Anonymous in Rochester, New York asks: “I read your piece on people pleasing and really related to the parts on how our childhood sets us up as adults. Now that the damage has been done I find that I still struggle to hold boundaries with my needy parents. I have my own life to live but at the same time feel responsible to them. It is making me feel resentful. What can I do?”
First of all, congratulations on coming to the realization that this is an issue. Most people never do. Our tendency is to continue year in and year out to go through the motions and never really explore the feelings that are rising up. So having the guts to confront it and find its origin is an achievement. Childhood adaptation work is challenging because it first requires us to discern differences. The norm is to not question things because we don’t know that our childhood could have been different. It’s like asking a fish to describe water. How could it do so when there is nothing to contrast it to? They don’t know what air is. Talking over your childhood in therapy or exploring the experiences of childhood with friends can be jarring at first. Our background is all we have ever known, so some cognitive dissonance is sure to result. I call cognitive dissonance the wrecking ball because it swings back and forth in our head, banging against our skull. These newly unraveling feelings can, say, cause us to have negative thoughts about our parents. There is a temptation then to label them as bad but --bang-- You love them and remember all the times they were good to you but --bang-- You are resentful that they constantly ask you for more than you would like to give but --bang-- They did all these good things for you as a kid (and they don’t hesitate to remind you) so you’re the bad person but Bang. Back and forth the ball swings. This makes boundaries difficult. One day you feel staunchly that you need to cut them out of your life, that you have put your time in with them. You may then tell them so. While the wrecking ball is firmly on that side you can stick to that hard boundary, but then some time passes. In that time they wear you down with guilt trips and pressure. You may miss them. Plus you are used to it being the other way. The wrecking ball comes loose, bangs to the other side, and the boundary is lost. The answer is to see how things are more complicated than either side of your head is seeing it. We humans want clarity at all times and feel great anxiety when we don’t have it. So label your parents good or label them bad, as long as there is a label, is what we think. The truth is your parents, like you, are a complicated mix of good, bad, and everything else. The truth is many things are true, even when they are in conflict. My suggestion is work on accepting the cognitive dissonance. The swing won’t be calmed by holding desperately to one or the other conclusion. It will be calmed by accepting that the whole picture is complicated. Now we take that fresh, accepted, complex picture and consider what action to take. A boundary that is based on complexity is a more stable one. You will feel less emotional swing and will have an easier time sticking to it. Your parents may still push, poke, and manipulate to try and get you back into the old ways. But you will be in a more stable position and less likely to be moved far from your position. How they react is beyond your control. This is another important thing to accept. But hopefully they will see the rationality in all of it and come around. - Want your questions answered? Toss them in the box here.
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“I believe that death anxiety is the mother of all religions, the mainspring of human creativity, and the ultimate therapeutic issue. Almost every session, at its deepest level, addresses death anxiety.” - Irv Yalom, ‘Staring at the Sun’
Yes, every session is at deepest about death anxiety. Our DNA is screaming up at us at all times, “stay alive, stay alive, keep your family alive, stay alive.” Of course it would hijack your brain to serve its sole purpose. I am not one to confuse correlation with causation, but I can’t help but notice a connection: rates among Americans, young adults in particular, who do not believe in an after-life are on the rise, and so are rates of crippling anxiety. An ever greater amount of people are concluding that Nothingness is what follows death. This is a thought that prevents people from falling asleep again when unknown forces jerk them awake at 3 am. My argument is that this is a snake eating its tail problem. That the anxiety creates the belief in Nothingness, which furthers the anxiety, which furthers the terror of the Nothingness. This makes sense when we understand anxiety. Anxiety is the fear of open-endedness. The fear of possibility. It’s a very stupid but well-intentioned part of the brain trying to protect us. Imagine you are sitting in an ordinary room in an ordinary house. Some thought rises up inside you that says “there is someone else in the room.” If we are using logic alone we tell ourselves that is absurd and go back to our activity. But we are not. So we glance around to reassure ourselves there is no one else. We take an action, so we can reach a conclusion. Anxiety soothed. With death we do not have such an option. We do not know what lies beyond. We want to know, but we are reasonably sure we cannot just die and come back to find out. Our anxiety will not be satisfied with that. It puts us in the bind of needing to draw a conclusion on the inconcludable. Whether the decline of religion in the West is good or bad is a separate debate. But surely we can agree that it has led to a decline in belief in the afterlife. Misguided or well-guided, religion gave an answer to this awful question. Into this void steps Nothingness. Nothingness, lights-out darkness, is solid. It is a conclusion you can hang your hat on. It removes the unknowness that anxiety hates. We can say to ourselves ‘that’s settled.’ Except it is not, because now you have to live your life with Nothingness looming over you. Your DNA wants only to exist but your conclusion is telling you existence is futile. The out here is embracing the mystery. Those who swear by Nothingness will say it is a scientific conclusion. But it cannot be theory if it cannot be measured. If there are no measurements, then there is no way of knowing what alternatives are plausible. Which means they are equally plausible. Which means anything is possible. We do not get to know what lies beyond. We do not know for sure it is Nothingness that lies beyond, but we know for sure a Mystery does. Nothingness is awful, but mysteries can be fun. Do not let anxiety run your life. Do not let it force conclusions. Especially unsupported ones that do you no good. Embrace the uncertainty. In the end it is the only thing we’ve got. Many men today feel like they’re falling behind, unable to meet traditional definitions of success. They see that others have succeeded, both before them and today, and conclude one thing: This is my failure.
In our culture, men are expected to be providers and achievers. You’ve “made it” if you can pay your bills and land promotions. The social status of another person is what we use as a shortcut to judge who he is. And so we assume others do the same about us. When a man feels he hasn’t reached the level he should, he works harder. He will bring work home with him, physically or mentally. Anxiety over unmet expectations builds, making it harder to get things done and often leading to burnout. The looming fear of getting fired - the ultimate blow to manhood - becomes a constant source of stress. These pressures are made worse by how work is set up. The primary goal of any employer is to get the most output for the least amount of input. So they put workers on a treadmill and gradually increase the speed. If they see you can run at 4 MPH without faltering, they increase it to 5. From 5 to 6. If at 6.5 MPH you struggle to keep up, then they now know what your max speed is. Some employers may demand 7 MPH, and the job market is such that if you can’t do it, they will find someone who will. But either way the preference is that you alone do it. Paying you $60,000 to do a ton of work leads to more profit than paying two people $50,000 to do it. So if we know work is naturally set up to always have us on the verge of breaking, why do we feel so terrible when we do? Times are changing, but much of it is still to do with a pressure to “man up.” Our grandfathers overcame the fascists without complaint, so the story goes. Being able to work through pain is the highest cultural virtue. And that mindset is exploited by those who want things from you. If you are not able to cut it, then it is ‘your’ failure. Buy an expensive watch and you can convince people you have succeeded. If they are convinced, maybe you can convince yourself. Buy the biggest TV and you have the most impressive way to distract from the nagging pain in the back of your mind. Go into debt. The same people who promote the idea that you must be strong, independent, and constantly working are more than willing to lend you money—at interest rates they control. In therapy I see again and again that the symptom is not the real problem. Men come in all the time with vague feelings of anxiety and inadequacy. They tend to want “tools” to get rid of the anxiety, so they can get back in the race. But anxiety is not an ailment, it is a beacon. It is a red flag. It is an alarm going off that says “here, over here, this is what needs attention!” Just addressing how not to feel anxious is putting a band-aid on a lopped off finger stub. We need to talk about how you got here in the first place. How we all keep getting here. And we need to question in what way we would like to participate in the culture that is exploiting you and grinding you down. I often will ask “what does being a man mean to you?” I find that the answers are not usually ones that we have independently come up with. Rather they are usually just a re-frame of what we have been told being a man means. Which to me means we are living someone else’s life instead of our own. Imagine yourself in, say Topeka, Kansas, 1938. The circus is in town, and out in a fallow corn field you see a huge beast of an elephant. You stare into her eyes. You do this long enough that something in the back of your mind panics as you realize “my God, this mammoth could break free and trample the whole crowd if she wanted to. We wouldn’t stand a chance.” But the elephant just stares passively back.
Your fear is not eased by the appearance of passivity. Nor is it eased by what you see as its restraints. The elephant has a simple rope tied around its ankle. No thicker than the rope your papa uses with the cattle. The rope is tied to a wooden stake, driven into the hardpan. You think to yourself that you and your buddy could probably tug of war that sucker right out of the ground. There is no reassurance there. How is it holding this monstrosity in place? The answer is standing right next to this long trunked colossus. Jumbo has an adorable little Dumbo. And around that baby elephant’s ankle you see the same rope. This being 1938 and you not having a smartphone to distract you, you sit and watch the elephants for a while. Every twenty moments or so the baby elephant yanks and yanks on the rope with childish exuberance. The stake does not budge, neither does mama. Then it dawns on you. The baby elephant is learning that the stake cannot be defeated. It gives up trying before it gets the strength to learn otherwise. That behemoth casting the long shadow on baby learned she was not capable at a time she was not capable. So she has gone through life believing she is not capable. It begs some questions: What were the ropes that were tied around your young ankles? Who are the circus owners in your life? Who is benefiting from your continued disbelief in your abilities? How can you break free from bondage with one sharp yank? What stops you? I was recently interviewed by Authority Magazine on the topic of being a people pleaser. Below is an excerpt from that article. The full version can be read for free on their website.
- What does “People Pleaser” mean to you? A people pleaser is a person who feels compelled to give more than they receive in any kind of relationship. Their default thinking will be some form of ‘what can I do to make people around me happy?’ On the surface, it seems like being a person who wants to please others is a good thing. Can you help articulate a few of the challenges that come with being a people pleaser? It does seem like a good thing on the surface. Certainly it is better than being the complete opposite. The trouble is the people pleaser invites others to take advantage of them. People pleasers will find there is inequality in their relationships. They are apt to grow bitter and feel that although they give so much to others, they get little in return. They may ask ‘when is it gonna be my turn?’ ... How does people-pleasing behavior impact personal relationships? If you establish in your relationships that you will give and give and not ask anything in return, the people in your life will accept that arrangement without much thought. People may assume you just take pleasure from giving. That you don’t want much of anything in return. Even well-meaning people can fall into this receiving without giving back trap. Receiving is easy, and if a person isn’t being asked for anything, it takes mental effort for them to notice that they should be giving. The above is the more common scenario. But there are more dangerous ones. People pleasers attract people users the way a glove attracts a hand. It is common for the victim in abusive relationships to be a people pleaser. An abuser may be the type of person who consciously only wants to take and take. So they sniff out a person who was raised to give. The abuser unknowingly plays the role of that childhood parent or caretaker. And the victim will play their old familiar role, possibly not knowing a different role is an option. This is exasperated by gender norms. Women are already conditioned to be givers in mainstream culture. If they grew up in a household that was both unstable and patriarchal, they likely would’ve received the message that it’s a woman’s job to quietly give and have no expectation of anything in return. ... Often while we say we want to change aspects of our lives that bother us, we don’t actually want to. That we actually prefer to keep the drama alive. This may be hard to accept. The drama appears to be everything you hate, so how could it also be your preference? The answer may be that the drama is familiar. In discussing anxiety I often use the metaphor of ‘the tiger in the room.’ Anxiety is the fear that because we have endured traumas and stressful events in the past, we will again in the future. So we have to be anxiously on guard for it, we have to be looking around for where the tiger -the threat- is hiding. Relief from anxiety can then come when you see the tiger, when a bad thing is happening to you. Because at least then you are in a familiar experience. The alternative is being comfortable with openness. That anything could happen, that there are no barriers, that anything can be in the room. This could mean a tiger is present, but it could also mean that love is present. It could mean a million different things good, bad, and neutral may be in the room. Anything may occur. If you choose to people please, then you will get the same familiar result. However if you choose openness, if you choose to take a new action, then you will get a new result. Is a new result what you want? Then take it. Full interview here. To book a counseling session, click here Human beings seem to be unique in that we are the only species that can physically be in one place but mentally be else. Be that ruminating on the past or dreading the future. Either way when we are emotionally flooded our hormones are bombarding our mind and making us feel not present.
Common triggers for emotional flooding are situations we previously found stressful. If we are having an argument with our partner that feels similar to a previous argument, our frustration will increase and we will have the feeling of 'here we go again'. That here we go again feeling makes us feel trapped. Because if we had that feeling before and are having it again now, the anxious part of our mind assumes we will keep having that feeling. Emotional flooding in this case means panic! It is hormones that are the biological cause of emotional flooding. Hormones, chemical messengers such as adrenaline, are shooting throughout our mind and body when we are emotionally flooded. Left unchecked, to put it simply, we do stupid stuff. We say things that hurt our partner, or we take actions we cannot untake. Over time, resentment builds in the relationship. Think of emotional flooding as like being drunk. If you are under the influence, it's best not to drive a car or make big decisions. We are not our best selves when drunk. But when alcohol wears off, we can think straight again. The same is true with these hormones. When you are emotionally flooded try your best to remove yourself from the situation. The tried and true technique of walking away to calm down still works. Once you have calmed down, and if your partner has as well, circle back to the argument. You can let them know why you walked away, and why you believe it was for the benefit of the relationship. Having these conversations when hormonally "sober" can lay the groundwork for better future arguments. So next time the fight comes up you can say some version of "hey, I think we are getting emotionally flooded right now. I don't want to lose connection with you, so for the health of our relationship, let's give each other some space." The Conclusion Drawing Machine The brain is a conclusion drawing machine. It does not believe in our ability to live in uncertainty. It has little faith in ‘we’ll figure it out when we get there’. It abhors ambiguity. It needs answers now, and if good ones cannot be found, it will settle for bad ones. The brain’s first preference is the correct conclusion. It wants to be right about people, places, and things. It wants to be right about relationships and ideas. This is the golden conclusion we are always striving for. The brain’s second preference is an incorrect conclusion. We like to close loops in our head. Mysteries are fun when they have answers. So many things in life are either unanswerable, or unanswerable in the moment. We lose sleep worrying about things that have yet to play out. Telling ourselves a lie can help us rest. Believing we have arrived at the truth means no longer having to think about it. The least favorable preference is coming to no conclusion at all. Like the uncomfortable feeling when you are walking and the next step isn’t where you thought it would be. For our cavemen ancestors who faced threats we have since inoculated against or drove extinct, mysterious situations were where deadly danger dwelt. We are hardwired to have a nagging voice in our head saying ‘figure it out, figure it out. Don’t wait for more information, figure it out now.’ Comparitivitis Comparitivitis - noun - /kəm-per-I-tə-vī-dəs/ : inflammation in soul caused by thoughts of others successes, particularly in comparison to ours. Psychosomatic disorder. Arises in subject from misconceptions on how ‘they’ve got it over there’. Individuals most vulnerable to comparitivitis include infants, toddlers, and those who have difficulty imagining what it is like to be in other people’s shoes. Symptoms include: (a) endless social media scrolling, (b) “I wish I/we could do/had that” statements, (c) inability to appreciate what one already has, (d) decreased motor function SEE ALSO: Joneses, keeping up with; First World Problems High School is Over
Maybe when we look back on it there is nostalgia but let’s face it, high school was awful. We were in rapidly changing bodies, first discovering what the social world was, and surrounded by others in the same situation. No longer was there the innocent equality of the prepubescent days, when every kid was just a kid. Now there were rankings, cliques, hierarchies. We spent our days all in the same brick building. Everyone knew everyone, had an opinion on everyone and we had one for them. Hell even everyone’s parents had an opinion on us. We were being watched and judged; ‘No Mistakes’ was the order of the day. After high school it’s all over. When we become an adult no one cares anymore. We are cast out into the world for our chapter three. Trouble is, every single person who has reached this point brought with them a view of the world developed in the preceding eighteen years. So if that view says that people are compared, categorized, and ranked, then we are going to march into adulthood thinking that is still happening. It’s not still happening. No one cares, and that is a really good thing. Go make mistakes, fall flat on your face. No one is watching anymore, they too are off on their own. Go do a thing. Become you. (Originally featured on Social Work Today)
In the American Southwest, there’s a little guy called the trapdoor spider. It sits all day in the small tunnel it dug into the earth with specially adapted teeth. It chose this space, seeing it as best suited for its purposes and freely available. It did the work of digging, closed its silk-hinged trap door, and now it waits. Time passes, its prey creeps across its doorstep, and it strikes. It’s quick, and to our eyes violent, but also natural. It’s smooth. It’s the way of the world. The tree in the woods did not select its spot. But it too works with the parts it has evolved on the ground that it found available. Time passes, and the storm winds rise up. The many branches of the tree bend and give way; the wind moves on. Maybe it appears violent to our eyes, but it is also natural, smooth, and the way of the world. Some trapdoor spiders may starve, and some mighty trees may fall. But the tree does not attack the wind, and the trapdoor spider does not run around the ground in a panic. They do not force these actions because they know intuitively they won’t work. They do not force these actions because they lack anxiety. Anxiety can be a beautiful thing. In large part because of anxiety, we do not have to live with our bodies or roots hiding in the ground. We can venture out across the earth safe in the knowledge that, to a strong degree, we can react to trouble and threats. Our blessing is that our reaction switch is always set to “on.” Our curse is that we can never turn it off. Reaction will always be our default. Reaction is controlled by our amygdala, the almond-shaped bit of brain that sits near where the brain connects to the rest of the body. When we feel, see, smell, or taste things, that information passes through our amygdala first before moving on to the rest of our brain. If we see a bear’s paw swinging at us with claws out, our amygdala will direct the body to dodge it before we even recognize with the rest of our minds that it is a bear’s paw. The amygdala is so wonderful when it is functioning properly. When we have suffered a trauma, have suppressed a lot of emotion, or are under considerable stress, the amygdala can be like a malfunctioning fire alarm. It will scream out to us, “Something is wrong! We need to take action now!” Action, action, all the time. This is anxiety. The amygdala reacts. But it knows its abilities are limited, and that it has an ally in our skull in our higher brain. The prefrontal cortex. The place where we do our higher thinking. This is the part you are using right now to comprehend and consider these words. The amygdala reacts and asks our higher brain to take action. It sends up stress signals like the Bat Signal. It makes us physically uncomfortable so we will act. When we act, we feel comfortable again for a while. If there are no actual threats that can be addressed, we may turn to our default coping strategies. We may rearrange the furniture, seek out some reassurance, or throw a tantrum. Afterwards we feel better. Unfortunately, in searching for short-term relief, we often do long-term damage. Our actions, when there was no real immediate threat, fed back to the amygdala the message that it was right to get all worked up and send out those stress hormones. The amygdala then thinks it should see more things as threats and make us even more anxious next time. The solution then is the most counter-intuitive thing imaginable in the moment. Unless the bear’s paw, the tornado, or the city bus truly is barreling toward us, the best thing we can do is take inaction. It is to sit there with the pain, watch it swell up like a wave in our mind and body, reach its crest, and then recede. Because it will recede. It will not drown you. As the stress hormones taper off, you will find that you survived, that your life was never actually at risk. After the initial reaction of our amygdala, our actions are within the control of the higher mind. When we ride the wave of anxious discomfort to its conclusion, we are then able to respond rather than react to what is going on. With practice this becomes easier, and we grow more skilled at working with our anxiety. Eventually we can even learn to appreciate our amygdalas, which do so much good for us. We can learn to love them because they are part of the beautiful experience of being alive. We can learn when we need to respond. Or, like the patient trapdoor spider or the tree on a peaceful day, we may find that no action is required at all but to be. Satellite View on Anxiety When we are in a highly anxious state the world closes in tightly. It’s kind of like being in Google Street View. We’re locked in place and all we can sense is our immediate surroundings. Our brain is scanning the area around us because it perceives threats. We can see detail in every direction, but only about 40 feet out. But that 360 degree bubble is not the only place life exists. Our anxiety is so concerned with the moment that we lose sight of that. If we are able to zoom out we see that the moment is a small part of the whole. There is the town, the county, the state, the nation, and it is all happening on this green and blue orb. If we can catch ourselves in the moment, and click that (-) button to zoom out, we can be better off for it. Oftentimes the people that know us best are already there, viewing our life from 40,000 feet. It may be worth asking them what is actually going on in the wider view, help adjust your perspective. The Overnight Attendant
The brain is like a good hotel. It is all efficiency. During the day bellhops zip up and down elevators, maids toss white linen in the air, and a team of workers at the front desk process weary travelers. We can take on most challenges in the daytime. At nighttime things change. Staff go home to their houses and apartments. Come 3 AM there is no one around but the Overnight Attendant. That one lone person manning the front desk in the unlikely case someone is needed. The staff need rest, so they rest while the rest of the world is at rest. We need, uh, rest too. We can run a whole operation during the day. We can hold conversations while operating vehicles. Listen to podcasts while cleaning. It is amazing what the brain can do! The cost of being human is that such an amazing piece of machinery as the neocortex cannot run at full power, 24-hours a day. At 3 AM it wants to be asleep. So if we are awake at 3 AM, the hotel is not at its best. The anxiety we experience then is like a group of teenagers broke into the swimming pool area, someone clogged the lobby toilets, a surprise tour bus just pulled in, and oh by the way the building is on fire. The Overnight Attendant is not equipped to handle all this. What brain is awake at 3 AM is not equipped to handle problems. The best possible answer is to lock the doors and say “I am going to figure this out tomorrow when I am fully staffed again.” Hope Loan This one is dorky, but it can work. It’s called the Hope Loan. Sometimes in life we know we are in a pinch point, where life is coming at us from different angles. Perhaps the kids are at a really tough age, while simultaneously we are overwhelmed at work. Or you are in some major transition. A divorce, grieving a loss, an emptying nest. What all of these situations have in common is that they are not permanent. They are tough times, but the pain we are feeling in those moments won’t last. There are better times ahead. It’s hard to imagine that in the moment, of course. But the moment is emotional, not logical. Logic is clear: periods of pain are followed by periods of not-pain. We all are familiar with loans at this point. A loan is a bet on yourself. It’s saying “I am gonna be worth enough in the future, I just need a lump sum to help me in the present.” A hope loan says the same thing. “The future is gonna be alright, so I am gonna take a lump sum of those good vibes now.” Hope loan: like a regular loan, but no monthly payments! When we have BIG feelings like anxiety, anger, and sadness, or when we are just feeling overwhelmed, we tend to get stuck in our head. Our fight or flight reactions are triggered and we start to narrowly focus on whatever caused the problem or the pain.
This can be a healthy reaction to things if the problem is we are being physically attacked, but thankfully modern life is not as often like that. Instead the best thing we can do is come out of that mental state, so we can think with a clear head again. The 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Method (not my invention) can be helpful with this. It involves using all five of our senses to reconnect us with the world outside of our head. And of course if you lack one or more of these senses, feel free to adapt it how you see fit. The idea is to acknowledge 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. If I am in a position where there is not much around me to see or smell (such as laying in bed) I will think about things I encountered that day. The benefit of this technique is to remind you that the rest of the world exists, and that it isn't falling apart. It also takes time to run thru the process, giving our mind-body a chance to slow down the release of those nasty hormone chemicals. (More about those chemicals here!) I like to not only name the object I can sense, but also think about the object. For example if I see a chair, I like to think about why the chair is shaped the way it is, who could have designed it, what I like about it, why we have chairs at all, etc. By the time I am done with this I am curious about the world again, and not lost in my own problems. |
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