time whack or the occasional put-down that causes entrenched psychological damage; it’s the ongoing, continuous nature of the incidents that gives them their lasting power and, thus, makes them abusive.
AND THIS HAS WHAT TO DO WITH MY CRAP RELATIONSHIP WITH MOM?We’re designed first and foremost to survive. We don’t have some separate subsystem in place for psychological pain; it piggybacks on the one we have to save our physical bodies. Fear of actions you intellectually know won’t hurt you – calling a guy you like, standing up to mom, saying no, etc. – are equivalent to the fear you feel if you were to, say, fall through a hole in the ice and almost drown. You feel that your body, your very being, is going to die, and you will do anything to circumvent this. And, in the same way that you might be extra cautious about thin ice – perhaps even avoiding ice skating altogether – you are extra cautious to avoid the issues that caused you emotional pain.
You may want a better relationship with mom, for example, but the action necessary to get is, to you, deeply unsafe. Self-protective behavior can’t be intellectualized away because that behavior was learned the hard way, by pain.
Self-protection trumps desire every time. This is why people stay in bad relationships or go from one bad relationship to the next. It’s not the familiarity that drives them over and over to the same kind of relationship; rather, it’s the safety – which they misidentify as “happiness.”
Look at it this way: let’s say you learned early on that you’re never right and that vulnerability equals pain. You might then find yourself in a relationship with someone who’s very controlling (“Safety – if I just follow those rules, I’ll be fine.”) and self-absorbed (“Safety – I won’t have to expose my self.”). You may recognize all of the negative qualities in the other person and may be miserable much of the time but you stay – or find someone similar to replace them – because, to the core of your being, you believe is you assert yourself or expose yourself, you literally will not survive.
AND THIS SHOWS UP IN LOVE HOW?
You’re drawn to people in whose shadow you can exist. You want to be needed by someone, hopefully someone who will tell you what to do so you’ll never be “wrong” and suffer the consequences of being wrong.
So you, the one in the bad relationship, are attracted to the people who make you feel all the things you can’t feel inside yourself – loved, alive, normal, right. They don’t make you feel this way all the time; in fact, most of the time, you’re totally miserable around them. But they make you feel it some of the time, and some of the time is better than none of the time. It’s not the negative that you’re drawn to, but the brief moments of positive.
Unfortunately, you’re now in the worst of all traps – relying on other people to “make” you feel something about yourself. You are now their puppet; they can “make” you feel anything (not that you have feelings, and not that you’re responsible for them if you do have them – what you feel is always someone else’s fault). Usually, they don’t even know or care what you’re feeling, but, thanks to you, they have complete and total control over you nonetheless.
So one of two things happens: 1. You form long-term relationships with people who treat you badly. By servicing their needs, you’re somehow safe. You cling desperately to these relationships and debase yourself to their memory long after they’ve ended.
2. You go from relationship to relationship – or date a lot or have long gaps between seeing people – and somehow magically never really connect.
Both the relationship and non-relationship versions amount to the same thing: they allow you tell yourself you’re normal without actually having to expose yourself emotionally. In order to maintain the lie that nothing’s wrong with you, you need to find a mate; “normal” means connecting with someone, right? But, whatever mate you find, you need to ensure that you won’t be harmed the way you were harmed when you were younger. Of course, the fact that you’re horribly maiming yourself in the present-day is irrelevant; it’s about protecting yourself from past harm, not current harm, that drives everything.
IF YOU’RE THE UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIP TYPE:
You stay in the relationship because the person you’re seeing expects absolutely nothing of you. You’ll never have to assert yourself because they want to control everything; you’ll never having to worry about not feeling normal because you’re told what to do all the time – THEIR expectation is YOUR normal; you get to feel valuable because you have a tangible list of things you’re doing for your mate – this list assures you that they couldn’t survive without you (you try not to the think about the fact that they could replace you at any moment because you’re not really a person to them).
So instead of love, you get utility, which is perfect for you – love is dangerous. You already KNOW your feelings are wrong; thanks to the strict relationship rules, you can often feel really right. Following the rules makes you feel normal. You can never make anything worse because you’re not allowed, really, to do anything at all. You’re safe.
IF YOU’RE THE DODGING RELATIONSHIPS TYPE:
You go out, date, hookup, have “relationships” that always die. You need them to tell yourself you’re normal – nothing’s wrong with you, right? It’s just that you can never seem to find anyone who works out! Weird!
You start feeling something for someone, something stronger than feels safe or wilder than feels safe. Not that that feeling ever gets to your conscious brain; you take action the second you start feeling it. You pretend you’re normal by saying things to your friends like, “I really like this one!” or “We’re having a good time, this is good.” Things to indicate you’re open, willing, reaching for love. You’re setting up evidence of your normalcy in advance for when it fizzles down the road (and it always fizzles), evidence to prove it couldn’t have been your fault because you were into it and wanted it to happen. While this “evidence” is often relayed to other people, it’s really, of course, for you.
So, when feelings for the other person arise, you need to figure out a way to get rid of that person without doing anything traceable. They need to somehow disappear, and it needs to look like it’s their fault. Therefore, you PUSH.
Pushing always involves either external circumstances or something being wrong with the other person. In either case, it’s evidence that’s there’s nothing wrong with you; the reason this relationship ended – which is totally different from the last relationship’s ending and the one before that – had nothing to do with you.
Pushing looks like this:
Just as things seem to be heating up, you somehow magically have a ton of work to do! Or mom’s in town! Or you just got a creepy vibe on your last date! Or any of a million other external circumstances that interfere with your actually continuing to see the person you have unacknowledged feelings for.
“I mean, what – I’m supposed to quit my job to go on a date?!?” “My sister’s going through this crisis and I have to be there for her.” “This week is just crazy for me.” “I already made dinner plans with [random person X – this lady I met twice on a plane, my old housekeeper, a journalist friend who’s staying with me for a few days].”
You somehow have time to see non-meaningful people or your best friend whom you see all the time but you just can’t drag it all together to actually make a meaningful love date – my nutso week, my boss, work pressure, I’m just exhausted, I already made plans with a friend this weekend. Somehow, all of a sudden, NOTHING is cancelable. It’s with great regret that you just can’t manage to see that person you’ve been dating. Maybe you even complain to your friends, your later “trial” witnesses, about your wacky schedule. Regardless of what you do, you’ve managed to create a circumstance where the other person is so turned off by you that, if you ever do call them, they (hopefully) won’t really be interested anymore – which is fine; them rejecting you allows you to get rid of them while still appearing “normal.” (Because if you felt abnormal, you might find yourself doing some self-examination which might lead to DANGEROUS behavior – and that’s needs to be avoided at all costs.)
At any rate, if the person persists, well, you can always go back to being flaky until they finally go away for good. Alternatively, you also might delay calling for so long that you embarrassedly tell your friends that you’re horrified, you got so sucked in by work, and now you just can’t call. You blew it, sigh. Sometimes, because you really really want love and your emotional garden is so damned parched, you just randomly call the person 2 months later. “Hey, what’s up?” You then talk about making plans which magically don’t really come together. You want it, but you have to make sure you’ll never get it. The push always works. Relationships, after all, follow the laws of Newtonian physics in that the object at rest tends to remain at rest. If you don’t both do work at the beginning, it’ll die. So it dies, you’re blameless, and onto the next.
By the way, sometimes you may even marry or form long-term partnerships with these people to maintain your self-oblivious “normalcy.” Those are even better because, once you’re married or committed, you can stop acting and just completely disconnect – you don’t have to ask yourself any questions when you have a spouse right? Maybe you stop being there for them as much; maybe you start drinking a lot or doing drugs; you go out with friends; you just mysteriously don’t wind up spending a ton of time alone with the other person. One excellent way to do that is by having kids so your partner won’t notice how absent you are and will, as an added bonus, have an investment in being blind to your behavior because of their need to pretend that you’re actually a family.
WELL HOW DO I CHANGE THIS?
The most difficult part of self-awareness, the first step really, is assuming that 100% of your emotions are fake. All of them. Here’s the problem. We assume our emotions are giving us accurate information, e.g. “I’m feeling angry; I must be angry at you!” The problem is that, prior to true self-awareness, your emotions are NOT unbiased reporters of your actual feelings. Your emotions have one intention: to make you take self-protective action. It goes like this:
• Someone tells you you did something wrong. • Addressing this requires one of two things, standing up for yourself or apologizing. Your subconscious knows that “standing up for yourself” and “being wrong” require immediate action; you can’t ever stand up for yourself or apologize (and, thus, be wrong) because those two actions had horrible consequences for you in the past. • You need to get this person to shut up or even better go away and, ideally, never confront you with this kind of thing ever again. Thus, your response: • Emotion: You get angry, furious. Which leads to: • Action: You verbally lay into the person, enraged.
Your emotion, in other words, did NOT truly relay your feelings. Your emotion had a function; the function of anger, for example, is to shut down communication – kill the messenger because you don’t like the message.
This is why you need to assume that all of your emotions are false. You’re not angry, you’re frightened. You’re not happy, you’re safe. This is a painful and scary place to be. You can’t count on your own feelings anymore – everything’s suspect. Most importantly, you need to stop acting on them. Just the act of not acting, of giving yourself breathing room to think about what you’re feeling and doing (and, incidentally, of not taking action that’s counter to your current-day desires), will jumpstart the process of change. Stopping is change.
Getting real means acknowledging real reality – that you’re acting out of a need for safety and that’s it. Even if peeling back all the layers seems like too much right now, breathe a little easier knowing you’re behaving for a reason. You’re not a self-destructive self-loather; you’re simply seeking a safety you no longer need.
]]>“I just made a terrible choice.”
“Why did I do that? That was dumb!”
“I think this is the best thing for me.”
One character of decision-making is that we tend to place judgment on potential outcomes or courses of action, i.e. “good” and “bad” decisions; “right” and “wrong” choices. Judging decision-making all seems to be a natural part of a logical process: we think things through and make a behavior choice – the “best” decision – by thinking things through and coming up with a binary, black-and-white world of right/wrong/good/bad.
But good or bad, right or wrong for what, exactly? Is it the “right” thing to do or the thing you’re going to do regardless but using “right” to justify your behavior? Does “good” really mean “easy” and “bad” mean “frightening”? Is “right” equivalent to “I’m in control” and “wrong” equal to “someone else is in control”?
So one problem with judging potential courses of action is that the core basis for your judgment often goes unexamined. By labeling it, you don’t have to really understand it. What you’re judging, really, is your own logic, and you act as if that logic is somehow objective. It’s not, of course; it’s serving something – avoiding what you fear.
MY LIFE AS A TRANSISTOR
Another problem is that we often reduce our choices to two because the other choices are just too messy to think about. Binary choices, which leave out a host of other choices, make us feel somehow in control, as if the distillation means we’ve thought through all courses of action and look – just two left! And, conveniently, I want to do one and not the other! One’s “right” and one’s “wrong”! It can feel overwhelming to pick through a host of complicated alternatives, and “this choice just feels right” can be a very soothing balm to all that confusion.
BUT, WAIT, AREN’T SOME CHOICES BINARY?
No. But many choices have the ILLUSION of seeming binary. In fact, there are – depending on where you are in your personal growth – a minimum of three solutions to every problem: the right or good one, the wrong or bad one, and the one you simply don’t want to think about. Try replacing “good” with “safe” and “bad” with “scary” and you will begin to get a sense of what those judgments are really servicing.
But binary logic can feel very compelling and not like a trap at all. One way to know you’re getting stuck in a binary choice is that binary choices generally reduce down to one confrontational/active component and one non-confrontational/passive component. For example, “I’m sick of the way mom is treating me. I’m either going to confront her about it or cut my contact with her to almost nothing.” Confront or end it – that’s binary.
Another problem is that we tend to draw causal relationships between feelings and solutions. “I’m unhappy at work. I need to either quit my job or ask my boss for a raise.” Of course, maybe you need to do neither. For example, maybe you’re unhappy at work and unhappy in your love life and unhappy with a family relationship and your unhappiness is internal and has nothing to do with work. Thus, in this example, neither quitting your job nor getting raise would solve your problem because your binary solution is unrelated to the true problem. But the binary solution SEEMS related – and that’s the trap.
So what’s a more effective way to make decisions?
REMOVE JUDGMENT
Decisions don’t need to be justified; they need to be thought through. Instead of good/bad/right/wrong, look at it this way: there are no right or wrong decision; there are only actions and their consequences. And those actions and consequences service something within you – fear and desire.
DETERMINE WHAT DRIVES YOUR CHOICES
Choices operate on a continuum. At one end are choices based on desire; at the other end are choices based on fear. They can be difficult to distinguish because fear often couches itself in the language of desire. Just because your statement starts with “I want” doesn’t mean you’re operating out of desire. Example:
“My ex and I have a country house. Our relationship has been over for a year and we’ve moved on (well, my ex has at least and I tell myself I have). We bought the country house when we were together, and my ex and my ex’s new relationship invited me up to it for the weekend. It makes me sick and sad to think of going. I know I shouldn’t. But, well, we’re selling the house and I really want to go up there and make sure that they don’t take stuff I want. So maybe I really should go. Yeah, I’m probably gonna go.”
So, if you go, are you going out of fear or desire? In your logic: You’re just going to keep an eye on your property. And maybe it’s time for you to see your ex with the new relationship so you can face that feeling and move on, right? And, hey, it’s your house too – why shouldn’t you go? Anyway, it’ll be nice to get out of town for the weekend.
No.
You need to pick apart your logic. Here’s how: Replace “I want” and “I should” and other similar phrases with what you believe is going to happen if you DON’T do what you think you should or want to do. Replace “I want” with “I’m afraid if I don’t [fill in action] then [blah blah blah will happen].”
So, instead of “I should go to the country house with my ex & ex’s new relationship,” try “I’m afraid if I don’t go to the country house with my ex and my ex’s new relationship then…” Then what will happen? Then they’ll get all the good stuff! “I’m afraid that, if my ex and the new relationship get all the good stuff then…” Then I’ll be cut out of my fair share. “I’m afraid that if I’m cut out of my fair share then…” Then they’ll have more and better than I do. “I’m afraid if my ex has more and better then…” Then it will mean my hold on my ex is slipping, that my ex doesn’t need me. “I’m afraid if my hold on my ex starts slipping then…” Then I’ll feel like a zero, a nothing, a hopeless loser, unloveable. “I’m afraid that if I’m a nothing and unloveable then…” I don’t exist.
Once you see that your logic is based is fear, you need to really think loooooooooong and hard about whether or not you want to live your life out of fear of being nothing. The truly horrible thing is that, when you make choices out of fear, you end up getting exactly what you were trying to avoid. Is there any way that spending a weekend in a country with your ex and your ex’s new relationship is going to make you feel like anything other than nothing?
You might not be able to get all the way to the bottom, to the true, core fear (“I don’t exist”), but, if you can even go a little bit of the way, you can know you’re operating out of fear no matter how much it sounds like desire, no matter how logical your reasoning seems, and make a behavior decision depending on how you want to lead your life.
By contrast to fear, desire’s answer to what will happen if you don’t get what you want is simply that you won’t have it. Let’s start with a biggie - “I’m afraid that if I don’t have the love of my ex in my life then…” Then I guess I won’t have the love of my ex in my life. Oh well. I want it, but if I don’t get it, then that’s the only consequence. Not, “If I don’t get it then I’ll be [devastated, a zero, a raging loon, etc.]”
To determine if the issue you’re dealing with is based on desire, replace the judgment/”I want”/”I should” with “I want to be a person who…” “I want to be a person who spends a weekend in the country house with the ex and the ex’s new relationship.” Uh, no. “I want to be a person who gets stuff from the country house.” No. “I want to be someone who has a loving relationship.” Yes.
Fear takes the specific and generalizes it (“If I don’t have the love of my ex then that will prove I’m unloveable AND I’LL NEVER BE LOVED.”); desire disconnects the specific from the general (“Not having the love of my ex does not equal not having love at all; there’s plenty to be had elsewhere.) With desire-based choices, you may be, for example, saddened if you don’t get what you want; with fear-based choices, you’re crippled if you don’t get what you want.
PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE
Here’s how you break it down. First, what’s the issue; in the above example, “weekend with ex.” Second, is it fear or desire? Third, what are the consequences of your binary choices (as these will lead you to your fears)?
Then here’s how you build it back up. First, what do you want, big picture in terms of this issue? Second, what are the ways you can get that desire? Third, what are you going to do? Example:
“Every time I see mom, she talks about my weight, and I hate it. I’ve told her to quit bugging me about it, but she won’t stop. So I’ve now reached the point where I’m either going to have a major confrontation with her or cut off basically all contact.”
Break it down.
What’s the issue?: Talking to mom about my weight.
Fear or desire?: “I want to be someone who can’t have my mother talk about my weight.” Sounds like fear.
Action/Consequence 1: “I’m afraid that if I don’t confront my mother then…” Then it will confirm (in my head at least) that she has no respect for me, and, if she has no respect for me then I’ll blah blah blah etc. etc. Sounds like fear.
Action/Consequence 2: “I’m afraid that if I don’t cut off all contact with my mother then…” Then I’ll be reduced to a screaming, helpless ball? Then I’ll only be able to view myself as a hideous, fat pig? And if that’s true, then… etc. Sounds like fear.
Time to rebuild.
Desired outcome: “I want to be someone who has a strong relationship with mom.” That sounds good. “I want to be someone who is capable of setting boundaries.” That also sounds good.
Possible course of action:
Confront mom – that seems to end in fear.
Do nothing – that seems to end in fear.
What’s the thing I really don’t want to do? How about “lose control of the outcome”? Confronting mom will wind up in a huge fight whereby I’ll feel justified in cutting her off – that’s me trying to control the outcome. Cutting her off is also me controlling the outcome. In fact, cutting her off seems to be what I want to do because she’s reflecting back at me something I hate about myself. So what’s my third course of action, the one I could take in which the outcome is uncertain? Well, I could be vulnerable and share with her how sad I am that we’re not closer; I could take responsibility for the fact that I’ve created a relationship with her where she can’t feel free to speak her mind; etc. In other words, I could have a whole vulnerable talk where I might get hurt and rejected, i.e. where I have no control over the outcome.
So beneath “I want mom to quit bugging me about my weight” lurks a fear of loss of control – of self-control. “When mom talks about my weight, I lose it; I’ve put control over my emotions in mom’s hands. I hate it, and I’m blaming her for it.” The problem isn’t mom; YOU’RE the one who gave her control. Thus, the problem, in this example, is your own boundaries. You can choose an action based on who you want to be in this moment – a vulnerable, attempted-relationship-strengthening groping boundary-setter or a controlling, angry, closed-off crazy person.
At the bottom of good/bad/right/wrong, below binary choices, is something relating back to you. The circumstance is triggering a fear. “Good” or “right” decisions mean decisions that allow you to avoid the fear; “bad” or “wrong” decisions or are swirling near the fear or are there to justify the fear-based good/right decision (having there be a “wrong” decision is very helpful in making the “right,” i.e. fear-based one). Remember, there are only choices and their consequences. Choices are based somewhere between fear and desire. By choosing desire – by reaching for what you want regardless of whether or not you think you’ll get it – you’re choosing you.
]]>“Yeah yeah, it’s great that this project is happening, but now look at how much work I have to do.”
“I’m getting married, and I’ve never been this stressed.”
We often think that the way we react to a given circumstance is somehow a set in stone. "These idiots completely screwed up my project, everything's out of whack, I just lost my best employee - of course I'm stressed out!" We normalize the stress, using the situation to justify the feeling and, subsequently, the behavior. However, your reaction is a CHOICE, not a given, and you actually have other choices.
This isn't to say that some situations don't induce anger, frustration, or stress. Rather, once those feelings arise, you have a vast choice in what you do next. Do you sit there and bad-mouth people to your friends? Spin a situation over and over in your head? Talk about how bad future problems are going to be because this present-day problem screwed everything up? Those are all choices.
SO WHAT ARE MY OTHER CHOICES?
How about, "This totally sucks that those idiots screwed this up. But, God, I love what I do, and I'll figure out a way to make this okay." or "You know what? They made a mistake. I guess my options are more limited than they were. That bums me out. But I had no control over the situation, so I'm just going to sit here and make the best of the options I have and enjoy myself. The payoff for me, the pleasure I get from doing the work, still overrides the displeasure I get from some of the people I work with and some of the decisions they make."
Your reaction to a situation is determined by your emotional state when you go into that situation. In other words, THE SITUATION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR EMOTIONS. For example, if your reaction to a given situation is anger, it’s because you’re angry about something else to begin with. You then carry over that emotional state to everything in your life. It’s your go-to. You, therefore, have outsized reactions to a given situation; your meter is off. You lose a sense of how [angry, stressed, crazy] you should be. The way to determine the validity of your emotions – and your subsequent behavior and feelings – is, first, to look at where you start.
EMOTIONAL SET-POINTS
Are you easy to anger? To stress? To cry? Or are you a slow burn but once you go, you GO? Ask yourself, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being highest, where your general emotional state is. Are you more or less a constant 7?
What happens is that you start high and your emotions spiral higher and higher until you lose all sense of logic and just feel your [rage, frustration, fear]. Example:
ORIGINAL ANGER BASELINE: 5 (you’re not always anger, but anger’s really easy for you to access; you have a range from irritation to blind rage)
1. You make an internet date with someone - a total stranger.
2. They blow you off.
3. You get angry. You feel judged. You feel used, played. You just lost your Saturday night!
BASELINE RESET: For a person with, say, a baseline of 1 for anger, they might jump to a 3, a 30% increase in anger – it’s irksome to be blown off! You, however, started at 5. Your anger level with this person is now 6.5 – you’re pretty angry.
4. You send them a note about how you waited for them and they didn't show.
5. They don’t respond. Wow, that’s really rude. A non-angry person might feel a 2 – the other person is sending a message you don’t want to hear but oh well; this is a rude person you’re dealing with so why get pissed? But not you. You’ve just added 20% to your 6.5. Now you’re up to a 7.8!
6. A few days later, they respond with a legitimate-sounding excuse. This, perhaps, drops your anger back down to a 6 or 6.5. You’ve now been heard; maybe, just maybe, they had a real crisis. A non-angry person, by the way, would be around 1 (or would have moved on entirely).
7. You, however, have a whole little drama in your head about what you're going to write back. The reason for this drama, of course, is that you’re ANGRY.
8. You decide to be open but a little punitive (not that you phrase it to yourself that way but it's what you email back).
9. They don't respond to your note.
10. Now you're really upset - Fuck them! You’ve just added another, say, 20% to your anger. Back to your 7.8.
REALITY CHECK
This person is a total stranger you met on the internet, a totally disconnected, impersonal space. Why are you so mad?!?! Your anger is at a level as if you’d been betrayed by your best friend. A 7.8 because some douche you don’t even know is rude and a bad communicator?
When you overreact from the start, each subsequent event compounds the previous until you’re totally out of control. Your start point level determines how much personal meaning you attribute to the other person's actions. If your start point is a 1, you’re never going to really be that upset by the other person. If it’s a 5, you’re half mad to begin with.
If the behavior of a total stranger feels personal, look within! Why is it so personal – what’s that about? What were you drawn to in them - what did you project - that's making you so upset? Irritation at standing around and losing your Saturday night? Sure. Anger, resentment, feeling judged, maybe sadness ("I really had hopes for this one!") - no. Those feelings have nothing to do with this total stranger and everything to do with your own feelings of inadequacy and low self-worth.
One way to determine reality is to ask yourself, “If this had happened to a friend and not to me, what levels would I say were normal?” Maybe a 3 or 4 when you’re standing in the bar, a 2 or 3 when you're firing off the note, and a 0 or 1 by the next day? If your levels are above those you'd think standard for a friend, then you instantly know the issue is about you - which is freeing, because it takes the power back from a total stranger and puts it onto you.
SO HOW DO I LOWER MY EMOTIONAL SET-POINT?
There are two basic ways: identify the fear or find the joy (or both of course).
The first way, identifying the fear, is easy to say and torturous to do (and is where therapy can really help). It means recognizing that your emotions are entirely about YOU and parsing out what you’re really feeling. “I create situations where I have unrealistic expectations of people who then go on to disappoint me. I do this in lieu of forming real relationships because I’m afraid to be vulnerable with people. My anger offers me an excuse to avoid connecting for real because I’ll find some flaw in the other person that will make me angry. My anger, in other words, keeps me protected.”
The second way, finding the joy, allows for a reduction is your emotional level. As you’re feeling your anger, add (in the above example), “I’m really happy that I’m reaching out and trying to connect with someone. And there’s something kind of hilarious and fun about the bizarreness of internet dating. Plus, what the hell – I’m telling the universe what I what.” That reminder of your own joy, that you’re getting something of the overall process even if it’s not so great right in this moment, will lower your emotional state. Remind yourself that you’re doing this for YOU.
BUT WHAT IF I CAN’T FIND THE JOY?
If you can't genuinely can’t find the joy, if you repeat a situation over and over that only makes you miserable, then that means you're doing whatever you’re doing out of fear of stopping. Complete the sentence, "I'm afraid is I stop doing this, then…" What will happen? People will think I'm a loser? I'll be nothing? I'll have no means to prove to others that I'm valuable? I’ll be alone? I’ll be empty?
Don’t forget – “doing” also means “doing nothing.” Inaction IS action. The same thing applies; find the joy in your inaction or look for the fear that prevents you from acting.
One of the hardest things to grapple with is that your emotions entirely about you and not about other people. But there's enormous power in that recognition because, while you have zero control over changing anyone else, you have absolute control over changing yourself. Be grateful for the recognition, even if it's a fearful one, because that recognition means you have the power to change. (Of course, one of the reasons we blame others is that we don't want to admit the problem is ours because we're so afraid that, if it is, we'll have to change, i.e. do something we utterly fear.) Just remember, how you approach a situation is your own determination. If you're feeling stress, anger, upset, then stop and find the joy.
]]>“My shitty job is ruining everything in my life.”
“If I were 15 pounds thinner, everything would be different.”
Do you sometimes feel as if your life is basically misery punctuated by moments of happiness because you seem to be missing… something? And then you find yourself chasing work/love/beauty/etc. to recapture that happiness? And somehow you never quite have “the thing”; it’s always the next thing, the one just out of reach. You feel incomplete.
Maybe you’re the kind of person who moves a lot in the hopes that when you arrive in the new place you’ll magically be a new person as well. Or you keep switching jobs. Or work out obsessively. Or maybe you SAY you want something but have all kinds of rules and restrictions surrounding it – “I want a relationship but I won’t do internet dating.” “I want a completely different kind of job but there’s no way I’m willing to take anything entry-level in my new field.”
You sit there and wish for things to change but they don’t. Or you change them slightly but somehow that new thing turns out to be exactly the same as the old thing.
LIFE-LAWN-CARE AXIOM #1
Your crazy travels with you.
There’s always room in the overhead bin for crazy.
“Sure, no problem – hey guys, move over so we can squeeze in my crazy.”
In other words, the problem isn’t the [job/relationship/flabby arms] – it’s YOU.
BUT WHY AM I SO DISSATISFIED?
There are several reasons why we feel we need something from the outside to give us joy but why we never seem to get those things. Before going into them, get out two pieces of paper (either real or mental). On one sheet, write down all about the things you feel would change your life – “If I only had [blank]…” “If I were only [blank]…” “If [person in my life] would just [blank]…” “everything would be different.” On the other sheet, jot down what you believe to be your strengths – “I’m a good friend.” “I’m willing to be vulnerable in relationships.” “I’m loving to my children.” Etc.
“I’M INCOMPLETE”
One reason we seek solutions from the outside is that we believe they’re going to fill something inside of us. We believe there’s something missing. So the first step in resolving this problem is to examine what that outside object is meant to do, what internal function it’s serving, what it’s trying to substitute for. Examples:
“If I were married, everything would be different.”
Translation: “I believe, at a core level, that I am unlovable. I need someone to love the love into me; they need to provide the love for me that I don’t have for myself.”
“If I were making $300/hour or had that other job or that other career or that award or that position, everything would be different.”
Translation: “I believe, at a core level, that I am meaningless and don’t really exist. I need something tangible – money, power, attributed meaning (‘You’re teaching sign language to chimps? God, you’re cool!’) – in order to feel like I’m really here, that I matter.”
To state something you probably already intellectually know, having some outside thing won’t make you feel complete because it’s not the outside thing you crave; it’s the underlying feeling. That is, you’re not chasing the relationship or the job; you’re chasing love-ability and mattering. Those feelings, of course, are things you BRING to a loving relationship or a meaningful job, not things that can be acquired FROM a relationship or a job, which is, in part, why you don’t have them.
UGH. SO NOW WHAT?
The most important thing to realize here is that incompleteness is a matter of perception and not of reality. You are, in fact, whole.
Think of incompleteness as being a really convincing optical illusion. Imagine a bucket filled with rocks. On each rock is a word that describes part of you - "loving," "talented," etc. - whatever your words are (imagine them from the sheets you wrote out or thought about earlier). In reality, whether the rocks have negative or positive words on them, the bucket is totally full.
HOWEVER, on top of the bucket is a pitch-black piece of paper covered with all the things you think you don't have - "love," "happiness," etc. (again from what your list you wrote out earlier). Here’s where incompleteness comes from: when you look at the bucket, that black paper gives the bucket the optical illusion of being empty; so instead of seeing what you HAVE, you only see what you NEED; instead of seeing the fullness of who you ARE, you see the emptiness of what you LACK.
LIFE-LAWN-CARE AXIOM #2
The rocks can change, but the bucket is always full.
You don’t need to add anything more. You can rewrite your rocks or reshuffle your rocks, but you don’t need more rocks.
REWRITING YOUR ROCKS
Go back to those two lists, your “have” and “lack” lists. The first step toward recognizing your wholeness is to rephrase your “lacks” into “haves” and then move them to your “have” sheet.
Example 1:
Lack: “If I had a relationship, everything would be different.”
Translation: “I’m unlovable.”
Rephrase the feeling: “I feel as if there’s something wrong with me, as if I’m not loveable. I’m seeking proof from the outside for this but, really, it’s something I have to provide for myself. It’s not that I’m unlovable; it’s that, for a variety of reasons that I’m about to start exploring, my self-love is low right now. Self-love is in the bucket but maybe it’s way at the bottom or it’s a pebble that needs to become a boulder. It’s there but not really accessible.”
Rephrase the external object: “No one from the outside can make me love myself. Therefore, not being a relationship right now is a choice not a lack; I actively choose to hold off on that while I work on my self-love issue.”
Rephrase “lack” to “have”: “New ‘have’ category: self-love. Current status: minimal. Future goal: big and full. Course of action (first step): contemplate this new information for a while.”
Example 2:
Lack: “If I had career success/new job, everything would be different.”
Translation: “I don’t matter.”
Rephrase the feeling: “I feel as if I don’t really exist, like there’s an emptiness inside me. I look for validation from the outside – if I have cool job, other people will think I’m cool; if I’m successful at work, other people will respect me. The problem isn’t my job; the problem is with my belief that I don’t matter. This is a self-esteem issue and not a job issue. Self-esteem is in the bucket; it’s just really small right now.”
Rephrase the external object: “No job is going to give me meaning. I’m not lacking a new or successful job. Therefore, I’m choosing to maintain the status quo job-wise right now until I work through my self-esteem issues.”
Rephrase the “lack” to “have”: “New ‘have’ category: self-esteem. Current status: non-existent. Future goal: tons of it. Course of action (first step): start examining possible underlying reasons for self-esteem issue.”
When you’ve done this with all your “lacks,” look at your new sheet. Everything is on your “have” page. There is no “lack” page. You already have whatever it is you think you lack. The issue isn’t incompleteness - it’s change.
BUT HOW DO I KNOW WHAT “WHOLE” LOOKS LIKE?
You are already whole – you just don’t see it that way yet. There are several markers along the way from feeling incomplete to seeing your wholeness that might help you note your own progress.
Marker 1: When you feel your fears but don’t let those fears stop you.
Marker 2: When you rectify your mistakes.
Marker 3: When you take responsibility for the consequences of your behavior.
Marker 4: When you allow space in your world to feel bad. To expand on this, we often associate negative feelings with incompleteness. “I’m depressed; I lack [blah blah blah].” Here’s why:
Imagine that you’re surrounded by a globe that can contain a finite amount of emotion. You can handle any emotion that’s in the globe. If your globe isn't big enough to encompass the size of your emotions, you feel beaten down by them, as they've breached the globe and are hemorrhaging all around you. This is what depression, for example, is - it's bigger than your globe; your globe doesn't have the resources to envelop it; it's uncontainable.
So a final marker for your progress is when you feel, say, depressed, you realize that your globe is bigger than your depression; your globe can hold it. That belief, that you are larger than your emotions, that there’s room inside you for those negative feelings, that you can DO something about them, that they’re coming FROM you rather than AT you, is a recognition of your own wholeness.
CHOOSING COMPLETENESS
The only difference between "whole" and "incomplete" is whether you believe you're whole or not. Whole is being able to look in the mirror and see the damage, the depression, the bad choices, the stupid things you've done or said, the things that are missing from your life, all your fears, etc. and knowing that you're enough anyway. In other words, you see your bucket as always being full, even if it's currently full of unhappiness. It means that you know, to your core, that you don't need one single thing from the outside world to make you complete. It means you’re moving from relying on the outside world for certain feelings to knowing that everything you need to solve your problems is inside yourself.
Look in the mirror, list all your problems, all the things about yourself you want to change, and know that the power to change them - the choice - is solely yours and, whether you make those choices or not, YOU’RE STILL ENOUGH - that's choosing wholeness.
Wholeness, by the way, isn't the end of a process - it's the beginning because it transforms the way you interact with the world from that moment onward.
]]>NEGATIVE ENERGY
All this is negative energy because it’s taking energy AWAY from you whether you’re with the person or not. The goal, in any troubled, dissolved, or dissolving relationship is to get back to zero, to a space where the decisions in your life aren’t based around what they might do, say, or feel or what you might do, say, or feel back. Zero is real neutral, not “I don’t care!” but actually the ability to go through your life without losing energy on the situation.
By the way, moving into positive is NOT the goal. Positive motion requires both of you; often, one party wants to heal or move forward and the other doesn’t; the goal in this situation is zero and not a positive number. Don’t forget, something real – and perhaps unexamined – led the relationship to form and later dissolve. Were you the same person then as you are now? Are they? Did expectations or life change in some way that made once-tolerable behavior no longer acceptable? Are you looking for something from them that they can’t give you because you need to find it within yourself – like validation or a sense of worth or any of a number of internal states that have nothing to do with them (even though you think they do)?
Positive Motion Brief Sidebar
Positive motion requires the following: desire to move forward on both sides, independent self-examination on both sides, a willingness to be wrong on both sides, a willingness to take responsibility – and not issue blame – on both sides, a mutual discussion of the process of the relationship, an examination and reworking of the interpersonal communication, and an agreement on a new process for the failed relationship. If both sides are willing to do that, then by all means move the relationship forward – it’ll probably end up being stronger for it. If not, all you can do is get yourself back to zero. Here’s how.
STOP!
I have an exercise: Before continuing to read this section, quickly jot down the five or ten people you consider to be closest you.
Done? Okay.
DEFINING CLOSENESS
Relationships are defined by how the people in the relationship treat each other. They are NOT defined by what we tell ourselves a relationship is or what he hope it is or wish it could be. It is defined by behavior, specifically the least-close behavior in the relationship. So, before understanding how to get back to zero, you first have to take a good, hard look at what the relationship really is. But how do you know where you stand with each other. Well, via the Three Hallmarks of Closeness: Reliability, Emotional Honesty, and Demonstrative Behavior.
Reliability
The first Hallmark of Closeness is reliability. One way to create distance in a relationship is to become unreliable, aka flaky. You call the person back three days after they call you; you bail on plans; you avoid making plans at all by being really wishy-washy about your availability; you’re always late, showing little, if any, respect for their time. Your actions are saying, “Don’t count on me! I am NOT gonna be there for you.” It’s not that you dislike the person; it’s that you want to keep them at arm’s length.
By contrast, when you’re close with someone, you’re reliable – you show up on time; you follow through with what you say you’re going to do; you’re there when they need you. Your level of reliability, then, becomes one marker of your relationship with another person.
Emotional Honesty
The second Hallmark of Closeness is emotional honesty. How real are you with the person? When they say, “What’s going on with you?” do you say, “Nothing” or “Not much” even when there’s a lot happening? Do you share inner truths with them? If you’re feeling hurt by them, do you discuss it with them? Do you believe your relationship could survive a real discussion of your feelings? By being emotionally dishonest, you’re creating a lopsidedness in the relationship in which you’re sharing less with them than they are with you. By contrast, when you’re being emotionally honest, you’re being vulnerable, inviting the other person inside.
Demonstrative Behavior
The third Hallmark of Closeness is demonstrative behavior. One way we distance ourselves from people is by being reactive instead of active: you respond to their calls but never initiate; when you see them at a party, you’re friendly and at all other times it’s out of sight out of mind; even if you do think of them when you’re not in their presence, you don’t do anything about – the dynamic is that they have to reach out for you.
Demonstrative behavior, by contrast, means thinking about someone and then DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT. This can be as simple as a phone call – “Hey, what’re you up to?” In a more romantic guise, it’s flowers perhaps or a gift. A mass emailing of a joke is NOT a demonstrative behavior in terms of closeness; a joked emailed to one specific person because you thought they, specifically, would think it was funny is. The point of demonstrative behavior is that it indicates that you were thinking of the person when they weren’t in your presence, that you remembered their existence and reached out to let them know. How often you engage in this behavior with someone is an indicator of how close you are to them.
EXERCISE PART 1
Draw two bullseye targets with 3 rings – inner, middle, and outer – on two separate pieces of paper. Pull out your list of five or ten names. On the first bullseye, go through each name and ask yourself, “Am I reliable with this person? Am I emotionally honest with this person? Do I enact demonstrative behavior with this person?” Go core here and really examine the truth. If you do all three for the person, but their name in the center; if you do two, put them in the middle ring; if you do one, put them in the outer ring; if you realize you do none, then put their name outside the target. For any person who gets less than 3, jot down where you distance yourself, e.g. “I’m reliable and I share my thoughts and feelings but I never call them.”
When you’re done, go on to part 2.
EXERCISE PART 2
On the second bullseye, go down the same list, only this time asking yourself, “How does this person treat me? Are they reliable to me? Are they emotionally honest with me? Do they enact demonstrative behavior with me?” Do the same as above – if a person is close to you in all 3 ways, put them in the center; if not, note where they distance themselves and put them in the appropriate ring.
EXERCISE PART 3
Put the two sheets side by side and look for disparities – without judgment. Are you doing all 3 hallmarks for someone but they’re only doing 2 back for you? Or the reverse? This tells you where you really stand with people you consider to be close in your life.
SO NOW WHAT?
You don’t have to be close to everyone – who has the time? However, the reality of any relationship is defined by the lowest number of Hallmarks; if there’s a disparity, THE LOWEST NUMBER IS THE TRUTH. 3 means close; 2 means friends; 1 means acquaintance; 0 means a stranger.
Yes, it totally sucks to discover that someone you consider to be a close friend actually treats you like you’re a bare acquaintance. This is, of course, all about you and your expectations and has nothing to do with them. They’re telling you what you are to them by how they treat you, not what they say or what you tell yourself.
And this is where the negative energy comes from: they-treat-you-like-a-2 minus you-treat-them-like-a-3 equals NEGATIVE ENERGY. Often, this negative energy comes with resentment, blame, a desire to change their behavior, and a twisting of interpretation in order to expand their 2-ish behavior to fill up your 3 space. You need to zero this relationship.
GETTING TO ZERO
Getting to zero means accepting the other person’s behavior and forgiving yourself for staying in an unequal relationship for so long. It means, ultimately, allowing the relationship to be what it is – a two, a one, a zero – without being punitive. Here’s how: apply the 3 Hallmarks of Closeness TO YOURSELF. This is the only way to zero –being totally real with yourself, feeling your feelings, and moving on as opposed to lying to yourself, denying your feelings, and staying stuck.
SELF RELIABILITY
Is your stress getting in the way of your self-reliability? Have you told yourself you’ll do things – go work out, see a movie with someone, pay your bills, etc. – that you’re not doing because you’re so upset? This is negative energy because the dissolving relationship is subtracting from your life. In the process, you’re distancing you from you by becoming unreliable on your own behalf. Set goals for yourself and DO THEM. This action will be one step toward zero.
SELF EMOTIONAL HONESTY
One way we deal with dissolving relationships is to act unaffected around the other person. We feel we need to act “cool” so they won’t know they’re getting to us in some way. This act perpetuates the negative energy because it’s allowing THEM to dictate our behavior and feelings instead of us. Instead, be with your feelings. If you’re feeling sad around the person, be sad. Stop trying to act like it doesn’t matter and that you don’t care. It does matter and you do care – and that’s okay.
The longer-term the relationship, the more negative you can expect your energy to be if it ends. Give yourself a break; you can’t get from, say, -200 to 0 in an afternoon. Relationships take time to mourn. Unless you’re a stalker, this is generally much easier if the person vanishes from your life. However, especially with friends, there are often social ties that force the two of you to be together. This togetherness can exacerbate your upset. LET IT.
Friends Sidebar
Being emotionally honest with your mutual friends is NOT the same thing as dragging them in the middle of your dissolving relationship. Dragging them into it means talking about the other person; emotional honesty means talking about yourself. Remember, emotional dishonesty is a distancing tool – you’ll create distance with your other friends if you don’t share your feelings. If you want to tell them how you feel, tell them. If they have their boundaries in place (see previous blog below), they can relate to both split friends without consequence. If they can’t be emotionally honest with you or allow you to be emotionally honest with them, well, time to re-examine where they fall on the target and deal with the truth of that friendship.
SELF DEMONSTRATIVE BEHAVIOR
Are you sitting on the couch and running through the relationship over and over in your head? Are you lying in bed all day? Are you eating ice cream then hating yourself for it? Getting drunk all the time to numb out?
Self demonstrative behavior means enacting caring behavior on your own behalf. By contrast, we often engage in punitive behavior that we later hate ourselves for; “you did something bad to me so I’m going to punish myself” is classic alcoholic behavior – “I’m really mad at you so I’m gonna go drink!” Simply stopping doing this self-punishing behavior IS self demonstrative behavior. Focus on your future happiness, your goals for yourself, small or big, whatever they may be, and your efforts toward reaching them. Even small things, like patting yourself on the back for being vulnerable even though you got hurt, is self-caring behavior.
The other person isn’t “winning” if they get to you; you’re not condoning their prior bad behavior if you forgive them for it. Show yourself you matter to you because that is the road back to zero.